No one is loving the national Wills & Kate love fest more than I, but I couldn’t resist sharing this little gem today. It was big news a couple of weeks back when our beloved Queen joined Facebook, and in this comedy skit presented by BBC Comedy, someone has gloriously united the two pieces of news in matrimony.
Giggle away.
Filed under Comedy, Current Affairs
I have been meaning to post on the product placement horrors in one of my fave US teen dramas 90210 for some time, and that post is still forthcoming – but in the meantime, a quick update on recent developments in that area for the UK broadcast market.
Ever in the shadow of its more commercially open American cousin, the British broadcasting industry has always been hampered by government guidelines restricting product placement on our TV screens. Not for much longer.
Under new legislation announced by the Government on 9 February, product placement will be allowed in UK terrestrial television programmes. In his statement, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Ben Bradshaw said that maintaining a ban on television product placement would “jeopardise the competitiveness” of UK programme makers “at a time when this crucial part of our creative industries needs all the help we can give it.”
This decision follows the introduction of the Audiovisual Media Regulations 2009 on 19 December 2009, which allowed some product placement in ‘on-demand’ television and television-like services. However, until this week’s Government announcement, there were no exceptions to the prohibition on television product placement. The question of television product placement has proved a contentious issue, with many stakeholders expressing concerns about the potential adverse impact on the editorial independence of broadcasters and on viewers’ trust in what they see on television. The strength of opinion is evident in that the Government received almost 1480 responses during its recent consultation.
For this reason, the Government has decided to “proceed with caution” and has decided to introduce further safeguards beyond those set out in the AVMS Regulations 2009. Products and services such as alcohol, food and drinks high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS), infant follow-on milk and gambling will all be excluded from the new product placement rules, and BBC licence funded programmes will also remain unaffected.
Further, it is significant that the new rules will not take effect immediately, as the Government want to give Ofcom the opportunity to run a public consultation and make detailed changes to its Code. However, it is anticipated that shows including product placement will be being shown on terrestrial TV by the end of the year, in what could herald a new era for television advertising and broadcasting.
Watch out for a pint of the black stuff being ordered in the Old Vic this side of Christmas.
A little online meme currently doing the Facebook rounds is that, of the Top 100 books (as identified by the BBC in 2003), the BBC reckons that the average adult has only read 6.
This I felt was worthy of a blog for several reasons. Firstly, the list itself should be viewed by everyone, as all those who know me are aware of my enthusiasm for great works of English Literature (well, those and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series).
But secondly, when I came to post ‘the list’ here, I learnt that the listcurrently being promulgated by numerous Twitterers and Facebook users is not in fact the list that the BBC published6 years ago. Nor, to any end that I can discern online, did the Beeb ever make the claim that only 6 titles have been read by the ’average adult’.
So here we have a classic example of an Internet meme- whereby content is spread instantly, virally and often inaccurately throughout the blogosphere, accelerated by the immediacy of the social media space. Thus, in the space of a week, the BBC’s actuallist has been replaced by the now prolific alternative version flooding Facebook walls and inboxes around the globe. A small-scale insight into how the blogosphere can re-write history faster than we can correct it, or remember it.
That said, both the amended list (duplications aside) and the original list (below) are both worth perusing to asses your own accomplishments. Certain Facebook buddies of mine have taken to marking those read with an X and forwarding their total to friends…
(OK, so I make it 42 from the list below – so far).
See how you fair…
1. [ ] – The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. [ ] – Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. [ ] – His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. [ ] – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. [ ] – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. [ ] – To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. [ ] – Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. [ ] – Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. [ ] – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. [ ] – Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. [ ] – Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. [ ] – Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. [ ] – Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. [ ] – Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. [ ] – The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. [ ] – The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. [ ] – Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. [ ] – Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. [ ] – Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. [ ] – War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. [ ] – Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. [ ] – Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. [ ] – Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. [ ] – Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. [ ] – The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. [ ] – Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. [ ] – Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. [ ] – A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. [ ] – The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. [ ] – Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. [ ] – The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. [ ] – One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. [ ] – The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. [ ] – David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. [ ] – Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. [ ] – Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. [ ] – A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. [ ] – Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. [ ] – Dune, Frank Herbert
40. [ ] – Emma, Jane Austen
41. [ ] – Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. [ ] – Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. [ ] – The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. [ ] – The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. [ ] – Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. [ ] – Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. [ ] – A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. [ ] – Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. [ ] – Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. [ ] – The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. [ ] – The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. [ ] – Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. [ ] – The Stand, Stephen King
54. [ ] – Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. [ ] – A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. [ ] – The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. [ ] – Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. [ ] – Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. [ ] – Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. [ ] – Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. [ ] – Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. [ ] – Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. [ ] – A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. [ ] – The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. [ ] – Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. [ ] – The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. [ ] – The Magus, John Fowles
68. [ ] – Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. [ ] – Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. [ ] – Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. [ ] – Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. [ ] – The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. [ ] – Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. [ ] – Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. [ ] – Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. [ ] – The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. [ ] – The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. [ ] – Ulysses, James Joyce
79. [ ] – Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. [ ] – Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. [ ] – The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. [ ] – I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. [ ] – Holes, Louis Sachar
84. [ ] – Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. [ ] – The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. [ ] – Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. [ ] – Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. [ ] – Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. [ ] – Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. [ ] – On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. [ ] – The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. [ ] – The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. [ ] – The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. [ ] – The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. [ ] – Katherine, Anya Seton
96. [ ] – Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. [ ] – Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. [ ] – Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. [ ] – The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100.[ ] – Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
Filed under Blogging, Books, Social Media
