Words Dept.: archive

Compare and contrast Britain with North Korea. One has a state-controlled media, news blackouts and pages and pages of congratulatory and uncritical PR puff about senior members of a privileged, unelected elite. The other is North Korea. Boom boom. The BBC has been justifying its decision not to report for the last ten weeks the [...]

I’m watching GMTV again. The section called Entertainment Today, or just ET, as it was introduced. (Sadly there are no aliens, unless there’s something we don’t know about Jenni Falconer.) They just featured an interview with Antony Cotton off of Coronation Street, who was discussing the storyline in tonight’s episode. I fully understand the purpose [...]

Apparently there was an earthquake last night. No, really. Look at this long list of boring anecdotes (sorry, I meant to say cutting edge media weblog 2.0) if you don’t believe me. As a seasoned veteran of the infamous Dudley quake of ’02 (I was living in Birmingham at the time), I knew what it [...]

According to almost everyone, private equity firms are fundamentally a bad thing, especially if the company you work for happens to be bought by one. And according to the Mail on Sunday yesterday, two of the most famous – Cinven and Apax Partners – are keen to buy RBI (my employer) from current owner Reed [...]

Look at this. It’s Jonathan Wilkes being interviewed in the MEN about his role in the musical theatre version of The Wedding Singer. I really love musicals, especially those based on moderately entertaining late-1990s Adam Sandler movies that made very little mark on the public consciousness. So I was keen to read this insightful piece. [...]

Do you wake up in the night sweating about your workflow solutions strategy? Do you fear inherent cyclicality and long for more cohesive and synergistic times? I, personally, don’t. But I did wake up yesterday morning in a hotel in Edinburgh to read on my Blackberry that the parent company of the magazine publisher I work for is [...]

Words Dept. is a fan of egg-shaped ex-greengrocer Gregg Wallace, the co-host/judge of TV’s Masterchef. So it is with great embarrassment and personal sadness that I must recount the claims this weekend that in addition to a penchant for “plates of food”, the renowned “ingredients expert” is a fan of sick bottom spanking action for [...]

George W. Bush is clearly disturbed. He grins like a post-coital bonobo on Prozac for the duration of his BBC interview with Matt Frei. Perhaps it’s understandable, considering Frei is asking him about such rib-tickling topics as AIDS in Africa, “genocide” in Darfur and China’s human rights record. Bush, as we know, finds it difficult [...]

What is, or was, the point of Xfm Manchester? After launching with much fanfare just two years ago, GCap Media has announced that it is going to sell off its Xfm radio licence in Manchester. The reason is a cost cutting drive by GCap in order to fend off a takeover, exacerbated by rising costs [...]

BSkyB discovered a fun way of reporting its “mixed” half-year financial results today. The broadcaster, which announced a £112m net loss because of its pigheaded decision in 2006 to purchase a 17.9% stake in ITV at an hysterically overblown price just to stop Virgin Media doing the same, simply commandeered the business update on Sky [...]