Archive for March, 2008
Global Radio Buys GCap Media
They’ve been after a new radio group for ages and finally they’ve found got one. Global Radio’s offer has been endorsed by the Directors of GCap Media and recommended to the other shareholders. What does this mean? Well if the shareholders accept it (which they are very likely to do) Global will be the new [...]
Poor Kristy
I got the latest email update from GWR Bristol today, which mentioned their current breakfast contest – Bush and Troy Almighty. In it, they ‘take control’ of a listener’s life. Bascially, the listener has to do what the audience tells them and if they manage to make it to the end of the contest, they [...]
Online Privacy
There’s always lots of scare stories about online privacy and how you should be careful about what you give out to people on those, there, internets. Now, whilst I think it’s important that you think about what you share, i’m getting less worried about it, to be honest. Just think when you get a bank [...]
What Global Does Next…
This coming week will probably be the last for GCap Media as Global Radio agrees the final terms to acquire the “belegaured radio group” (copyright every newspaper). Whilst traditionally it’s the acquiree that feels the brunt of any changes or cuts, the unique nature of the takeover creates some interesting questions. First and foremost, GCap [...]
Student Radio and DAB
I had a really nice time at the Student Radio Conference in Bath last week. I was ostensibly there to chair a panel on future radio stuff, the natterly titled (by me) “is radio’s digital future the same as student radio’s digital future”. Alongside me was Ofcom’s Will Jackson, GCap’s Nick Piggott and sky.com’s Ben [...]
BBC Local Radio Websites
The BBC national radio websites produce some of the world’s best radio station websites. They’re generally well-designed, with up to date content and interesting applications that support the creative of the radio programmes. Actually, I think that last one is a key point that many radio station websites fall down all. Radio sites often get [...]
Ongoing BBC iPlayer Hack Battle
UPDATE: The BBC have since fixed(!) this, so the example below no longer works. Boing Boing is pointing out that a new hack is available that sucks MP4s off of the iPlayer site and drops them onto your computer in all their DRM free glory. It is, however, quite complicated. (update: there’s an easier version [...]
AOL Acquires Bebo
Is this the worst corporate photo ever? Bebo, a funky, young social network gets acquired by evil besuited corporate giants. Randy (left) and Joanna (middle) are too far away from each other and Ron (right) just looks Photoshopped on. And this is the photo that AOL themselves released! Though it is easy to see which [...]
BBC Blocks iPlayer Hack
So, my enjoyment about being able to download iPlayer programmes was (as I expected) short lived. If you’re new to this, well, the BBC changed the service so that iPhone/iTouch users could stream the iPlayer on their devices. However, this also allowed everyone to be able to download raw MP4 files, unprotected, and do what [...]
Getting iPlayer Video Downloaded on the iPhone and iTouch
(image from RTPeat) UPDATE: The BBC have since fixed(!) this, so the example below no longer works. Hooray for the BBC. They’ve just enabled the BBC iPlayer to stream MP4s onto the iPhone and iPod Touch. This however has created a small chink in the BBC’s DRM infrastrcuture that allows anyone to download these MP4s [...]