If you live in the UK, you can hardly fail to have noticed that the Queen had her (official) 90th birthday at the weekend. As usual, this was celebrated with a series of events – a church service at St Paul’s Cathedral on Friday, Trooping the Colour on Saturday, and the Patron’s Lunch on Sunday. […]
TV production: at the general election
Staying up all night is not my usual idea of fun but working on the production of the general election for the BBC was not a job to say no to. The call was to work at New Broadcasting House (of W1A fame) with a great big map – and boy was it big! My […]
Remembering D Day 70
Last week I was privileged to be asked to produce the highlights programme for the BBCs D Day commemorations, which went out on BBC2 on Friday evening, after nine hours of programmes on BBC1, which chronicled the commemorations along the Normandy coast. It was a moving and emotional experience for the entire production team, and tears […]
How Google changed journalism & how PRs should react
Paul Curran, who is one of our media training team, was a reporter for the BBC for over 20 years. He has experienced at first hand how the internet has revolutionised the way the media operates. Here he talks about the impact of Google on his working life, and how PR departments – and those doing […]
Trooping Flypast: a story of a few seconds of TV footage
This year’s Trooping the Colour Highlights programme contained something very unusual. Did you spot it? It wasn’t in the main programme, shown on BBC1 in the morning of 15 June 2013. It was in the Highlights, which were broadcast on BBC2 at 6.30 that evening. Now it’s fairly usual that the Trooping highlights programme includes some […]
Crisis Communications interviews: an interesting example
If you run a business, the last place you ever want to be is facing Anne Robinson in the Watchdog studio, answering for the failings of your company. She is not an easy interviewer to face – combative and opinionated. Watch what happened when Eileen Downey, from Britannia Hotel Group, which owns Pontins, was held to […]
Sinead O’Connor vs Eddie Mair on TV
On Sunday, Sinead O’Connor appeared on the Andrew Marr TV show, in the regular end of the programme music slot. She was interviewed by briefly by Eddie Mair, and, it’s fair to say, didn’t appear to have enjoyed the process. Viewing the comments below the Youtube link, opinion is divided on who came off best […]
Bill Gates on TV: the Dimbleby Lecture
The Dimbleby Lecture is an annual event in which an individual who has made a significant contribution to the culture of our times gives a keynote speech to an invited audience for broadcast on BBC1. Set up in honour of Richard Dimbleby over 40 years ago, past speakers have included the Prince of Wales, nobel […]
BBC: in defence of public service
The BBC has come in for some major bashing since the broadcast of the ITV documentary about Jimmy Saville, and is generally deemed to be ‘in crisis’. The resignation of the Director General George Entwhistle came on Saturday afternoon as I was sitting in an outside broadcast truck outside the Albert Hall, preparing for the […]
The Teaching Awards: Uplifting television production
Teachers come in for a lot of flack – David Laws, the Education Minister is just the latest to take a pop, claiming that teachers fail to encourage children to ‘reach for the stars’. I just hope he was watching the Teaching Awards yesterday afternoon on BBC2. This is an annual event – the Oscars […]
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