The iPlayer is currently in another beta stage, meaning that the previous 1000-user beta which launched on 15th November last year simply wasn’t good enough and nor was the beta before that of 5000 users from October 2005. So, cue a mad rush of those ‘in-the-know’ to start toying with the new technology, as soon as the floodgates opened last Friday. However, those who got to the site were welcomed by a friendly piece of text, stating that memberships are to be handed out on an application basis. You apply, wait to be accepted and then the fun allegedly starts.

With disappointment comes a sense of reasoning, initially, where the frustration subsides and one realises that, maybe the BBC do need to tinker around with it one last time to get things right before a full public launch. However, after taking a look at the beta myself, there is a lot left for them to develop.

When you’re approved to enter the program, you’re given a username and password which consists of randomly generated letters and numbers respectively (therefore difficult to remember). But then, to use the iPlayer, you have to enter in a second, and separate, username and password which is the normal one you use to log into the BBC’s forums. So far, so bad, with two different logins required. After deciding I wanted to take a look at the last Doctor Who episode which I unfortunately missed, I was asked to install the iPlayer onto my computer, which I did right away… after being asked to sign in again. Upon installation, I refreshed the page as instructed but clicking ‘download’ just brought up the same request to install the iPlayer, despite having it open and in front of me.

As it demanded, I was in Windows, I had the recent Media Player and I opened the site in Internet Explorer. Do you think Mark Thompson and Bill Gates are having an affair behind our backs? iPlayer won’t work on Macs or Linux and it won’t work on Firefox or, in fact, any other browser, operating system or media player. This, the BBC says, is set to be in development by the autumn but knowing their regard for deadlines, who actually knows?

In fact, there already exists a very simple program which downloads popular programmes legally and with just a couple of clicks. 4 on Demand (or 4oD as it’s fashionably known) has been delivering programmes quite successfully, with a minimum amount of problems since last November. The worst bit is, they use the same technology as the iPlayer but the BBC still can’t pull it off, despite the gargantuan development time. Sure, 4oD is not perfect – it only runs in Windows and they don’t have further plans to extend it and some programmes cost money to view – but it actually works. As does ITV’s offering and Five’s odd CSI-only service – in fact the BBC run a report on their news site which seems to trounce the iPlayer in all ways. It seems the new application is losing popularity already.

Audience apathy isn’t the only problem, however. This beta (or gamma or even delta) test is extremely buggy, with users experiencing system crashes, delivery errors, failed logins, program conflicts, security problems… a cabbage could probably download BBC programming better than iPlayer. It desperately begs the question:

What the hell have the BBC been doing for the past four years?!

Let’s hope that by the full launch in the autumn, it actually works for everyone. For a look at the iPlayer from someone who did get it to work, have a look at the Guardian’s review. At the moment though, as far as I’m concerned, those re-runs of Chucklevision will have to wait.

-Daniel

Does the iPlayer work well for you? Is it a disastrous overinvestment of time and money or is it a godsend to audiences in the UK? What should we see from on demand television services in the future, in order to make them more accessible to audiences? Drop me a comment and tell me what you think.

The ASA has slapped the pert-and-pretty face of L’Oreal for faking the results of their mascara in a recent advert featuring the pert-and-pretty Penelope Cruz. Whilst the claim of making eyelashes appear up to 60% longer, as claimed by their advert, is ‘proven’ in their own consumer tests… Cruz was wearing false eyelashes whilst appearing in her latest adverts (print and television) for the make-up firm.

According to the Advertising Standards Authority’s investigation into the advert, “We noted from the lengthening study that 75% of subjects had a 60% increase or more in the visible length of their lashes when measured using digital imagery,” and that the Authority: “…noted L’Oreal’s belief that up to 60% longer lashes could be achieved irrespective of whether lashes were real or artificial.”

The national freesheet Metro quotes L’Oreal as responding with the time-honoured ‘no really, they do work, but just not when you want to film an advert’. They said: “It is common industry practice to make use of some artificial lashes in order to ensure a consistent lash line under filming or shooting conditions – the ASA had previously accepted on more than one occasion that this industry practice was not misleading.” L’Oreal confusingly sees it fit to accuse the ASA of being inconsistant.

Being the manly man that I am, I’m not make-up expert but I don’t see the point in buying fake lashes, just to make them look longer with mascara? Surely you’d just buy long lashes in the first place. Even with real eye lashes, the fact that the guinea pigs needed ‘digital imagery’ to notice the increase in visible length is quite worrying. How about we magnify your face a thousand times and put it on the side of a building – doesn’t it look much larger? The same applies in this case, I believe, unless those men you expect to be attracting with that mascara carry pocket ‘digital imaging’ devices around with them.

This does raise some more important questions, however. The very idea of make-up adverts featuring very beautiful women stating they sourced their looks from L’Oreal and other brands is quite misleading in itself. Who would hire an 18-year-old to advertise anti-ageing cream? But yet, hire any actor with naturally young looks whatever their age, and suddenly you find them attributing their beauty to a product which has only been released moments before the advert was output. It’s vulgar but true: you can’t polish a turd – but make-up adverts in their very essence set out to convince consumers that, whoever you are, you can magically look as beautiful as Penelope Cruz just with a dash of their product.

Or you could just fake it yourself, as this advert seems to prove.

-Daniel

P.S. Many apologies for the probably overused headline. It was just too tempting!

Mentioning Saddam Hussein, a new clip has surfaced on the internet which depicts the recently-executed (at the time of filming) former leader of Iraq, or his body at least, laying in the back of a van, accompanied by the singing and cheering of a crowd hoping to catch a glimpse of his body. According to the post on video website LiveLeak.com Chief Prosecutor Munqith Al-Faroun is depicted in the video, which was filmed outside an Iraqi Ministers’ HQ. Sorry for the lack of details but after a cursory search on Google for further information there seems to be little about.

However, it’s images like these which make real events all the more pertinant to the viewers at home. Showing a clip which someone has shot on their own camera, with its shaky and unprofessional style, often lends an essential bite of realism to any correspondant’s report, be it on the 24-hour news channels, relevant audio on the radio or the stills in a newspaper. Certainly even more crucial, is the fact that this is shot by an eyewitness at the time of the event, and as most news broadcasters’ and newspapers’ skills end ahead of clairvoyancy, getting the story from the scene recorded as it’s happening is a real boon.

Not all news is good news, though. This very blog counts as citizen journalism and what if I were to make wild accusations of a celebrity in sordid affairs with a head of state, including fuzzy pictures of some lookalikes? Not only would it be snapped up by the Daily Mirror (sorry, that was a cheap shot) but those who did pick up the story could find themselves in big trouble had I been a hoaxer. By the time news sources can verify claims to one thing or another, it’s likely the real hacks are on the scene/story by now, dampening the effect the citizen reporter has on the media.

Citizen journos have the power to provide real insight and many of the media giants have recently grasped that as the future in news broadcasting. In the case of the Virginia Tech killer, Seung-Hui Cho, he was himself a citizen journalist – describing to the world the reasons he decided to commit the crimes, something which no other person, let alone broadcaster, would be able to do.

However, there seems to be continually more to citizen journalism than first meets the eye. The constraints of BBC, Sky (et al) and newspaper output mean that the reporting on the story has to end somewhere, obviously in order to be able to report other events going on in the world. This is where news made by the people, for the people, really comes into its own.

Take Alive in Baghdad as one example. These self-made, ‘semi-pro’ (they don’t work for furnishing their pockets but the editing, camera work and generally effort put in is similar to that of a professional) and all-round good eggs gave cameras to ordinary Iraqis and ask them to film daily life. When the news cameras have stopped rolling, you really get to see life for what it is there, especially as conversations with interviewees are long and detailed, meaning the viewer really connects with the person, as opposed to hearing a soundbyte dubbed over by more Western-friendly tones.

This is the future of participatory journalism. Ordinary people deciding to set up their own ventures to report. This provides way more coverage and scope than CNN and the BBC can provide – not through some bias, promotion of ambiguity or general ignorance – it simply would make no sense for broadcasters to spend all their resources and effort on constantly monitoring the world yet further than they already do, when they can buy it from the Joe Bloggs who was there at the time.

The whole issue of citizen journalists and their payment would make a whole other post but either way, I hope I’ve outlined some of the importances and impact citizen journalism doesn’t just have on media in the UK, but on a global scale. One day, a one minute clip taken on your mobile just because you were at the scene of something, could be broadcast to literally billions of people in a matter of minutes. That’s the seed of citizen journalism but it has the potential to be so much more.

 -Daniel

Take a few cute photos, a shocking ‘snatched from her bed’ plot-line and two humble, loving parents in grief and you have the recipe for a media orgy, all falling over each other to catch on to what little information can be garnered from this event. Despite the fact of thousands of British children missing, politicians walk round with a yellow ribbon adorning their sweaty jackets ‘for Madeleine’ along with The Sun, dressing their website’s masthead for all to see and generally slapping every half-baked story about her on the front page.

Naturally, it’s not a point on its own to simply say “there are thousands of people missing, why is she so special?” because it’s obvious why. It makes a great story and I agree, it should certainly be in the news as it does have a high news value. However, there comes a point where the newsers turn to users.

As BBC’s Newswatch reports (yes, I am aware it’s the Daily Mail of news criticism), there have been as many as 5 live reports from Portugal within an hour of BBC News 24 and all with different reporters. ITN has been even worse with their wall-to-wall coverage and, in my mind, ITV news is about as tabloid as TV news gets, making them as bad as The Sun in my opinion. Lots and lots of reporting… yet no developments. The nature news media dictates that celebrities must also get involved in order to raise their profile and so consequently there’s been an auction for the person who can donate the most to the reward for finding her, with media attention sold to the highest bidder. Incidentally, the reward fund now stands at £2.6 million and I’m sure the National Missing Persons Helpline can only dream of raising such a large amount of money so quickly.

After the news coverage, the celebrities and the donations come the moral public reaction. Not only have there been websites, blogs and other general online ‘help’ as well as the much-reported offline support too. Cycling along Sunderland’s high street today I even saw a poster asking us to report any sightings of her, stuck to a phone box.

Put simply, there is nothing more special about this little 4-year-old girl than there is with any other British child. The family are certainly lucky to get this media attention and would be fools not to use it – and the media are right to report it. However, now that her face is out there and everyone knows what she looks like and what happened to her, the reporting should slow down to a trickle until there is actually something new to report.

It must be considered though, that this is news and newspapers thrive on it, obviously. So wouldn’t they be stupid not to capitalise on this? Your comments are much appreciated.

-Daniel

This seems like utter blindness on the side of the Department of Health. Whilst I understand these adverts are meant to shock, how can an advert continue to shock people if it gets banned by the ASA? Having people being violently dragged around by a hook in their mouth is not something most kids and even adults want to see as part of their day’s entertainment.

There are times when shocking ads slip through the net and simple usual ads get swept up in the hysteria of the Mary Whitehouses out there. One example is the KFC commercial of a couple of years ago, the most complained about ad of its year… because of call centre staff eating whilst singing. It was complained about 1,671 times because it encouraged children to talk whilst eating. Thank goodness the ASA has sense (sometimes) and didn’t ban the advert.

The issue here is the fine line between controversy and insanity. How did the DoH think they could get away with adverts which even depict mild violence? Did they talk the old ‘if they can run a woman over with a table in a pub, then we can drag people around with fish hooks’? Education is good enough in this country that everyone knows smoking is bad for them and if they want to give up, then they will. An advert with the phone number and website is enough to make people aware there is help out there.

Modern advertising is a complex market, with fractured audiences and so many different media to advertise on. Shock adverts are there to stand out from the crowd but, as I mentioned, getting your advert banned doesn’t help your promotion.

-

Thanks to everyone who responded to the previous post, I hope you’re aboard as regular readers now. If there’s anything you’re infuriated by or agree with, please post a comment.

-Daniel

However, in a recent ‘documentary’ for the BBC, John Sweeney investigates Scientology and, despite his unblemished track record for the truth, he loses his cool in what he terms an ‘exploding tomato’ moment. Who wouldn’t end up shouting for all they’re worth, after being stalked relentlessly for days by the mad professor of Scientology in the USA, Tommy Davis. They filmed interviews and confrontations and made their own videos which they posted on YouTube as a counter stratagem.

Scientology is a religion like no other and I mean that in a negative sense. Whilst they don’t go round claiming holy war on everyone they see like some clichéd ‘Islamic extremist organisation’, they are clearly the blind leading the blind. What the hell do they think they’re doing, stalking a prominent British journalist?

I don’t say this in defence of John, rather, how stupid do you have to be? Surely if you stalk someone in a blacked-out car, block access to key churches and criticise the journalist in question, then your religion is going to be seen as some oppressive, flighty and insane organisation, intent on quashing negativity from the outside. Doesn’t it make sense to fluff the reporter as much as possible, with posh dinners and friendly meetings in order to make Scientology seem like the quaint, expensive social club that it is, rather than some fascist cult? They shot themselves in the foot twice over, not only by denying a perfect vision of the sci-fi fantasists’ way of doing things but they forgot the Golden Rule of news - bad news is good news (for the channel broadcasting it, at least). Panorama achieved a 19% (4.4m) share of the viewers for that time, a boon for the programme’s editors.

As for the BBC, I can understand Tommy’s concerns after the previous ‘neutral’ and ‘unbiased’ documentaries that have been coming out of the BBC News tosh factory of late. Anything from the BBC that claims to blow the whistle on something or investigate malpractice I take an instant disregard to. I’ve yet to see an episode of Panorama that genuinely allows the other side a chance to exercise their right-to-reply beyond being shouted at by a Paxman wannabe in a suit two sizes too big. Either that or a ‘serious reporter’ in the new style of poly-skilled female newsreaders who overcompensate with glasses way too big for her face…

Sweeney will undoubtedly get a slap on the wrist and told not to do it again but, thankfully, be back to bite the head off some other jumped-up figurehead or other. The pay-as-you-go religion, as Sweeney describes it, has a lot of lessons to learn if anyone is going to take them seriously but, with millions under their belt already, they’re laughing.

Taking a quick glance at ‘Sweeney Panorama’ search results on YouTube brings up a startling anti-BBC response. Do these stupid defenders of the faith need reminding that, as in Scientology, the BBC is an organisation of individuals with varying opinions and reactions? You can’t say he is representative of the BBC.

Still, I wonder who came off looking stupid here, the BBC’s irratic journalism or Scientology’s censorship tactics? BBC, one. Scientology, nil. The BBC wins over any whinging, money grabbing fabulists.

-Daniel 

Media affects the world around us and particularly in Britain, with highly regulated radio, often liberally regulated television and almost not at all regulated newspapers, the UK media scene is as diverse now than it ever has been.

The UK is the home to the world’s biggest broadcaster, the BBC, (and no, I shall not cite my sources, I read it somewhere, ok?) and has a radio industry structure most countries are envious of. However, not all is perfect. Print media has heavy influence on public opinion thanks to the gutter press, ITV is dragging itself out of the wreckage of poor schedualing and dire ventures and the satellite vs. cable company’s war rages.

It’s an interesting environment and one which I hope to shed some light on for the uninitiated. For the initiated, I can offer nothing but my own commentary and criticism, for which I’m sure you’ll be happy to comment about.

Either way, let’s see what comes up.

-Daniel