THE 202 TELEVISION STATION WEBSITES (IN ORDER OF SKY DIGITAL CHANNEL NUMBER, AND THEN IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER)
Most of these television channels on the Sky Digital platform are listed below, with exceptions of the following:
A) The HD, +1, +2, and other variants of channels that are already listed below, and also if the original channels that they are based on are already listed in its original place. Channels mentioned below may be HD ones anyway. These have not been listed in order to avoid repetition within the list. Regional variations of BBC One and BBC Two listed between channels 951 and 972 are included because they contain variations which are different enough in order to be listed separately. BBC One region links point to the relevant regional news programme for that area, while BBC Two variations point to the main website of the relevant nation concerned between channels 970 and 972.
B) Channels which are listed between channels 860 and 949, which are mostly based on themes of gambling, betting, casinos, poker, dating, and anything which is regarded from a legal perspective as adult only channels aimed legally at persons over the age of 21, (as defined by the United Kingdom Parliament as part of the Ofcom rules within the Communications Act 2003, the Gambling Commission and other authorities based in the United Kingdom), which are sexual or even pornographic in nature, involving people over the age of 21 in a naked or sexual situation on screen. Bear in mind that this page is not just listing the channels below of course, but also providing links to the channel's website as well, which is why the channels listed between 860 and 949 are not listed below.
C) Sky Movie and Box Office channels listed between 301 and 314 and also between 700 and 755 which may show films that have violence, sexual content and offensive language, and in which case would be only suitable for persons over the age of 18 as well. Besides, the themes of the film channels change throughout the year sometimes, and so it can be difficult to keep up with all of this on the list.
Remember that the Sky Digital channel is the one that is listed on the link and not the number in the list seen on the left. For example, Al Jazeera English which is on channel 514, is positioned at number 101 in this list, but it is not channel 101 because that is BBC One of course!
Website links are included with most channels, but in the rare instance of one not being available (after a Google search), a Wikipedia entry on that channel (if there is one), or a news article relating to the channel, will be used, although this sort of thing is mostly discouraged for a number of reasons.
The list of channels may be out of date for a long while because of channels closing down, new channels starting up, and channels switching numbers. Also, this page is not updated as often as to keep up with these changes, so please be prepared for some out of date information below!
1) 101 AND 954 - BBC ONE
2) 102 AND 969 - BBC TWO
3) 103 AND 973 - ITV
4) 104 AND 974 - CHANNEL 4
5) 105 AND 171 - CHANNEL 5
6) 106 - SKY 1
7) 107 - SKY LIVING
8) 108 - SKY ATLANTIC
9) 109 - WATCH (UKTV)
10) 110 - GOLD (UKTV)
11) 111 - DAVE (UKTV)
12) 112 - COMEDY CENTRAL
13) 113 - UNIVERSAL
14) 114 - SYFY
15) 115 - BBC THREE
16) 116 - BBC FOUR
17) 118 - ITV 2
18) 119 - ITV 3
19) 120 - ITV 4
20) 121 - SKY 2
21) 122 - SKY LIVING
22) 124 - FOX HD
23) 125 - TLC
24) 126 - MTV HD
25) 129 - SKY ARTS 1
26) 130 - SKY ARTS 2
27) 132 - ALIBI (UKTV)
28) 134 - S4C
29) 136 - E4
30) 138 - MORE4
31) 140 - 4SEVEN
32) 144 - DMAX
33) 145 - CHALLENGE
34) 146 - CBS REALITY
35) 148 - CBS ACTION
36) 149 - CBS DRAMA
37) 156 - BIO
38) 157 - SONY TV
39) 166 - DRAMA CHANNEL (UKTV)
40) 167 - QUEST
41) 174 - 5USA
42) 176 - 5STAR
43) 182 - BEN
44) 183 - TRUE DRAMA
45) 184 - TRUE ENTERTAINMENT
46) 185 - MORE MOVIES
47) 187 - BET - BLACK ENTERTAINMENT TELEVISION
48) 188 - FOX TV
49) 189 - PROPELLER TV
50) 191 - SHOWCASE 1
51) 192 - SHOWCASE 2
52) 199 - OH TV
53) 203 - TV MY CHANNEL
54) 209 - THE AFRICA CHANNEL
55) 212 - INFORMATION TV
56) 218 - VOX AFRICA
57) 240 - HOME AND HEALTH
58) 242 - DISCOVERY SHED
59) 246 - HOME (UKTV)
60) 247 - GOOD FOOD (UKTV)
61) 248 - REALLY (UKTV)
62) 253 - THE STYLE NETWORK
63) 251 - TRAVEL CHANNEL
64) 262 - FOOD NETWORK
65) 273 - LUXURY LIFE
66) 280 - HORSE AND COUNTRY
67) 282 - FITNESS TV
68) 284 - HOLIDAY AND CRUISE
69) 290 - ABN TV
70) 291 - LIFETIME TV CHANNEL
71) 292 - FILMON TV
72) 294 - E!
301 TO 314 ARE SKY MOVIE CHANNELS WHICH MAY CONTAIN FILMS FOR OVER 18s THAT HAVE VIOLENCE, SEXUAL CONTENT OR OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE
73) 315 - FILM4
74) 317 - TCM HD
75) 319 - HORROR CHANNEL
76) 356 - VH1
77) 359 - THE BOX
78) 362 - SMASH HITS!
79) 401 - SKY SPORTS 1
80) 410 - EUROSPORT
81) 415 - AT THE RACES
82) 417 - ESPN
83) 418 - MUTV
84) 419 - EXTREME SPORTS
85) 421 - CHELSEA TV
86) 428 - PREMIER SPORTS
87) 429 - LIVERPOOL FC TV
88) 432 - RACING UK
89) 442 - TRACE SPORTS
90) 501 - SKY NEWS UK
91) 502 - BLOOMBERG TV
92) 503 - BBC NEWS CHANNEL
93) 504 - BBC PARLIAMENT
94) 505 - CNBC
95) 506 - CNN
96) 508 - EURONEWS
97) 509 - FOX NEWS
98) 510 - CCTV NEWS
99) 512 - RT
100) 513 - FRANCE 24 - ENGLISH
101) 514 - AL JAZEERA ENGLISH
102) 515 - CNC WORLD
103) 519 - ARISE NEWS HD
104) 523 - ANIMAL PLANET
105) 537 - YESTERDAY (UKTV)
106) 539 - COMMUNITY CHANNEL
107) 580 - GOD CHANNEL
108) 584 - DAYSTAR
109) 601 - CARTOON NETWORK
110) 603 - BOOMERANG TV
111) 604 - NICKELODEON
112) 606 - NICKTOONS
113) 609 - DISNEY CHANNEL
114) 613 - CBBC CHANNEL
115) 614 - CBEEBIES
116) 615 - NICK JR
117) 616 - POP TV
118) 617 - TINY POP
119) 619 - CARTOONITO
120) 621 - CITV
121) 623 - BABY TV
122) 626 - POP GIRL
123) 627 - KIX TV
124) 628 - DISNEY JUNIOR
125) 629 - KIX POWER
126) 640 - QVC UK
127) 642 - THE STORE
128) 643 - TV SHOP
129) 644 - IDEAL WORLD
130) 645 - PRICE DROP
131) 648 - HIGH STREET TV
132) 650 - THE JEWELLERY CHANNEL
133) 652 - GEMS TV
134) 654 - BID TV
135) 655 - JEWELLERY MAKER
136) 656 - HIGH STREET XTRA
137) 657 - TV WAREHOUSE
138) 658 - QVC BEAUTY
139) 659 - PAVER SHOES TV
140) 660 - THANE DIRECT
141) 664 - V CHANNEL
142) 666 - ROCKS AND CO 1
143) 668 - CRAFT EXTRA
144) 671 - CREATE AND CRAFT
145) 681 - THE DEPT STORE
146) 682 - THE MALL
700 TO 755 ARE SKY BOX OFFICE CHANNELS WHICH MAY CONTAIN FILMS FOR OVER 18s THAT HAVE VIOLENCE, SEXUAL CONTENT OR OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE
147) 780 - B4U MOVIES
148) 781 - B4U MUSIC
149) 785 - PCNE CHINESE
150) 787 - MTA MUSLIM
151) 788 - ZEE TV
152) 789 - ZING TV
153) 791 - ARY ENTERTAINMENT
154) 793 - MATV NATIONAL
155) 799 - TV5
156) 801 - RECORD TV
157) 802 - DM DIGITAL
158) 804 - ARY QTV
159) 805 - VENUS TV
160) 813 - ISLAM CHANNEL
161) 815 - GEO UK
162) 817 - SAHARA ONE
163) 819 - NOOR TV
164) 820 - PEACE TV
165) 822 - PTC PUNJABI
166) 824 - GEO TEZ
167) 825 - GEO NEWS
168) 826 - IQRA TV
169) 827 - ATN BANGLA TV
170) 831 - RISHTEY TV
171) 832 - GLORY TV
172) 833 - BRIT ASIA TV
173) 840 - THE SIKH CHANNEL
174) 843 - SAMAA TV
175) 844 - CHANNEL I
176) 845 - TAKBEER TV
177) 846 - ZEE PUNBABI
178) 847 - SANGRAT TV
179) 849 - AASTHA TV
180) 852 - NTV
181) 855 - SKY NEWS ARABIA
182) 856 - ZEE NEWS
183) 857 - TV 99
184) 858 - AKALL CHANNEL
185) 859 - HUM EUROPE
CHANNELS 860 TO 949 ARE NOT LISTED HERE DUE TO THEIR EXPLICIT ADULT NATURE OF ITS PROGRAMMING AND WEBSITE LINKS
186) 951 - BBC ONE SCOTLAND
187) 952 - BBC ONE WALES
188) 953 - BBC ONE NORTHERN IRELAND
189) 954 - BBC ONE LONDON
190) 955 - BBC ONE NORTH EAST AND CUMBRIA
191) 956 - BBC ONE NORTH (LEEDS)
192) 857 - BBC ONE NORTH (HUMBERSIDE)
193) 958 - BBC ONE NORTH WEST (MANCHESTER)
194) 959 - BBC ONE MIDLANDS (BIRMINGHAM)
195) 961 - BBC ONE EAST (NORWICH)
196) 964 - BBC ONE SOUTH (SOUTHAMPTON)
197) 965 - BBC ONE SOUTH EAST (KENT)
198) 966 - BBC ONE WEST (BRISTOL)
199) 967 - BBC ONE SOUTH WEST (PLYMOUTH)
200) 970 - BBC TWO SCOTLAND
201) 971 - BBC TWO WALES
202) 972 - BBC TWO NORTHERN IRELAND
THE 50 RADIO STATION WEBSITES (IN ORDER OF SKY DIGITAL CHANNEL NUMBER)
Radio stations such as BBC Radio 4 Long Wave and LBC News are not listed below in order to avoid repetition with the stations that they are based on, which are already on this list, and also because they are more or less regarded as the same station from a content and identity perspective. Only radio stations found Sky Digital nationally are listed below. Other BBC local radio stations and most independent local radio stations outside London are not listed for obvious reasons.
1) 0101 - BBC RADIO 1
2) 0102 - BBC RADIO 2
3) 0103 - BBC RADIO 3
4) 0104 - BBC RADIO 4
5) 0105 - BBC RADIO 5 LIVE
6) 0106 - CLASSIC FM
7) 0107 - ABSOLUTE RADIO
8) 0108 - TALKSPORT
9) 0109 - CAPITAL FM
10) 0110 - PLANET ROCK
11) 0111 - HEART FM
12) 0112 - LBC 97.3
13) 0113 - XFM
14) 0114 - CHOICE FM
15) 0115 - BBC WORLD SERVICE
16) 0116 - BBC RADIO SCOTLAND
17) 0117 - BBC RADIO WALES
18) 0118 - BBC RADIO ULSTER
19) 0119 - BBC ASIAN NETWORK
20) 0120 - BBC 6 MUSIC
21) 0121 - GOLD RADIO
22) 0122 - WRN EUROPE
23) 0125 - UCB UK
24) 0128 - SMOOTH RADIO
25) 0129 - SOLAR RADIO
26) 0130 - PANJAB RADIO
27) 0134 - UCB BIBLE
28) 0135 - UCB GOSPEL
29) 0136 - UCB INSPIRATIONAL
30) 0138 - TWR
31) 0139 - BBC RADIO NAN GAIDHEAL
32) 0146 - REAL RADIO
33) 0147 - EWTN
34) 0150 - SUKH SAGAR
35) 0154 - BBC RADIO CYMRU
36) 0160 - RTE RADIO 1
37) 0164 - RTE2 FM
38) 0165 - RTE LYRIC FM
39) 0169 - DESI RADIO
40) 0178 - KISS FM
41) 0180 - MAGIC RADIO
42) 0184 - STAR BEATS
43) 0186 - LIBERTY RADIO
44) 0188 - INSIGHT RADIO
45) 0202 - JAZZ FM
46) 0205 - KANSHI RADIO
47) 0207 - RAINBOW
48) 0210 - NEWSTALK IRELAND
49) 0211 - BFBS RADIO
50) 0214 - UCB IRELAND
THE 10 LOCAL RADIO STATIONS THAT CAN BE HEARD IN THE NOTTINGHAM AREA (IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER)
1) BBC RADIO NOTTINGHAM - 103.8 MHz FM
2) CAPITAL FM NOTTINGHAM (FORMERLY TRENT FM) - 96.2 MHz FM (ALSO PARTLY ON SKY DIGITAL CHANNEL 0109)
3) FLY FM (ONLINE ONLY)
4) GEM 106 - 106.0 MHz FM
5) GOLD - 999 KHz MW (ALSO ON SKY DIGITAL CHANNEL 0121)
6) KEMET FM - 97.5 MHz FM
7) RADIO DAWN - 107.6 MHz FM
8) RADIO FAZA - 97.1 MHz FM
9) SMOOTH RADIO - 106.6 MHz FM (ALSO ON SKY DIGITAL CHANNEL 0128)
10) TRENT SOUND (ONLINE ONLY)
THE 101 UNITED KINGDOM BROADCASTING, TELEVISION AND RADIO INFORMATION WEBSITES
The United Kingdom citizen's guide to most websites that are associated with broadcasting, television and radio in just 101 links. These are not in alphabetical order, but the reason why it is not in that order is so that one can see websites that are a lot more important and relevant to the member of the public (i.e. the consumer) towards the top of the list, such as myself. Likewise, they get less relevant and obscure as they go down the list, but still feature under the subject of broadcasting, television or radio. Also, any campaign websites featured are done in a neutral stance as well. If isn't broadcasting, then it isn't in the list.
1) OFCOM - I think that I will start with the obvious one here, and it is probably too obvious for it not to be included in this list. Ofcom (the Office for Communications, to give it its full name and title) is the United Kingdom's main broadcasting regulator, which had replaced various regulators such as the Independent Television Commission, the Broadcasting Standards Commission, the Radio Authority, the Radio Communications Agency, and Oftel (the former Office for Telecommunications), thanks to the good old Communications Act 2003. They also have more power than people realise, in the sense that they also regulate telephone services (but not the Premium Rate ones of course, they are done by some regulator called Phone Pay Plus, albeit all one word, as Ofcom are not that sleazy). If Ofcom is The Times when it comes to taste and decency (which they regulate very carefully, ironically enough), then Phone Play Plus is the Sunday Sport (I was going to say The Sun but that would have been far too kind as they are owned by the same company as The Times). I think that they even regulate postal communication such as the Royal Mail and the Post Office these days, although I am not too sure. I suppose that Ofcom is just one step down the ladder from the Police service as one of the United Kingdom's enforcement organisations, being on the same level as the Trading Standards, the Health and Safety Executive, the RSPCA. the National Health Service and so on. Even the security industry perhaps? If the Communications Act 2003 can regulate relationships, marriage and things like that, and forces us to keep our mouths shut when we are expressing our observations on life like I am doing here, then I am all for it.
2) TV LICENSING - I am proud to say that my address has been a TV Licence paying household for so long that I doubt that John Logie Baird had even invented the contraption itself when we started paying for it. I doubt that Baird was even born himself when we started paying for it. In fact, it probably even pre-dates the Wireless Telegraph Act 1949! Remember that if you do have any electrical equipment that can receive live television signals, whether it is a television set, a Digibox, video recorder, and even a computer or mobile phone, you need a Television Licence. It costs £145.50 for a colour licence and £49.00 for a monochrome licence as of April 2014 as I am writing this, although who still watches black and white television nowadays, I do not know. I am surprised that it has not been scrapped by now, and the authority has not made recipients pay the full colour licence. It is highly recommended that one should legally purchase a licence rather than wait for the TV Detector van to find you, as the £1,000 fine costs a lot more, not to mention a breach of section 363 of the Communications Act 2003. As for people assuming that ITV and the other commercial television stations do their programmes for nothing, let me say, that every time you go to Tesco, and purchase for example, a jar of Nescafe or a tin of Heinz Baked Beans, you are paying towards Nestle, Heinz (or indeed Tesco if they are own-name brands) for the advertising on the television and perhaps radio as well. As the cost is going to the BBC, the only thing that I am concerned of is where it is going - is it going towards the left-wing news and current affairs department, or is 0.01p of the fee going into the back pocket of some EastEnders actor? One goes to see a film at the cinema and is charged a fee, so what is wrong with that? You see advertising there as well, even though the screen is bigger, certainly bigger than the one I have at home. The fact of the matter is that if you don't have a television set or anything that transmits live television signals, one can opt out of paying the Licence Fee, even though one may need to prove to the inspector visiting you that you have no such equipment at your address, letting him look inside cupboards, lofts and cellars if you need to. It is still good value for money, and a fraction of what I pay each month for Sky, which I don't mind doing! And it is called the Television Licence, and not the BBC Licence, one needs a licence to watch Channel 4, but don't need one to listen to BBC Radio 4 (unless it is on a Sky or Freeview platform, that is).
3) ADVERTISING STANDARDS AUTHORITY - And now it's time for a commercial break - we shall see you again in a couple of minutes. I can see you in a couple of minutes, but how on earth can you "see me in a couple of minutes?" It is television - I can see you, but you cannot see me. We have only reached number three in the list, and you want to have a break already? This is the regulator of advertising on television and radio, and they took over that job just a few months after Ofcom was formed. If you find that Kellogg's Corn Flakes commercial offensive (breakfast cereals in the evening?), or that British Gas commercial misleading (there might be a lot of truth in that, although as I am a British Gas customer, I better watch myself about what I say about them), or that DFS commercial harmful then you will know where to report that to. What they don't do is deal with the fact that there are too many commercial breaks in an hour long show - three rather than the two they usually had before 2000, which was before their time as a television advertising regulator anyway. They don't deal with annoying advertising either - Remember Crazy Frog and Sweety the Chick? In fact, the Advertising Standards Authority was set up in 1962, mostly to oversee advertising in newspapers, magazines and later billboards in the streets. For some time, the subject of television advertising overlapped between this regulator and the television authorities, but it was decided that advertising was more prominent, and so they have been the regulator since 2004.
4) BROADCAST AUDIENCE RESEARCH BOARD - The name is BARB, and it isn't short for Barbara either. This BARB measure how many viewers have seen a television programme, so if you find out that Coronation Street had 11.8 million viewers tuning in for the latter of the Monday night episodes, then you know where that information came from. I think it all came from selected homes scattered across the country having one of these device box things plugged into the back of their television set, and that determined what they were watching most of the time, but they would have had to have a few thousands of these for an accurate result, I assume! It is also useful when it comes to one-off special events on television, for example the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton (the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge of course) in April 2011, got varies ratings throughout the day on BBC One due to people not watching it all the way through like I did, but it peaked at 13 million at around 1.00 pm when they kissed on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, which I have on a couple of Maxell videotapes, recording both BBC One and ITV 1 coverage, downstairs and upstairs respectively. I have always wondered how regional programmes are measured in this way. Now that ITV hardly has any in the English regions, apart from the regional news, I have wondered that in the 6.00 pm slot whether that it would be listed for London Tonight, or the total of regional news programmes on at that same time? Someone must have the answer, but it isn't me I am afraid.
5) DIGITAL UK - You may think that all the business with digital television is now all over and done with, now with all analogue signals were finally switched off in 2012. In fact, digital television is the future, possibly for as long as we are going to live. My local area was switched off during the early hours of Wednesday 31st August 2011 (I wasn't there at the time as I was staying in London as it coincided with a big personal event, and that almost coincided with the riots there had I have gone down there just three weeks earlier), with the local Waltham transmitter channels switched off, while BBC Two bid farewell two weeks earlier, we now all live in a digital country when it comes to television, and Northern Ireland was the last nation (or region) to switch off in 2012. Here is almost what you need to know about the digital services in your area. Mostly useful to Freeview customers (that experience with pixelating pictures, drop-outs from what you are seeing, and all that), although Sky Digital customers like myself also need to take note as well. The mascot that they used during the campaign to switch over to digital reminded me of the millennium bug thing that was big news in late 1999 and early 2000, and the publicity regarding that was rather similar to that. A memorable "once in a life time" experience. Digital UK is nor Digital Spy - that is further down on this list. Analogue was the 20th century and now digital is the 21st century.
6) SKY DIGITAL - One of the best providers for digital television and radio stations, which of course is what the channel lists above are based on. I have been with them since August 2005 when they set all the equipment up one Sunday morning, trailing wires and cables all over the house, switching over from what used to be ntl because there were channels on Sky that were not on ntl, and when I joined them, Unlike these cold callers who target you at the front door for gas and electricity or charity collections, I would like to say that I contacted Sky first on my own accord, doing so in my second telephone call to them as I got "cold feet" while doing the first one. In June 2011 (6th June - HD Day, ironically enough), they put a new box in, to enable HD channels (those that are not pinpointed in the Sky channel list above), to be seen. The other irony is that my HD television set broke down soon afterwards and now I have to watch programmes on an ordinary television set, where the HD channels look exactly the same as its default counterparts! Going back to 2005,the reason why I joined was mostly because I read on Internet forums at the time about channels that I would like to receive, but wasn't on ntl, so I basically signed to Sky. I changed over and never looked back. And I have got a lovely black satellite dish overlooking the neighbours at the back as well, which sadly was a victim to some scaffolding in 2011 and thus "no signal" on screen until it was removed. Still, it's great value for money each month, even if Rupert Murdoch is behind it. If paying for this service is straightforward, then paying the Licence Fee is a doddle in comparison! Rupert Murdoch, (and Lord Sir Alan Sugar considering my fist Digibox was made by Amstrad), are probably too not bad people, methinks...
7) VIRGIN MEDIA - No, it is not media for virgins, which is probably why I have never been a customer with them. It is one of Sky's rivals that I have never been a customer of since it took over from ntl in 2007. Sir Richard Branson may be behind the Virgin Media company, just like most others under the Virgin name (airlines, records, publishing, finance, and just like Sky, broadcasting), but I shall stick with Sky for the near future. Relatives still have Virgin Media simply because they were with ntl before and didn't change to Sky when I did. Some Nottingham customers go back further to the mists of time,(the mid to late 1990s) when it was Diamond Cable. My address didn't have cable until February 2000 (postponed the first time because the engineer didn't turn up, and I had to reschedule some eight or nine days later), but also because although we had the telephone service in 1997, we decided against the television service because some family members said that we didn't watch enough television. I remember when the engineer came up. I already had ntl for the telephone service, and the good news was that the cable television service was set up, but the bad news was that as I got onto the telephone to tell a relative about it, I found out that the telephone line was dead. As I needed to some shopping that afternoon, I rang the relative from a payphone and told them. For obvious reasons, I couldn't call from ntl in order to report the problem, so obviously someone else had to do it. They came, the next day as it was urgent, and reconnected the telephone line, so hopefully after that, I had both working cable television and cable from ntl. Now, it would be amazing if we were in that position now the analogue signals have been switched off, some 18 years later. Perhaps a good excuse to say that we didn't need a Television Licence, perhaps?
8) FREEVIEW - Here is a Freeview preview, and not a Freeview Review or a Freeview Revue. Basically, Freeview is just digital television through an aerial - a process that was used for many decades when analogue television was still with us. Almost the best of both worlds. I am sorry to both say and admit that I had Freeview upstairs but the picture is often so pixelated at times especially the obscure channels on cable due to poor reception in the bedroom that I now only watch the Sky service downstairs. You can't watch BBC One North East on Freeview if you live in the East Midlands or the South West, but you can on Sky Digital on channel 955 (including Look North and their edition of Inside Out as well). Freeview in my opinion is a thing of the past from a technology perspective, just like any television service through an aerial. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be too surprised if television aerials on people's roofs would be a thing of the past before, let's say, 2020. I can imagine sometime in the mid 2020s, a young child for example, walking down the street and asking his mother "what's that metal fishbone doing on that roof?", as children do when asking inquisitive questions that adults can't generally answer, no matter how intelligent they are. Cue mother explaining the process of how television used to work back in the 20th century to the aforementioned child and is greeted by a puzzled look. That's is probably only a generation away, when I am retired from modern life - again.
9) FREESAT - Basically, I always think of this as the David and Goliath of satellite television technology, if Freeview allows analogue aerials to not feel quite redundant just yet. It's a case of Freeview meets satellite television. At least I think that is what it is, because I have never been a customer of theirs. I assume that this one doesn't need an aerial, but please excuse my ignorance about this service as I have never been a customer with them. I believe that between Sky Digital, Virgin Media and Freesat, which are the three main satellite television providers in the United Kingdom that Freesat has the least number of customers for some reason. A bit like what the Liberal Democrats were to the Conservatives and Labour before the were part of the coalition government following the 2010 General Election. In other words, they are poor relation compared to the other two and always seem to be left out in those three. I assume that Freesat customers also have dishes attached to their dwellings as well - I have always assumed since the merger with Sky and BSB back in the early 1990s that every time I see a satellite dish on someone's house that it is always a Sky one, even if it is from a different company. I have to say that anything with the word "free" in its name is too good to be true, in fact, it could be a very misleading thing because as they say, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and so there is no such thing as a free view. Perhaps the name is a reference to days of the week? I mean, Friday means Free day, while Saturday means Sat day - Freesat, geddit?
10) MEDIAWATCH UK - No, not Crimewatch UK, which helped solved crimes and involved Nick Ross saying in a slightly reassuringly way, "don't have nightmares, do sleep well" at the end of each edition, but Mediawatch UK, an organisation that is just as much determined to catch out any savoury programmes on our television channels. They are campaigning for socially responsible media and against content which is potentially harmful. (Heterosexual kissing before the watershed - that would make Coronation Street, Emmerdale and EastEnders pornographic in comparison!) That is so 1883! Or was it 1783? Mediawatch UK was founded in its previous 1960s incarnation (around 1964 when she made her historic speech), by the late Mrs Mary Whitehouse, methinks, the middle-aged woman who was famous for saying way back in 1964, "Last Thursday evening, we sat as a family and watched a programme that started at 6.35 pm. And it was the dirtiest programme I have seen for a very long time". Crossroads often started in some ITV regions at 6.35 pm, but I doubt that it was that as it only debuted in the ATV Midlands region in November that year. Anyway, this particular Whitehouse seemed to have more power than the namesake palace in Washington DC that Lyndon B Johnson was staying at back then. Oh, and Whitehouse lived in the Anglia Television region, so we will probably never know what she thought of the foul-mouthed Sex Pistols on a London-only regional news programme back in 1976. Mind you, Colchester is a bit near to the London area... Only just by a few miles.
11) VOICE OF THE LISTENER AND VIEWER - The VLV does not stand for Viva Las Vegas in this case - that is the only other thing that I can think of that actually has the initials VLV! As you may have guessed, this is another "taste and decency on broadcasting" organisation from the Mary Whitehouse stable, battling for taste and decency on television. It lived on since Whitehouse's death in 2001, and when she retired, she was replaced by John Beyer, a figure frequently seen on programmes like Newsnight and heard on BBC Radio 4 and in the quality newspapers. It is a pity that former television executives don't do this sort of thing considering the experience they have in television, a bit like a former footballer progressing to become a football manager if you like. I bet that television executives such as the late Bruce Gyngell (mostly during his stint as Chief Executive of the pre-Granada takeover Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television in the mid 1990s, rather than his even longer stint at TV-am), would have seen organisations like this as some holy saviour to the industry, especially when he substituted programmes like Hollywood Lives or whatever it was called for 1970s repeats of Whicker's World. Nothing wrong with the latter, but nothing wrong with the former either. He probably would have wished that Associated-Rediffusion had not lost its franchise, and that television was still monochrome in the 1990s. Let's turn back the clock to the 19th century before television was invented, why don't we? Then we wouldn't need to put up with all of this. Can someone invent a time machine so we can do that?
12) RAJAR - First of all, I would like to say that RAJAR feels like a rather exotic sounding acronym if I do say so myself. They are similar to BARB (but Birmingham music station BRMB is even more similar to BARB when it comes to the letters used, but the only connection there is the radio station business), although they do indeed focus more on radio and listening figures. Capital London and LBC ruling the roost along with the national radio stations. Do they get excited about The Archers in exactly the same way as BARB do about Coronation Street? I think we should be told. Anyway, I have always thought that measuring radio listening is a lot more difficult than measuring television viewing because of the wide range of radio stations scattered around the United Kingdom, unless they just focus on the national radio stations. I am a radio junkie. I listen to hours and hours of radio, especially when I am out and about with the Sony pocket transistor, and that is not digital. It is great to keep in touch with the news on the radio just in case I miss anything important and I am not at home to capture it on Sky News or BBC News. I would love to know how many listeners listen to BBC Radio Nottingham on average - I believe that it is only 25,000 at any one time as a rough guess, (I don't have the figures in front of me), not presumably it isn't counting anyone who could be listening online, especially if they are on the other side of the world. Other radio stations like Smooth, Capital Radio Nottingham and Gold are more or less national when you think of digital and online coverage, and the only content that is local or regional are the commercials and probably news as it used to a few years ago before all of these mergers, but I think that they only have national news these days. RAJAR sounds like a an exotic animal from Africa or India - a tiger perhaps?
13) DIGITAL TV GROUP - An "unlucky for some" position of 13 in this list of 101 broadcasting website links, and it has been rather unlucky, but one of them had to be in 13th place, and so it had to be this one. As well as all that, this is a collective of various organisations designed in digital television, probably all over Europe perhaps? Including Digital UK, I think. It just shows you why so many organisations are making such a big fuss of digital television and the advantages of it, especially if you are a pensioner, you probably will not be here in 10 years time, and all this modern stuff is too confusing and baffling? Was digital television on the cards way back in the 1950s? Or even the 1930s when John Logie Baird was overseeing his invention? I think that back then, the prospect of colour television was only on the cards because of American film technology, and also people going to the cinema where it was the only way one would see films in colour for a number of years, and I think that made people wonder whether colour television was possible over in Britain. It was at least 30 years away for British people. The film South Pacific from 1958 was one example; it was only ever seen at cinema until it6s television premiere in 1972. The United States was ahead of its time when it came to both technology and broadcasting, so it was obvious that they would be the first country in the world to achieve things like that. Now we are in the digital era and there is no looking back anymore. By the mid 2030s, analogue television will probably be a subject of nostalgia as black and white television would have been as early as the 1980s. I can see that happening.
14) BRITISH BOARD OF FILM CLASSIFICATION - I always think of ID cards and trying to prove one's age when I think of this organisation. Just like purchasing cider or a pack of 20 Panama Cigars from your local off-licence; (the eight till late shop just round the corner which makes Spar or Londis look like Waitrose), and even if you happen to look a baby-faced 16 when you are actually 19, the gorgeous shop assistant has her legal duty to ask for ID, otherwise she would lose her job very quickly, courtesy of the local Trading Standards. Just like if you were looked one age and were of an older age, the same age in fact, the cinema cashier has an obligation to ask for ID if you want to see an 18 certificate horror film and you don't old enough to endure the gore and squalor that follows, and it is the BBFC that is responsible for the legislation, as well as the government. Most of the incumbent ages have been set since 1982 when it replaced complex letters such as A, X and probably AA (and I doubt that they were withdrawn due to complaints from the Automobile Association or Alcoholics Anonymous!) Originally, pre 1982, the A certificate was the equivalent of the U certificate now, although ironically, I thought it was the then equivalent of the 18 certificate because I thought that the A actually stood for adult for obvious reasons! These days, the BBFC give certificates of U, PG, 12, 15 or 18 to films, depending on whether they are violent, have sexual content or offensive language, and of course that extends to movies seen on television as well, and films one rents from libraries and stores that were like Blockbuster . Ironically, the 12 certificate was introduced in 1990, which was the same year that I had my own 12th birthday. I personally don't remember ever purchasing an 18 certificate film from a shop, and I certainly don't remember watching one at the cinema. I do remember watching a load of kid's films at the local Odeon circa 1984-1985. How did that slogan go back in the 1980s? "At a cinema near you from Friday, certificate PG", or something like that.
15) BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE - The BFI is quite a familiar set of initials in Britain (of quality, class and that's just about it), and also in film, media, acting and broadcasting. However, the website gives too much of very sketchy, flimsy and incomplete information on various television programmes and presenters, but a lot of information still needs to be filled in. Perhaps in five or six years' time, the website might be complete, who knows? There are far too many grey areas to look out for. There are still gaps on where information should be, and let's face it to be honest, it's not exactly Wikipedia or the Internet Movie Database for that matter, and so the latter is also on this list as a precaution. I am sorry, but despite how official this service is, when it comes to researching transmission dates and times, I would not recommend this as a an official tool for checking the transmission dates for movie premières, especially for those films that did the post-News at one and regional news 1.30 pm Monday and Friday matiness around the different ITV regions back in the mid 1980s - I wouldn't trust that to get exactly what you need. Looking at the newspaper archive on microfilm at main city libraries or spending a bit of money, looking at the incomplete Daily Express archive courtesy of UK Press Online may be an alternative avenue, but just like the BFI, there are big gaping holes there as well. If you like films on a Friday, then we have had TFI Friday (dare I say it), so what about BFI Friday? Another "I'll get me coat" time.
16) BROADCAST ADVERTISING CLEARANCE CENTRE - I find it really fascinating the way that they refer to themselves as a "clearance centre" because it makes them sound as they are trying to "clear" or get rid of something at "rock-bottom" prices something shoddy in a sub-Arthur Daley way that they don't want anymore because they don't have any more room for it in their warehouse, or can't afford to keep it any longer, (which is what bailiffs, "legalised" burglars and the police are for, methinks), or to "get shut of it" as they say up north, mostly Yorkshire, as if it is a closing down sale, closing down due to administration or liquidation thanks to a recent credit crunch or recession. The reality of the matter is that they make sure that commercials are fit to be transmitted on television, and so they have to "clear them" so that it is safe to be transmitted in the wilderness of commercial television. Or perhaps not, considering the complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority about some of them. Let's face it, if the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre had cleared up every single commercial correctly, then the Advertising Standards Authority would almost certainly be out of a job. How come so many offensive, harmful and misleading commercials get passed by them, anyway? Are they not doing their job properly or something? But then again, on yet another tangent, if the police did their job properly all the time, there would be no need for the Police and Crime Commissioner or the Independent Police Complaints Commission. After all, it would be far too dangerous for the police to be self-regulated at a time like this. A valid point.
17) COMMITTEES OF ADVERTISING PRACTICE - It is not a flat Cap that all male northerners wore from the 1930s onwards, but generally a CAP, to cap it all. It is a sort of "relative" of the Advertising Standards Authority website (more like a second cousin, five times removed), with a similar "tick" logo. (Flaming teachers at school had a lot to answer for when marking our books!) In fact, it is more or less the same logo with variation, so we know the two organisations are loosely connected to each other. It probably also gives advice on product placement and the like, and why is the real reason Coronation Street regulars just ask for "a pint of lager", in such a generic way when there are about 30 brands of beer available, and not "a pint of Carling Black Label" in the Rover's Return. "I don't really know", to quote Mavis Riley, and neither do I because I am a teetotaller. In fact, the only time I might touch a drop could be at Christmas time, but as that only comes once a year, who really knows? Need I also mention Blurred-out Coca-Cola cans and cups on The X-Factor that make things too obvious, and the irony of doing that is that it draws a lot more attention to the object where as otherwise people wouldn't think anything of it. I don't mind because I am more of a Pepsi drinker, but not Pepsi Max as that is a bit too strong in the caffeine stakes. The CAP is more of a consumer website. At least no one found that Gibbs SR toothpaste commercial from 1955 offensive, misleading or harmful - quite the opposite. It was tingling fresh and it did your gums good too, to quote the late Alex Mackintosh.
18) INSTITUTE OF PRACTITIONERS IN ADVERTISING - More information for people involved in advertising. (The IPA are not to be confused with IPC who publish women's magazines of course, or indeed the IPCC, which is the Independent Police Complaints Commission, or indeed the police's police, and they are not to be confused with the PCC, which is the Police and Crime Commissioner, or the Press Complaints Commission, ad infinitum). Basically, there are so many commercial breaks on so many channels, with so much advertising, so it's not surprising that there are so many organisations, authorities and associations connected with advertising, whether it is television, radio or not. Even more boffins making up rules for wannabe advertisers. The initials are very similar to the ITA and IBA, which were of course, the original commercial television regulators, the Independent Television Authority from 1954 to 1972 as a result of the Television Act 1954, and then the Independent Broadcasting Authority from 1972, with the name change, (to allow the regulation of commercial radio a year later), right up until the start of the Broadcasting Act 1990 on New Year's Day 1991 and the launch of the Independent Television Commission to replace the good old no nonsense IBA, and so on. It is quite appropriate then that this is an organisation that is about the advertising industry. I always think of the word "Practitioner" with the word General Practitioner - i.e. a family doctor. Let's hope that they get people well then.
19) EQUITY - If William Shakespeare had been a trade unionist back in his day (not that they existed for at least 300 years back then), he would have probably pondered in wonder, "to be a member of this trade union, or not to be a member of this trade union, that is the big question". This is the so-called trade union for a lot of people that you see on television, mostly actors, television presenters and performers. It's odd because I think of trade unions as working class and acting as middle class for some reason. If you have socialist principles, (that is, a union sort of person), and you are into performing, but not in the Scargill socialism sense, then you might want to join Equity. I have always wondered whether nearly all of the actors (those who appear in the credits on television, and in BBC Radio 4 plays for example) are all Equity members, and carry their card in their purses, wallets and handbags, glove compartment of their Skodas, or whether many of them don't have principles for unions or labour. I am certain that the famous ones who are more like to be Conservative Party voters would least likely to be Equity members, as some people say, some of them are so-called self-made millionaires if they have done well in their lives, which sometimes can be a bit cruel and stereotypical to say the least. I may be a Conservative myself, but I am not exactly an actor, although I was a member of a local Saturday morning drama group way back in the early 1990s for around three years. Not enough experience to join Equity, I am afraid.
20) INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE - I always say that if you are not listed on this website, then you are not famous, or at least had a major claim to fame. Just like most international (i.e. American) websites, such as the bulk of those ending in .com just like this one, (and there are an awful lot of them about, with a huge emphasis on the word "awful"), this one has - yes, yet another American bias. (I refuse to say "US" as that is a pronoun, and not a country name). Let's just get that out of the way for a start. Primarily, the Internet Movie Database is owned by Ebay rival Amazon, hence identical looking websites for them both, and the Internet Movie Database lists details of so many actors, television presenters and performers with the work they have done over the years, including their dates and places of birth, and dates and places of death, and age of death if they are sadly no longer with is. Although it does sometimes makes a habit of confusing two people with the same name, which I assume is why Equity brought in the rule in which no two members can have the same professional name. It is both neutral and partial in such a way that all of those so-called "nobodies" with hardly any acting entries to their credit (mostly extras and passers-by), are listed in the same way as Hollywood actors are. Another way of saying that is that A-listers are treated exactly the same as C-listers or even Z-listers, whether it is Z as in zed, or Z as in zee due its American domination. Not good or bad.
21) SPOTLIGHT - So who is in the Spotlight then? I often think of Spotlight as being part of the "Big Three" websites that an actor needs to know, along with the Equity and The Stage newspaper websites. There is plenty of news and views, which is all about the world of acting and broadcasting, including agent's details of various actors, just in case you want to contact one of them for an autograph, or a signed photograph! (Sometimes I provide the photograph itself to be autographed, usually a still from YouTube or the BBC iPlayer with a picture of that person, or an image from Google images or some other website). I have done this so many times, and I think that they have got sick and tired of me contacting the same agent's addresses, albeit for different actors and actresses. I know that Spotlight have hardback books with actor's information, with males and females listed separately. (I believe that the male volume is bigger for more than obvious reasons), and the volumes that go in alphabetical order, with about 500 pages in each volume, indexed as A-D, E-G, H-L etc, totalling up to tens of thousands of pages of names and agent's addresses, more than all the Greater London editions of the Yellow Pages put together. I have seen them at the main central libraries, but most of the information is on the website if you know the name of the person that you are looking for. This particular Spotlight is not to be confused with either BBC One South West's regional news programme or the BBC One Northern Ireland's current affairs programme.
22) DELUXE MEDIA EUROPE - Deluxe, not Dulux. No, you can't paint your living room walls with this! Anyway, I would like to say that their new name sounds a lot posher than its old "National Health" one, but they had replaced the quirky ITFC subtitling service in 2013 as one of the main companies that a lot of the subtitling seen on the television when one pressed 888 on the old analogue television service. A 2013 Digital Spy thread mentions that to a certain degree anyway. I am certain that when the ITFC had the contract, they mostly did ITV programmes such as the ITN news as I often used the 888 service, following the programme with the sound turned down or muted, although I always assumed that they were connected directly with either the Independent Television Commission or even more obviously, the old Teletext company, which was made redundant when analogue signals bid farewell to us, (but not the online only holidays website that is more recent). Any initial starting with the letters "IT" makes me think of something connected with ITV or commercial television at least. When I looked on Google for ITFC, I didn't get the subtitling website listed on the first page because it has ceased to be listed on there for obvious reasons, but the first thing I got was flaming Ipswich Town Football Club! I have even walked down Portland Road where they are based when I was staying in Ipswich, trying to find the National Express coach station in the town, to travel back home again. Damn those too-similar initials and acronyms which Google love to deliberately confuse!
23) EUROPEAN BROADCASTING UNION - The European Broadcasting Union are mostly responsible for various programmes transmitted across Europe (and countries that are not part of Europe, but are very much part of the EBU), such as the New Year's Day concert from Vienna, which the BBC has been showing since at least the 1930s, and will probably retain the rights to show it in Britain for as long as the BBC exists, or for as long as the concert exists. The BBC as Britain's breadwinner broadcaster mostly represents the United Kingdom as a member. They cover an area further than the European Union, going as far as Russia, parts of the Middle East (places like Israel and Iran) and northern Africa. Even to some degree, they cover North America and parts of South America as well. South Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand are also covered, making this one of the world's biggest broadcasting organisations, and it is in those countries that programmes like the Eurovision Song Contest can be seen in countries beyond Europe where participation is out of bounds. I wouldn't be at all surprised if their coverage extended to other planets In our solar system as well. I was listening to an Australian radio station, the day after a song contest, and they were talking about the contest and Sir Terry Wogan for a mention on the air, so presumably they got the British feed of the contest from BBC World, perhaps? They may also be responsible for international sports broadcasts, World Cups, Olympics, Royal Weddings and a lot more. I hope that Niger Farage won't force us to leave the European Broadcasting Union even if he wants to leave the European Union. I also hope that UKIP doesn't get into power after the 2015 General Election as he would be a terrible Prime Minister.
24) EUROVISION - If one Thinks of the word Eurovision, what automatically comes to mind? That's right - Nine times out of ten, (no - make that 99 times out of 100), the annual Song Contest will automatically come to mind, but they do a lot more than just that, and they often work with the EBU as well. Now that really is a surprise. Abba's Waterloo in 1974 (the only Eurovision song to be played regularly on radio, and the irony was that the United Kingdom didn't even give Sweden a single point back in 1974!), two years later, the Brotherhood of Man's Save All Your Kisses for Me in 1976, and five years after that, Cheryl Baker and Bucks Fizz's Making Your Mind Up in 1981, are what most people think when the word Eurovision is mentioned, but that is just one component of it. Eurovision was founded in the 1950s. However there is a slight difference between Eurovision and the song contest when it comes to the website addresses. The song contest address happens to be Eurovision.tv, which Eurovision in general, as you can see above, is Eurovision.net, the default website for them. The United Kingdom put so much money into the organisation, which is why we are loyal to the Song Contest as part of the Big Five countries that take part. We have not won the contest since 1997 when Katrina and the Waves won for us with Love Shine a Light, just a few days after Tony Blair became Prime Minister, so therefore the big $64,000 question is, will we ever win it again? France hasn't won it since 1977, and they are one of the Big Five as well French being a main language spoken, so that is saying something indeed. This is why I am not a Eurosceptic - why should I be one in the first place?
25) COMMONWEALTH BROADCASTING ASSOCIATION - That's commonwealth and not communist - there is a very big difference between the two of them! This must be the National Anthem of Broadcasting Associations, and that is how it would have went if set to lyrics: "God save our gracious commonwealth broadcasters! Long live our noble commonwealth broadcasters!" Alright, enough already! Or in a traditional and satirical Private Eye-style: [that's enough - Ed]. The United Kingdom is obviously a member of the Commonwealth by default ("God save the Queen and all that" again, to quote are good old National Anthem), Buckingham Palace (open to the public each summer), Balmoral, Windsor, Sandringham etc are all in Britain, and so they are also a member of this association as well. It is not quite as big as the European Broadcasting Union, but big enough! I haven't measured it myself to make direct comparisons. Now perhaps they are responsible for things like recent Royal Weddings (i.e. Prince William and Catherine Middleton on Friday 29th April 2011), recent jubilees (i.e. the Queen's Diamond Jubilee on that historical day of Tuesday 5th June 2012), and any recent Royal Family broadcast (i.e. the Queen's Christmas Day at 3.00 pm broadcast on Wednesday 25th December 2013?) Does anyone have any ideas about that? Only the United Kingdom, and I think, Malta are both members of the Commonwealth and the European Union, so that is something. They hardly ever give us any points in the Eurovision Song Contest each year though.
26) BROADCASTERS' LIASON GROUP - I don't know about you, but I have to say that I almost really love the titles of these organisations, and this one is no different. This particular one almost sounds like a broadcasting answer to a 12 person jury in a packed courtroom (crown court of course, not magistrates' court), or a dozen school governors sat around a horseshoe shaped desk discretely inside a school, discussing the latest school policies on physical bullying, homework, sex education and truancy. The liaison group in question, deal with things such as scheduling Party Political Broadcasts and the like. Remember when the old News at Ten had to be moved ten minutes later, with Big Ben actually showing that time of 10.10 pm as well, in order for a Party Political Broadcast to be included in the schedules? It used to be on at 9.00 pm back in the 1970s when all three terrestrial channels that were broadcasting then showed at exactly the same time, taking their feed from BBC 1. Looking at the television listings from a newspaper that was published on the very day that I was born, there was a Conservative Party Political Broadcast at 9.00 pm on that very day as well, when Margaret Thatcher was still Leader of the Opposition. The only other times News at Ten overran was when the football overran, especially during the World Cup? Returning to the subject of Party Political Broadcasts, I do hope that they give the Conservatives an extra five minutes on air before the next General Election if that is the case. David Cameron needs the time anyway if he is to win a second term at 10 Downing Street. Don't let that Ed Miliband into government, and make sure that Nick Clegg doesn't a get a promotion beyond Deputy Prime Minister and presenter on LBC!
27) DEPARTMENT FOR CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT - A government department that often forays into the world of broadcasting and media, and back again like an Australian boomerang. In fact, it's the only government website to make the list, and the only one to end with .gov.uk (most of them end with .co.uk, .org.uk or .com). At least I think that is the correct government department, "quango", or whatever it is called. Let's give that sportsman a knighthood for his effort in the 2012 Olympics! I used to like it when government departments such as this one, and the 10 Downing Street one, Depart for Work and Pensions etc had their own website URL, but now it seems that it is all part of the same website address of .gov.uk which is a shame as I think that before they had character with their own addresses, even though they were all part of the same government online. Mind you, I suppose that using the .gov.uk prefix, used for local councils and like that is a slightly confusing to be used as just that for government websites on their own. I can still use the obvious Culture URL and it was go to the updated .gov.uk website anyway. I just wish that it still had the "Directgov" name and address, although I can still remember when it was called UK Online, and it was presumably changed to Direct because there was a webspace provider with the same (the same name but with .co.uk at the end of it), so the government website got a new name to avoid confusion. However, even that one has closed down as of April 2014. so therefore it doesn't matter anymore, to quote that 1959 Buddy Holly song.
28) MEDIA UK - So what does Media UK cover, I hear you ask? Media UK Covers television and radio as well as newspapers, magazines and the odd children's comic, and I think that it also has a lot of information about contact addresses of various television and radio stations. Rather tabloid in retrospect. To me, the word "media" these days sounds as sleazy as the word "tabloid", which used to mean the same thing once upon a time, but since The Independent and The Times have gone to a "compact" size of newspaper, and would prefer to distance themselves against the meaning of that word. Tabloid means, small sized newspaper, but also more prominently these days, sleazy journalism. The Sun is usually the first newspaper that one thinks about that answers this description, and ironically, the now defunct News of the World, which was shut down in July 2011 due to the infamous Phone Hacking Scandal, was a tabloid in its latter sense long before 1984 when it became tabloid in its former sense. To coin a phrase, or indeed to coin an explicit oxymoron, up until then, the newspaper was a "broadsheet tabloid" - a broadsheet with tabloid news and views, and with so many newspapers that are tabloid, or should we say compact, there are very few newspapers that are like that anymore. The Times and The Independent are more "tabloid broadsheets" rather than "broadsheet tabloids". Also, another word that I don't like is "press", as in the noun meaning newspapers and journalism, rather than a verb, to press a button. There are some words in the English language that I really hate, haven't you noticed?
29) UK FREE TV - Free television is an oxymoron because everybody knows that in the United Kingdom, television is definitely not free by a long way. Who is your local Member of Parliament? Which local council do you live under? Where is your nearest branch of Asda? As you look at the relevant websites that those subjects are based on. It is another one of those "will I receive those services if I type my Post Code or area name into the box?" websites. Not if it happens to be SW1A 1AA, which is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's Post Code for Buckingham Palace of course as she doesn't have time to watch television all day, and not even her own broadcasts of those with her own family in them. It is more likely to be a Post Code lottery or even an ITV regional lottery. (The BBC does the National Lottery of course, or more specifically it's Camelot that does it, but you know what I mean). Never mind the north-south divide, it's more like the Tyne Tees and Meridian divide instead, in basic ITV language that only people who actually work inside the industry can properly understand. Perhaps if Television was indeed free in the United Kingdom (or if the United Kingdom was free of television completely), then no one would have a Licence Fee to pay? Literal interpretation, I know but the people behind the anti-Licence Fee websites further down in this list would be more than pleased about that. I don't mind paying as at least I do get something for my money, unlike annoying and stinking Premium Rate telephone calls which are on the rich person's side and not the poor person's. The least said about that sort of legalised extortion and legalised robbery, the better for all of us as far as I am concerned.
30) NATIONAL UNION OF JOURNALISTS - A sort of Equity with real life scripts and not fictitious scripts, one could say. Journalists being "themselves" and not being "in character".This is the trade union that represents newsreaders, news reporters, journalists, and almost anyone who works for ITN, CNN in Britain, Sky News and so on. When news programmes fall off air like they do on the BBC at least once every couple of years (the World at One replaced by classical music, possibly in order to mislead the listener into thinking that he has just tuned into BBC Radio 3 rather than BBC Radio 4), short bulletins replaced by Tom and Jerry cartoons (which was always the case anyway in the south east, strike or not). Even then, I am sure that a child would be interested in cartoons anyway rather than news and current affairs programmes. Unlike the primary industry socialists such as the miners, journalists don't always strike over pay and better conditions, as they don't need to most of the time. Many of them are too greedy and get overpaid, especially the ones that work for corporations such as the BBC. Considering the harassment that a lot of journalists and news reporters give to celebrities (the paparazzi, a word that I only heard for the very first time when Diana, Princess of Wales was killed in Paris, and so I thought that it was some form of French word), and members of the public (general harassment by default), it is probably a complete blessing in disguise when journalists go on strike, even if you hate the unions. The question is of course, who do you hate more? The trade unions themselves or the members of those trade unions?
31) ADVERTISING ASSOCIATION - An association that works with advertising, which is too obvious to repeat online like I just have, but I have done so anyway. They are there, serving businesses and consumers that benefit from advertising on television and radio, although I believe that they are more focused on newspaper, television, billboard and milk bottle advertising as well, in the days when milk bottles came directly from the milkman and were made of glass and not plastic like they are made from the supermarket these days. (Remember milk bottle advertising? You are too young if you don't know what I am talking about). And of course, on the side of buses, on the terraces at football grounds, and so on. I think that they outlawed billboard advertising of tobacco products in the early 2000s (probably 2005-ish?), but I don't think that they were responsible for the banning of cigarette advertising from television back in 1965 (sensible move, but it hasn't made any impact of those generation giving up and people born decades after that legislation starting smoking), although they were already banned from a BBC perspective if you know what I mean. I am not certain whether regular advertisers on television, radio and newspapers such as Heinz, Kellogg's, Cadbury's, Nestle, Mars, Birds Eye, Unilever, Procter and Gamble, McDonald's (an A-lister), Microsoft (another A-lister), and so on, as companies are directly members of an advertising association, be it this one or any other one. They might be.
32) RADIO ACADEMY - The word "academy". It really sounds grand and posh and important and classy, doesn't it? And almost elitist. Using the word "academy", doesn't it? It's a pity that it doesn't have affect when former schools that are renamed academies are called actually that including around three local schools, two former comprehensives and a primary school that were merged into the same academy then. At least I wasn't a former pupil (part of their "alumni") of any of those schools back in the 1980s or whenever it was. The Radio Academy exists in order to promote the quality and excellence in British radio broadcasting. A few little known (from a national perspective) local radio presenters, quote often those who do breakfast or drive-time will be the ones who are most likely to get an academy award or something for being radio presenter of the year or something. Such as Broadcast magazine mentioning back in 1998 that local radio presenter Tim Hubbard had received an award for the best drive-time presenter on BBC Radio Cornwall. Alright, that might not have been the Radio Academy's doing - it might have been an internal BBC award, but you get my drift. He wasn't at the Newlyn Fish Festival when I visited there in 2004 and again in 2010, (when both days coincided with the August Bank Holiday Monday falling on my birthday - the penultimate day in August, so please try and work that one out for yourself if you dare). Local awards? No one from the Nottingham or East Midlands area ever seems to be nominated - it always seems to be London (Evening Standard syndrome ahoy), which of course is the wildcard area of Britain where local issues automatically become national ones (or even international ones) by default. Or perhaps Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
33) RADIO ADVERTISING CLEARANCE CENTRE - The Radio Advertising Clearance Centre, otherwise abbreviated to the initials RACC, are not to be confused with the RAC, (a car spelt backwards, and also a major rival to the AA - that is the Automobile Association and not the Advertising Association of course, also Green Flag and National Breakdown who are on hand to tow you away if you are in the middle of nowhere, stranded and ran out of petrol, provided you are a member, that is). Anyway, this seems to be a radio equivalent of the BACC, considering the similarity on its initials yet again, although I thought that they did both television and radio. The RACC make sure that commercials designed to be transmitted on the radio have passed the quality test prior to transmission. All those local windows, plumbing and heating "one man band" company commercials heard on Smooth Radio and Gem 106 is enough for anyone to break a window (although legally, I would not condone it at all). However, if the RACC mess up big time, (as they often do), and a commercial that is offensive, misleading or harmful is transmitted. The legal broadcasting answer to something that causes harassment, alarm or distress, so the good listener can complain to the Advertising Standards Authority about them. Nothing to do with the academies that happened to be so-called reformed schools that are these in name only and not in nature. Thank goodness I left school behind on Tuesday 15th March 1994 and the place closed itself just over a year later, but school hasn't left me behind, ever!
34) COBA - It stands for the Commercial Broadcasters Association, but if that is the case, then the initials only spell out CBA, so what on earth does the letter "O" stand for? COBA is the voice of commercial broadcasters in the United Kingdom, albeit a rather timid and low-key voice due to the relative obscurity of this organisation. I actually assumed that they were mostly radio organisation at first. It is not to be confused with COBRA (don't ever confuse a cobra with COBA as they will not like it, and Coba will like it even less!) or even COBR, which is the Cabinet Office Briefing Room, which is used a few times a year for emergency meetings by the main government ministers, such as the August 2011 England Riots. Whatever happened to that Preparing for Emergencies website thing that the government were going on about only a few years ago, then? Anyway, a look at the front page of the Coba website and we see moving logos such as Sky, Viacom, FX and QVC - The Shopping Channel, a channel with presenters unnecessarily overuse the word "literally" when demonstrating an item onscreen, as observed by Victor Lewis Smith on his Ads Infinitum programme. Or was that TV Offal? I can't remember. (I like to think that the analogy of QVC making money from the products it sells, exactly like a shop on the High Street, and so therefore someone "shoplifting" from QVC is rather like ITV losing advertising revenue due to the lack of transmitting commercials, or someone not paying their Licence Fee - think about that one for as long as you like!) I hope that you like my analogies because I feel that I am the only ones who thinks of these in that sort of way!
35) BRITISH VIDEO ASSOCIATION - "Video killed the radio star", according to the Buggles' 1979 hit which was the first ever video, ironically to be seen on MTV in the United States back on Saturday 1st August 1981, and ever since then, video has probably killed a lot of things, certainly technological, although more modern technology later on in the years has subsequently killed video itself, possibly in revenge. Looking after the video (and presumably DVD industry as well), which some of us still use to record programmes on like Yours Truly, as we have never got round to recording DVDs yet. After all, DVDs could be the blue ray discs of the 2010s. The front page of this aforementioned website has various pictures of various new DVDs coming into the spotlight, although I don't know whether they would be interested in the critic's reviews on them, but they certainly seem to give them a free plug online, as if to endorse them. Logos endorsed on screen also come from usually American film company that include Disney (of course), 20th Century Fox (it has such an outdated name for the 21st century methinks), Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures and Paramount, to name but a very few. Many of these own television channels seen on Sky anyway. I believe that High Street stores like HMV would also be part of the association's clients (even if HMV have had a few administration difficulties in the past couple of years). I know that video-renting company Blockbuster definitely has at the end of 2013. The only reason why I have never got round to recording DVDs yet is because I have only ever owned a DVD player and not a recorder. Probably where the early 1980s phrase "Video Nasties" came from. Kenny Everett, eat your heart out!
36) VIDEO STANDARDS COUNCIL - Are you old enough to watch this video? That is the big question. This organisation is a lot similar to the British Board of Film Classification, perhaps it is some sort of cousin, (or indeed the initials BBFC could easily stand for the British Broadcasting Flaming Corporation, with the word "flaming" ironically substituted for a much stronger word if you dare). They deal with whether videos or DVDs have too much offensive language on them. Bollards! It was established in 1989 - Tuesday 11th July 1989 to be precise. (Ironically, the same year that my household had a video recorder for the very first time, installed in May of that year). They also do the same U, PG, 12, 15 and 18 reminders to the public about sexual content, violence and offensive language just as much as the BBFC does, ad infinitum. They have a tick in their logo similar to the Advertising Standards Authority has, although they are not directly related, even if they both have the word "standards" in their names. Has any 18 certificate programme ever passed as a U by mistake, I wonder? Or vice versa? Gone is the Uc certificate, "you see", and that means no more nursery rhyme or cartoon videos with that certificate on anymore. I am a politically correct citizen, (scout's honour, cross my heart and hope to die etc), who only watches programmes with a U certificate, and perhaps if I am risky, a PG certificate as well. Now where have we heard all of that before? On the back of a DVD box perhaps? Or on the back of a cereal packet?
37) NARROW BANDWIDTH TELEVISION ASSOCIATION - Has your television set got narrow bandwidth? Or even wide bandwidth? (Or even Gyles Brandreth?) His writing about this subject would be a bit better than mine, but I will give it a go anyway. Narrow bandwidth television is probably almost as narrow as the description used on here, probably. For some reason, in my mind I have slightly distorted visions of white coated professors, scientists and doctors (with raised hairlines, a la the 1980s Tefal commercials), in laboratories and factories doing experiments into seeing whether narrow bandwidth actually works probably, and possibly blowing themselves up in the process, as a way of finding the hard way that their experiments don't really work after all. The National Bandwidth Television Association website looks like a personal website on the internet circa 2000 - the stone age, (which was around the time when I first designed my own personal website, and it has stayed like that ever since). It has its five digit visitor counter (reading 62,666 views as I am looking at it right now - what a devil!) It doesn't look as if it has been updated for a few years now. The president of the association is a gentleman called Malcolm Baird - I have always wondered whether he is a descendent of John Logie Baird or just changed his name by Deed Poll as a tribute to the historic man because of his fascination with television in general? Baird is a Scottish surname, so the probably is that all people with that surname are Scottish or have links to Scotland. Come to think of it, are all living people with the surname Baird direct or distant descendants of the television inventor? Sam Baird, who is often known on the professional snooker circuit as "The Blade", perhaps? But he is English and not Scottish.
38) GET DIGITAL RADIO - Here is some information as to whether digital radio is available in your area. Thankfully, digital radio is indeed available in my area, in answer to that question. I have my own portable digital radio, which someone purchased from Tesco I think, (yes, they do sell non-food and drink items as well), and gave to me as a Christmas 2013 present - two days after Christmas Day itself, but it was well worth the wait and they couldn't come up on 25th December. It's a cute, black petite little thing. (And I know that I am also a Sky Digital customer, but in this instance, I don't mean the digital radio service on Sky), but the reception is brilliant as it could possibly be if it tried. During the weekend between Christmas and New Year, I plugged the radio into a backroom socket, and pointing the aerial (or antenna) out of the window in the same direction as where the Waltham television transmitter is situated, and I got over 50 radio stations, around 15 more than when I first tuned in, although to be fair, I didn't have the aerial up and I didn't point it towards the best possible direction to get too many radio stations, and besides, there was a dip in the landscape the first time round where the transmitter didn't quite reach, (which was rather ironic considering there was BBC Radio Nottingham's main transmitter just around the corner). The Sky Digital radio wasn't really portable to carry from room to room for all the obvious reasons, so that is why I needed a portable "room to room" radio as well. I have to keep up with technology sooner or later!
39) GET ME DIGITAL - Or even better still, please just get me anything that can make me happy for the rest of my life, except that they would have more than their work cut out if they could possibly do that for me! This "Get Me Digital" website is aimed quite obviously at those people who do not already have digital, hence the statement in the website's name. No, I don't live in a hole in the ground, although sometimes I feel as if I wanted to stay there. You don't have to get me digital because I already have it! Both mains and portable! But to anyone who is still new to Digital (and therefore must be on another planet as it has been in existence since the late 1990s at least), here is a chance to find out about the technology. Even now, when I hear those words being mentioned, I still associate the words "analogue" and "digital" with clocks and telling the time; the hands pointing to the numbers versus an infro-red display telling you the time straight away. I always prefer the latter when it comes to digital watches, but for a short while I have one of those sports watches that had the best of both worlds with analogue and digital, and when it comes to changing the clocks back or forward at the end of October or March, it was double work to do that to the watch, what with all the other clocks that I have to change when that comes around each year! As for digital television and radio, well, one could say that I am equipped and prepared for the future a bit more than most other people. ironic for someone who is a few years behind the technological times.
40) RADIO PLAYER - One of my favourites. Well, it is one of my favourites when it behaves itself and gets to work properly, but when it has problems, it is not one of my favourites. You can basically listen to almost any radio station that has online access in the United Kingdom. I mostly have the page unofficially "bookmarked" on the screen, on the "letter B" tab, as I often listen to the BBC local radio stations when I am on there. There is no law that you can't listen to BBC Radio Bristol if you are in the Nottingham area. In fact, I think that listening to a local radio station other than your own is the next best thing to actually travelling to the area in question, and being there in spirit if you know what you mean. Perhaps, one could imagine that further by listening to BBC Radio Merseyside and having Google Maps on your computer, while looking at street view maps of the Liverpool area, perhaps? Just an example I had anyway. A good proportion of the independent radio stations are all on there, although I believe that not all of them are on there, especially the tin pot ones, the student ones, the 28 day restricted service ones, and of course the pirate ones (not to be confused with Cornwall's Pirate FM which is only "pirate" by name and is otherwise a legitimate radio station regulated by Ofcom. even though the main difference these days is the local advertising and perhaps local news as well. The music on there is the same as BBC Radio 1 or Absolute Radio, and has been like that since the 1980s at least.
41) BROADCAST MAGAZINE - The trade and industry newspaper (and written voice, if that is yet another oxymoron) for the "entire" British broadcasting industry, giving the BBC's in-house magazine Ariel a run for its money, ever so slightly. As we all know however, Ariel is not available to buy in WH Smiths or any other newsagent for that matter, and the only Ariel that is available in the supermarkets is the biological washing powder. Producers, directors, cameramen, scriptwriters, and so on. And perhaps a few anoraks as well. Last time I looked at the publication (which I got from one of the bigger WH Smiths where I live), it also had the BARB ratings information towards the back pages. "3.7 million viewers (usually an ITV word), watched BBC One's Six O'clock News on Tuesday evening" etc. It's great to see that Channel 5's programmes are notching up a couple of million viewers nowadays, especially now they have Neighbours on their books. In it's early years, Sky One was getting more viewers, and that was before most people had Cable, although to be fair, in areas like Wales, Northern Ireland, the north of Scotland formerly served by Grampian on ITV, and the south east of England where limited transmitters were used in order to avoid interference with French television signals, Channel 5 had limited viewers, unless one had Cable back in the late 1990s, so to them, it was just as much a non-terrestrial television station as the Sky channels were Things are now just a little bit different. Going back to Broadcast magazine, it's a great resource, and some central libraries should have at least a year's worth of past issues for users to look at. However, I am glad that their website URL is "Broadcast Now" and not the unsettling "Produxion" [sic] and now links to a spin-off website. Never liked the spelling of that - it looks far too American.
42) THE STAGE NEWSPAPER - The world is a stage as they say. In that case, this must be an international publication. The Stage is a weekly newspaper that has been going since the late 19th century, with an online archive to prove how long it has been going, (or thinking about it, one could even think of it as a magazine-alike newspaper a la The Weekly News), rather than just a stage. Whether you are treading the boards, breaking one of your legs, (as long as you are not "dying" in a theatrical sense), or indeed treading the boards, this is the official trade newspaper for those who are actors, thespians, television presenters, puppeteers, circus performers, anyone arrested so far as part of Operation Yewtree (especially if they were famous throughout the 1970s and 1980s while working in children's entertainment), and anyone who calls themselves "performers". It often contains obituaries of recently deceased actors and thespians (luvvies as Private Eye sometimes calls them), and gives details of pantomimes at the end of the year (I think it does anyway - I have probably only ever purchased one copy in my life from WH Smiths). The Stage is an industry publication just like other websites mentioned on here. I thought that such a publication like the Radio Times was too mainstream to be included on here and not associated directly with the broadcasting industry. It is not to be confused with The Times-alike Australian newspaper The Age (which can be seen read by characters in series such as Prisoner: Cell Block H - so there is an acting connection there after all?) We do love obscurity on here because it is a lot more exciting!
43) CAMPAIGN FOR PRESS AND BROADCASTING FREEDOM - Freedom for what? Freedom from what? And freedom about what? George Michael's Freedom? There are a lot of unanswered questions there. Freedom is letting prisoners out of jail early before their sentence is complete (well it isn't parole anyway). If you want a definition of what freedom really is. This website is Eurosceptic in a broadcasting sense, although I am personally not Eurosceptic in a political sense, or broadcasting I assume (I am a Conservative not a UKIP supporter with membership to prove it), so I might not agree with what this website has to offer. They seem to be in support of organisations such as the Freedom Association (as endorsed by East Midlands Conservative turned UKIP MEP Roger Helmer), and of course, the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I wrote to Roger Helmer "MEP" before he defected in early 2012, and said to him in as many words: "you have made a big mistake". Anyhow, I think that the "Campaign" just want a bit more transparency in broadcasting rather than let confidential information go astray and into the wrong hands. I doubt that Ofcom or indeed the Communications Act 2003 or the Data Protection Act 1998 are big fans of this organisation as speculation in the media is something to be avoided these days. And I bet that the Freedom Association are strongly against the Television Licence Fee as well. For good reading on the subject of freedom, why don't you have a good read of "Whose Side Are They On?" by Alan Pearce, a great author who was a former journalist, and I have managed to contact via email, and you will probably find out from reading that book what is wrong with Britain (just like the Daily Mail), and its civil liberties these days.
44) BROADCASTING FEE ASSOCIATION - They might as well call themselves the "Television Licensing Association" or use some similar wording anyway, because it is more relevant, but on the other hand, it might be too similar to TV Licensing's name itself, and could cause confusion in the process. As you can easily guess, They do indeed oversee sub-niche organisations such as TV Licensing, I assume. There seems to be very little in content on these pages, with so much white spaces in between just like looking at websites from the late 1990s and early 2000s in the Archive website. Any white spaces left over on websites these days are filled by obtrusive advertising from the like of the "dreaded" Unicef, (dreaded from an online advertising perspective anyway), Procter and Gamble Products, and commercial companies that have links to the websites that you have been looking at previously online. Looking at the content directly on this website, the United Kingdom information takes you to another page, where interestingly, on the illustrated map, Northern Ireland is not the same colour as the British mainland is, making it look as if Northern Ireland is out of the area that it serves from its United Kingdom perspective. and even the Isle of Man has the colour despite being a Crown Dependency and not being officially part of the United Kingdom. On the Ireland page, Northern Ireland is not on there either. So, in a way, this is an authority that oversees other authorities. Those who are against the Licence Fee, (and whose websites are further down this list, (cf BBC TV Licence), and all that), would presumably also boycott a website such as this in the same way as the would to the official TV Licensing website.
45) ADVANCED TELEVISION - So how advanced is "advanced" then? More advanced than the year 2000 (or even 2010), perhaps? Perhaps that advanced year is still to come in the no so distant future? One could say that the way I write this list is rather advanced, (and also how I type this list as well), but not as advanced as technology or television is at the moment. Looking at the future of television technology. Now we are well into the digital phase of television (at least 17 years of it at the time of writing this), can it revolve any further? I learnt more about Advanced Television by doing it my own way. I took a trip on a National Express coach (via the M1, Chesterfield and Sheffield), and spend two nights in a Premier Inn hotel, (which I would like to say was the most comfortable stay in a hotel that I have ever had so far), in order to spend over six hours visiting the National Media Museum (formerly the National Museum of Film, Photography and Television, or whatever it was called before), in Bradford on my birthday of all days back in August 2013 for the second time in my life - the first time was back in 1992 as part of a trip organised by a Saturday morning workshop which good-old Nottinghamshire County Council were responsible for (a few years before the dumbed-down unitary authority cancer came along on April Fools Day 1998), and I have to say that I learnt more about advanced television technology a lot more visiting Bradford than I would do visiting this website. How about bringing back Tomorrow's World and also those other science and technology programmes from the 1970s and 1980s that is all I say!
46) THE AGENTS' ASSOCIATION - The mind really boggles with this one. It has a slightly "inflated" claim on its front page that it is "the largest association of its kind in the World", and they are not just referring to any agent's association in the world, but generally any association whatsoever in the world. Even if one looked in the Directory of British Associations (Edition Number 19), which in my case (or indeed bookcase), my own copy happens to be a second hand copy I have got in my bookcase that I got from Ebay as a result of being a withdrawn former library book, which would have set me back at least £250, even if I purchased it first hand and brand new? Perhaps Guinness World Records, (formerly known as the Guinness Book of Records of course, changing the name a few years ago when they realised that the organisation is also online and goes beyond just the book which it is based on), should contain a listing for this association, then? How big is the association in comparison with other associations, and hoe does one measure an association? with a tape measure or ruler, perhaps? An agent can be of anyone, just like a secret agent, not just an actor. So I assuming that this association that represents various agents of actors and presenters that one can look up on the Spotlight website. I would argue that this website is similar in tone and flavour to the Spotlight website, and that Spotlight is a lot bigger and more well-known. Just like Spotlight, they also have addresses for actors agents, although it is the agents they are interested in rather than the actors. Cut out on the middleman I suppose. I often think of social workers or support workers for example as some sort of agent or spokesman, and sometimes I think that it is the same thing in all but name.
47) BSL (BRITISH SIGN LANGUAGE) ZONE - No, I did not say Boyzone so please do not get too excited like I often do when that word is mentioned. I said BSL Zone - the British Sign Language Zone. The irony there is that you must have probably gone deaf as well because you wouldn't have heard me if I read this out to you in a verbal way. There is no sign of Shane Lynch (who I affectionately regard as the older brother that I never had), or Ronan Keating anywhere here. Thankfully, (and I know that this sounds cruel to people who are a lot worse off than myself, at times when I think that I myself are worse off than anyone else I know), I would like to say that I am not deaf or hard of hearing, (thank goodness), but because of that, I don't know too much about British (or any other nationality) of sign language. I am in perfect hearing thankfully, and have done so all of my life, and I hope that will be the case for the rest of my life, touch wood. Most people are so ignorant, that they only know the relevant "signs" for offensive phrases "up yours" and various pieces of offensive language. The BSL Zone is representing British Sign Language for the deaf and hard of hearing on television. Programmes on the television such as the BBC's See Hear have given deaf people their own programme in order to communicate better via television since the early 1980s. And as more and more programmes are subtitled which started from the page 888 teletext number, it has helped deaf people even more. When I write out my Christmas cards at the end of the year, I often choose a charity at random in order to donate to just because it's the festive season, along with a Christmas card. I have been doing this for a couple of years now, and past recipients have been the Riding for the Disabled Association and Parkinson's UK, which I refer in an way of affection as as my "Charity of the Year". Who knows that next Christmas, my annual donation could be to a deaf charity?
48) DEAF BROADCASTING COUNCIL - Now, how on earth can a broadcasting council be deaf? Sorry, I am stretching literal interpretation to its limits yet again! Anyway, I have to say that there is something quite positive about a person using sign language on television or generally in public, whether the person is deaf themselves or just using the language to help deaf people communicate. The same goes for lip-reading and general on-screen subtitles that used to be on page 888 of both Ceefax and Teletext. The only problem is that we don't really see it too often these days, and not as much as we did see only a few years ago. The Deaf Broadcasting Council is an organisation, (and is also presumably a charitable one as well), which has a few aims with its utmost to represent the deaf community when it comes to broadcasting, complimenting British Sign Language and other ways of communication, and so that their form of communication can be as equal as most other people. I think that broadcasting councils or whatever for different minority disabilities are a great idea, don't get me wrong. Taking that a step further, and if there isn't already one in existence, I was wondering whether we could have an Autism Broadcasting Council (appropriately abbreviated to ABC as it has a nice ring to it), or even better, an Asperger Syndrome Broadcasting Council as well? I want to become the chairman or even the Chief Executive of it as it was my idea. I think that it could be about time that "my minority group" was now represented a little bit more, in mainstream society. Perhaps the National Autistic Society could have something to do with that? Just give me a few hundred quid to start off, and it just might work, you never know - and I might never know either.
49) AUDIO DESCRIPTION ASSOCIATION - She is actually named "Audio Description Association", but you can call her Ada (or ADA) for short, (but not Asda). And now, we face a huge transition from our deaf communities onwards to our blind communities. Unfortunately of course, this will not obviously benefit deaf people unlike the two previous entries on this list, but it could benefit blind people and those who cannot see very well to some great use. Helping the blind and short-sighted people (and anyone else that the old Royal National Institute for the Blind as it then was, has plenty of support), to follow television programmes easier, which one can do with a Sky remote control, but don't ask me exactly how you do that because I have completely forgotten how to do that, as I am writing this! I once turned on my audio description on Sky by accident while starting to watch a programme, (I was probably trying to turn the subtitles on and did that by mistake), and I have to admit that it was a very strange experience. Let's say for example that you are watching a drama serial which has a character called John. All of this "John opens the door", said by someone who can't be seen (even by sighted people). It was a drama programme, so John wasn't his real name - it was his character name we assume. I was wondering whether blind people still have a free Television Licence regardless of age, or has that stopped now, and that they have to pay the same as everyone else? In which case the radio is the better sort of media for a blind person as they are not missing out on anything that a sighted person would be missing. At least radio makes a blind person equal with a sighted person.
50) AUTHORITY FOR TELEVISION ON DEMAND (ATVOD) - These descriptions are getting even more difficult to write after several days doing this! But I will soldier on and keep doing this for as long as I can. Basically, ATVOD is otherwise known as the Authority for Television on Demand. When I saw the "ATV" part of the name, I thought that it was a website that was a tribute to the former Midlands and London Weekend (but not London Weekend Television - LWT, which replaced it) ITV company ATV, makers of Pipkins (nee Inigo Pipkin when it started back in January 1973), Tiswas and Crossroads, (it had "Midlands" written all over it for nearly 24 years), but it isn't. I know that there is an ATV tribute website with forum included somewhere on the Internet, but I am not sure of the URL at the moment, and I am far too busy to look at Google while I am writing this. Anyway, the acronym looks a bit like saying "ATV Odd!" This website is just an authority for television on demand, or one assumes television by subscription, which some people want as a replacement for the Licence Fee if they have decided that it needs to be scrapped. The $64,000 question is, do we all demand television these days, and what sort of television do we demand? I think that we do the opposite, and demand a lot less television. Most people demand that they shouldn't have to pay a Television Licence Fee as they say that it is an abuse of their human rights and civil liberties, and they also demand better quality programming rather than Emmerdale six times a week (twice on a Thursday evening), but apart from that, any demands by television are few and far between. I tend to demand lots of things, but I hardly ever get them.
51) LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY TELEVISION (LCD TV) ASSOCIATION - At number 51, we are now half way into this list of broadcasting links ranging from 1 to 101 at long last! Now, you don't really have to be a millionaire to own liquid crystals, but do need a couple of thousand pounds to keep up with the modern technology that contains the aforementioned crystals, especially if they happen to be television sets. As you know, LCD means Liquid Crystal Display of course. Yes, televisions that have a liquid crystal display, so they are talking about most of the modern ones of course. Liquid crystal displays still sound exotic even in 2014 as I write this, and it certainly does in my household. There was me think that LCD was some sort of drug reference, but that was LSD instead. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, to quote the Beatles song. (Not LCD - Lucy in the Clouds with Diamonds?) Perhaps it was the main reason why Britain decimal in 1971 - to avoid the controversial acronym of pounds, shillings and pence - LSD? And what to watch on your LCD television set, if anything ironic is on there? All those broadcasting puns based on the phrase "Liquid Crystal", and there are so many of them, if you think about it. Challenge has episodes of the Liquid Crystal Maze, perhaps? The BBC had Liquid Crystal News? You could watch Liquid Crystal Palace play football, and if you are in London, you could have received your local programmes from the Liquid Crystal Palace transmitter. This one is so difficult to write about. Now I have finished with this one, I shall now gladly get me winter coat and get myself out of here, in which the coast itself not made of liquid crystal and I am glad to say.
52) LET'S BE CLEAR AT 800 - Let's be clear at where? Let's be clear about this website as I have a few personal stories to tell, well at least one of them anyway. The main personal story that I have to tell is this: back in June 2013, there was a campaign from this organisation about mobile phone signals using former analogue channels, and so therefore some channels would have to move frequencies. No, I don't have a mobile phone, well, not a working and actively switched on one at the moment as I choose to use the tradition landline telephone instead. Basically, I have Freeview upstairs, as I have said before, and a few weeks after I received a postcard through the door from these "At 800" people, the BBC television and radio signals disappeared for good. After I wrote to them, I was later sent some device that was supposed to plug into the back of the television set with the aerial plugged into the device, so that is what I did, and I even swapped things round, hoping that I would solve the problem, but it didn't because I would assume that the BBC channels would return to the set if I plugged this in, but no. As I have completely no flaming idea as to how to retune the damn thing, I am stuck with it, along with ITV, Channel 4 and commercial television channels on it, but as I have said before, I just switched the upstairs television set off, went downstairs, and watched the channels on Sky instead, which wasn't affected by this situation. Just shows you that the Licence Fee which the BBC get money from, I wouldn't benefit from when I wouldn't be able to watch any BBC channels upstairs.
53) TV ADVERTISING - What is there to say about television advertising that hasn't already been said on this list? It is intrusive if you are enjoying a television programme, having to wait three minutes before you can continue watching it again, and it invites you, (or to be more correct, forces you, bribes you and blackmails you to death) in order for you to purchase items and services that you simply do not want in the first place, and many of these you can't afford even you wanted them anyway. This happens online as well on television, so I am well aware of the disobedient antics of these so-called desperate salesmen, who are they are robbers in disguise most of the time. It is a kind of consumer blackmail which even more shockingly, is perfectly legal. On this website, there are information to advertisers on how much a slot on television could be worth at peak time and that sort of thing. The lucrativeness varies from region to region and from one time of year to another. For example, a one minute slot in the London ITV region during a Wednesday episode Coronation Street in mid December, is a lot more lucrative than a ten second slot in the Border Television region during a Sunday morning imported repeat in mid July. Everyone knows that! Bring back J R Hartley looking for his copy of Fly Fishing for Yellow Pages, (even if the actor who played Hartley, the late Norman Lumsden is no longer with us). I know he can't do any new commercials, but surely the television stations could show the commercial again, as it still exists in the television archives, and the Yellow Pages is definitely so going? Well, the BBC can't for obvious reasons.
54) CAMPAIGN FOR REGIONAL BROADCASTING (MIDLANDS) - The name of the game is that they are in favour of campaigning for more regional and local content in the more or less landlocked region that most refer to as the Midlands (and I often read "Midlands" as being the West Midlands - region, not county, rather than "East Midlands" or both areas). Although I feel that regional content is perfectly fine as it is, my motto to this sort of thing is if it isn't broke then why try to fix it? In fact, I sometimes feel that it can be be too regional, considering all the crime that is happening locally. Regional news and local news may be good to some people, but basically in a nutshell, I do not want to know who has been stabbed to death just 50 yards from where I live, thank you very much. The Danielle Beccan incident has taught me that over the years. This is also something that annoys and infuriates me as someone who lives in the Nottingham area: Why does any news story related to the Hillsborough disaster end up being ignored from a Nottingham perspective? On that day back in April 1989, It was a Liverpool club that played a "Nottingham" club, surprise, surprise, Nottingham Forest, but for what it's worth, but Nottingham might as well be a city in Merseyside or South Yorkshire rather than the East Midlands, considering how the coverage is being circulated. What makes it even worse was on that day, both teams played on neutral ground in Sheffield, which means that Nottingham and Liverpool were supposed to be equal when playing on that day, but Liverpool is getting more acknowledgement for it. Why is this so? Damn East Midlands Today and damn Central News as well. Damn the Nottingham Post and any other local rags in existance, and yes I know that it s a newspaper and not a television programme. And someone is also setting up this "Notts TV" or whatever it is called, being a very amateurish student and work experience television station with about 100 viewers at any one time, and it will probably appear on spare Sky Digital channel 117 or on channel six (or channel 106) on Sky, moving Sky One to a different slot, so we will probably see a lot more of that as well.
55) CHRISTIAN BROADCASTING COUNCIL - This is the CBC - the Christian Broadcasting Council, and not the BBC - the British Broadcasting Corporation, and definitely not the ABC - the Anglican Broadcasting Council, which doesn't exist as far as I know - the closest there is to that is the Anglican Broadcast Network - the ABN. OK, It may be Christianity, but it is not all God, the angels (even if it happens to be Melissa George playing an angel, who happened to be Angel Parish, nee Brooks - just think back to the Australian soap opera Home and Away back in the mid 1990s in order to understand that statement!), or the devil you know. In fact, better the devil you know than the devil you don't as they say. It isn't all about nativity plays, or red, red wine tasting at the holy communion either. It isn't even Psalm 23: "The Lord is my Shepherd" either. There is a lot more to it than that. It is more or less overseeing Christianity in broadcasting. The only ones I can of that are on television at the moment are Sky One's Sunday morning series The Hour of Power as well as the GOD TV channel, (GOD is written in capital letters of course to mean power, dominance and most of all, business, obviously seen from the television station's shareholder's perspective), are two examples of broadcasting that I think they would oversee. But at least Sky One still commit (or should I say, transmits) a Christian service on a Sunday morning apart from the terrestrial television channels who gave up in the mind 1990s, with the exception of Christmas, Easter and perhaps if we are lucky, Palm Sunday. Salvation Army, anyone?
56) CHRISTIAN TELEVISION ASSOCIATION - Are there really enough Christian television stations in the United Kingdom in order to merit its own association, or is this an international one? I think website has an URL ending in .uk.com, which is the only one I think on this list, so I believe that it is British. Either that, or it is an international one with a special British prefix to benefit British search engines, although to Google it doesn't matter in the slightest it seems. I have to admit that religious television broadcasting is so difficult to write about, unless you actually work in broadcasting or actually work in religion or the local clergy. I mean, what exactly do you write about? Something like this perhaps? Glory, glory hallelujah! As I pretend to be Dame Thora Hird in that early 1980s Yorkshire Television Friday night at 8.30 pm sitcom, bashing a tambourine in rejoice and excitement as rediscovering myself and also homeless people at Christmas time. Television stations that focus on Christianity, but not in a Church of England or Archbishop of Canterbury sort of sense. Whether it is St Augustine in 597 AD or Justin Welby in 2014 AD. St Peter in 32 AD or Pope Francis in 2014 AD. It is a different sort of Christianity. Views about homosexual marriage or civil partnerships, compared to their heterosexual counterparts? Those channels on the Sky Digital platform that loiter between channels 570 and 600 are mostly the Christian ones, including the aforementioned GOD channel, where as the ones in the 800s are aimed at Muslim, Sikh and Hindu followers. Jehovah's Witnesses anyone? If it happens to be at 11.00 am on a Sunday morning (when you should be in church anyway), don't answer the door whatever you do! You may wish you had not done that!
57) INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING TRUST - They seem to help lots and lots of broadcasters to gain as much support as they can from what they could do. I think that they probably cover a lot more ground than the European Broadcasting Union, but don't quote me on that. A look at the front page from a current day April 2014 perspective (as I am writing this), gives us in the news column on the right as "a briefing with Michael Herrod, head of foreign news, (I thought he actually said Michael Howard, as in the former Conservative Party leader, famous for his ignoring Jeremy Paxman's big question "did you threaten to overrule him?" on Newsnight in the mid 1990s when Howard was Home Secretary in John Major's government), and Natalie Fay, who is the Executive Producer on Assignment for ITN". In the "Latest News" column. we learn at the time of writing this that from Tuesday 1st April 2014, the BBC World Service moves from the Foreign Office to licence Fee funding, (where have we heard that old chestnut before?), which presumably was not an April Fools joke designed for that day in question. (Why does the new tax year start so close to April Fools Day anyway?) I always assumed that the BBC World Service, a radio station where here in the United Kingdom, more people listen in at 3.00 am rather than 3.00 pm for all the obvious reasons, had right up until a couple of years ago, was actually based in Bush House on London (or should that be "BVSH HOVSE", spelt in an "I CLAVDIVS" sort of way, simply because we had to use letter Vs instead of Us because someone had stolen them). That is what I would have thought anyway. There is nothing more to be said. To sum this all up in three words - "an interesting website".
58) ASSOCIATION FOR INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING - That's right. I repeat, the Association for International Broadcasting. Alpha, Foxtrot, India, and Bravo. What is there to say about this one? They represent broadcasting around the world, blah, blah, blah. Including hopefully, the United Kingdom, and serving our members in television and radio etc. And that magic word "transmedia", (which is so much an underused word that even the spell checker that I use on my internet provider doesn't even recognise as I wrote it) - a word that one doesn't hear too often, even on broadcasting lists. To me, it sounds like some sort of cross-dressing media or something. Please bring back those obscure word programmes like Call My Bluff so that now, the Internet can help us cheat with the correct definition of the words on Google! But trans-anything sounds like that, apart from words (usually verbs) like transport, transfer and translate of course. Anyway, the Association for International Broadcasting, or the AIB (to give it their abbreviation) actually have a publication called The Channel, a sort of sub-Broadcast magazine, and the word Channel has an emphasis of the word as in "television channel" and not "Channel Islands" (something that Jersey and Guernsey-based Channel Television would probably have problems with the double meanings of). Perhaps resitting a couple of GCSE Geography examinations could increase this organisation's knowledge of what is and what isn't part of the United Kingdom? No, on second thoughts, make that an A level examination rather than a GCSE one to be on the safe side. Not A to B, but AIB. Remember that.
59) PARENT PORT - Please also remember that this is obviously written from perspective of someone who has never even been a parent, so do please forgive me for any inconsistencies and inaccuracies. This is a website aimed at parents to help them make sure that what their children see on television is suitable for them, and that they don't see anything that they shouldn't. I think that applies to the parents as well! Back in the mid 1990s I was in a telephone conversation with someone from the NSPCC when I saw that they had a booklet about the dangers of screen violence if viewed by youngsters, which was advertised in a newspaper or magazine, so I decided to get a copy by contacting the charity in question. I made an interesting point that exposing violence or sexual content to a youngster (let's say under the age of 16 in this case, although we could increase it to 18 for legal reasons if we need to), is a form of abuse in a visual rather than a physical way, and the NSPCC representative did agree with me. I have to say however that this sort regulation will be forever in its "are you sitting comfortably? Then we will begin" sub-Watch With Mother phase for some good reason, but no Andy Pandy, Bill and Ben or any Woodentops in evidence here. But then again, why should I have the cheek to comment on a subject such as this when I am not even in a social relationship, never mind a parent? I am an adult citizen who is aged over 18, I can damn well comment on this in anyway I like, within reason, and within not offending or distressing anyone who reads this.
60) WOMEN IN FILM AND TELEVISION - Before I proceed with this, please excuse me while I throw something which is very delicate and expensive on to the hard concrete floor. Smash! There, I feel a lot better now. Where was I? Oh yes, This happens to be a website that is about the feminine sex and their connections with film and television, although why this website and organisation actually exists is a real mystery. Yes, presenters like Esther Rantzen, Zoe Ball, Anneka Rice, Cilla Black, Carol Vorderman, Anne Robinson, Vanessa Feltz etc, are all females who work in television, but for Christ's sake, do they really and honestly need their own organisation? I was rather hesitant on whether to include this in the list but decided to in the end for no good reason. I tried to find the male version of this website on Google but there doesn't seem to be one. I am all for equal rights between males and females, but this proves otherwise. Come to think of it, is there a male version of the Women's Institute around? And they say that whites only organisations are racist when positive discrimination or positive action ones are acceptable and perfectly legal? I hate Harriet Harman. I would not condone a lot of the British National Party do, simply because I support the Conservative Party and I have been a member (but not an activist due to my social difficulties) since the start of 2005. This sounds to me like double standards and political correctness gone mad! Oh no, I am sounding exactly like Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday! I think I will go to the writing bureau and get my Basildon Bond out!
61) CLEARCAST - Some "not quite obscure as others towards the bottom of this list" organisation that allows advertisers to get their product on the air. I am not too sure whether this one is a commercial website or a generally technical one. Either way, I do think of it as being relevant enough to be included on our list here. I don't know but to me, Clearcast does sound a bit like a brand of something you use to mow the lawn. I can imagine the advertising, right now: "keep lawns clear for weeks with new Clearcast weed killer. Available from all good DIY and gardening superstores, including Homebase". Clearcast on lawns? Oh, that was Qualcast, wasn't it? Their brand of green coloured lawnmowers against rival Flymo's orange coloured ones. What was their slogan? "A lot less bovver [sic] than a hover" as it said in the commercials, often shown on Friday evening ITV during the summer months, ironically. And if it was an advertisement, then it is relevant to the organisation after all! I know that wasn't Flymo anyway. How do I know about gardening anyway? I don't have green fingers, and the local council often looks after the lawn in the back garden, so one can be forgiven for such ignorance in the confusion between lawn mowing and some broadcasting website! Even I used to think that Stirling Moss was something you used to put on a lawn rather than someone to do with motor racing. I must get out a lot more - and do some gardening, perhaps? The coast is clear, and the cast is clear as well.
62) KSL TECHNICAL - Although this one seems to be a company website, (to which I sincerely apologise to all reading this), which is usually something that I decided may not go on this list as I mostly got for associations, organisations, charities, and even government quangos at times, rather than commercial companies or corporations. Or even CIDs - nothing to do with the police, but those initials standing for Companies In Disguise. It does have a lot of information about television reception, digital news and all that sort of thing, so I decided to include it. It is owned by Steve Larkins, whose name is featured in the website URL, so there shouldn't be any problem there. Steve could be his middle name, considering the letter K, but I shall not speculate any further. This website even had details on how to manually add on the different ITV regions on Sky, and was referred and linked to frequently on various television forums in the early to mid 2000s in response to the old "I live in the Tyne Tees region because I live in Darlington and Sky decide that I should get Tyne Tees because of my Post Code, but I want to receive Meridian as well on my television set because I came from Hampshire originally - how do I go about doing that?" With Sky of course, you will get the London region (originally for the audio description and subtitles that wasn't on any other ITV region at that point), and your own region if you didn't already live in London. Aren't we supposed to live in a democracy now? In a few country? So why not let the viewer have Westcountry Television on his screen even though he lives in the Shetland Islands?
63) RADIO AND TELLY - It's called Radio and Telly, and not Telly and Radio, please note. Make sure that you refer to the name in that order. With just a tiny bit of information on radio and television in Britain, as well as the technical jargon, gobbledygook and higgledy-piggledy language as it says. What more can be said about that? In addition to all the technical help on offer, Radio and Telly (yes, Telly, and not Television or TV), also has a forum where one can discuss problems with Sky, Freeview, Virgin Media, BT Vision, and one will get proper "no-frills" bargain-basement technical advice for their troubles. At least they don't charge you a fee online. I do think that the people who run this website really know what they are doing, even if they were anoraks in their youths. They also have a forum discussing comedy shows as well, (alternative mostly, rather than mainstream), just to prove to everyone that people on there really do have a sense of humour after all, even though it does feel a bit out of place of the original scope of why people originally visit the website for, i.e. not for comedy. If they started a new forum for current affairs I might consider joining myself, if I am desperate. Seriously, I would use this website as an alternative to the bigger websites online such as the high and mighty Digital Spy, for the main reasons that I have explained elsewhere on this list, but also because I think that small is beautiful if you get a better service. Compare a supermarket (or even a hypermarket) with a corner shop if you like.
64) FREQUENCY FINDER - This is mostly a radio one, this is. Find out the frequency of your local radio stations here. Or just guess when you next switch your radio on. I just love the list of radio stations sorted out by FM frequency, so you can see which other radio stations around the United Kingdom also share the same frequency. Just like BBC Radio Nottingham's 103.8 MHz FM frequency, which is also shared with BBC Three Counties Radio, (a BBC local radio station that serves Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, or "Beds, Herts and Bucks" to coin a local catchphrase that the radio station has), it can be heard travelling down the M1 going to and from London, and is also famous for its award-winning JVS consumer programme presented by Jonathan Vernon Smith, a programme that I have taken part in a couple of times for reasons that is to precious to write down here, as well as BBC Radio Solent's Dorset transmitter, a couple of BBC Radio 4 frequencies in Scotland and Wales, and one for BBC Radio Cymru in some unpronounceable area that starts with Llan-something. And the number of Independent Local Radio stations that use 96.2 MHz FM as well as Capital Radio Nottingham (nee Trent FM and the original Radio Trent as it was called when it started back in July 1975), is amazing as well. I don't know how the FM waveband copes during atmospheric conditions. It never seems to affect Medium Wave or Long Wave, I know that. I wonder why it doesn't?
65) BECTU - If Equity is a trade union causes members to create havoc in front of the camera then Bectu does more or less the same thing behind the camera. The trade union, which refers to itself as the Media and Entertainment Union, is mostly for those who work behind the camera in television. Their main claim to fame was probably during the TV-am strike in 1987 and 1988, when their members were locked out by the Big Man Bruce Gyngell, (yes, our Australian born-British-died hero in the television industry), who had a penchant for Buddhism (after studying various religions in the Orient) and the colour pink (yes, the colour pink), earning him the nickname "the Pink Panther", along with a fierce hatred of trade unions, no matter which union was involved with the television service. Come to think of it, as Gyngell was boss of Yorkshire Tyne Tees Television in the mid 1990s, it's a wonder whether he would have been given the nickname "the Yorkshire Ripper" as well! Shall we say that considering he got on with the late former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher better than most other politicians of the 1980s, as well as strongly disliking the trade unions, I very much doubt that he was a Labour supporter. I think that he was Conservative who was politically blue even if he was pink regarding everything else, and good for him. He would have had my support! I have always assumed that all television executives from Australia behaved like Gyngell to be honest. One of Bectu's campaigns seen at the moment of writing this happens to be Say No to Exploitation in TV. They really seem to care.
66) CONFEDERATION OF AERIAL INDUSTRIES - We are being technical here with our websites! Here is a very interesting question for anyone who is happening to read this, in order to answer: do you like television aerials? They are so fascinating to look at and talk about, aren't they? Not many people would agree with that statement, but there could be some who would. Certainly in the days of analogue television, and also now if one has Freeview, a good aerial in a good position determines whether local television reception will be good, or whether it will be snowy, ghostly (due to surrounding buildings or mountains), wavy lines due to atmospheric conditions or anything else. No doubt that back in the days of Nottingham-based analogue viewing, consisting of watching a ghostly Sutton Coldfield reception with a Waltham transmitter aerial plugged in, (south east of Nottingham which is in exactly the same direction as the Sky satellite dishes usually point, ironically enough), and it did look quite weird on screen, even if you wanted to see Bob Warman read the regional news for the first time since the Central Television region split into two back in the mid 1980s. And if Rod Hull had watched that Manchester United match in his native Meridian ITV region, via a Sky dish rather than just an aerial on the roof, then perhaps he would have lived to have seen the year 2000 and beyond? Perhaps he should lived back in the Pink Windmill as the sails shouldn't have affected his television reception. Forget the "emus can't fly" joke - it is not worth it.
67) AERIAL INSTALLATION - Need a new aerial, or does the existing one on the roof point to the wrong transmitter? Then perhaps you need this! When I used to travel by bus (well I still do, but anyway), I used to look out of the window at people's houses and see the television aerials on the roof, imagining my visual compass and guessing correctly which television transmitter they are more likely to get their local programmes from, in this case, Waltham, Kimberley (also known as the Nottingham transmitter with vertical aerials pointing north west of the city - you will know what I mean if you ever visited Nottingham and saw most of the serials on the roofs north west of the city), Sutton Coldfield, and anyone who lives north or east of Nottingham and can get Yorkshire Television as well as Central, the Belmont transmitter. Quite handy for regional news and that old Tuesday 7.30 pm opposite EastEnders on ITV slot back in the 1990s for a choice of viewing. In those days, because we didn't have cable, and it was just before Channel 5 started up as well. I used to try and pick up another ITV region by pointing a portable television aerial close to the television set in a different direction to the ones on neighbouring roofs outside, and adding a signal booster as well, and I just about managed it. Now I have Sky, I laugh at myself for doing that all those years ago. Oh, and speaking of television of the past, please bring back the old IBA trade test bulletins on Tuesday mornings. And come to think of it, bring back Monday's Newcomers as well.
68) RETRA - I just love these trade associations that only enthusiasts and those who actually work in the relevant industry by default would take the slight bit of notice of. I know that the acronym sounds like "Retro" that is, retrospective of course, and so one would assume that it was a website about "retro" things in the past - i.e. nostalgia and happiness for the past when things were 1,000 better than they are now. But this is Retra, and they deal with different things. They are the main association that represents retailers who sell televisions radios and other electrical goods (so-called "white goods", washing machines, fridge freezers, vacuum cleaners, toasters, kettles, microwaves, dishwashers, cookers, Hornby model train sets, etc - anything that the bailiffs would take on receipt of an unpaid debt for council tax). Perhaps not the train sets as they are not allowed to take toys, or utilities that are used for food, bathing, sleep and so on. Anyway, Enough about bailiffs what about electrical retailers? I think that they only represent independent retailers that do second hand goods and repairs rather than the big High Street names like Currys, Argos, PC World, or dare I say it, Tesco. You would never know if you are purchasing a new appliance whether you need to get in touch with the association who represents the shop, do you? If that is the case, then the chances are Retra represents them. A bit of a Retra-sepective, methinks!
69) ROYAL TELEVISION SOCIETY - You can easily guarantee that any organisation with the word "Royal" in its name is a truly British one (and proud of it - think of the Royal Mail for example), and one endorsed by either Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II or one of her grown-up children or grandchildren (an oxymoron if ever I heard one). And these organisation, (the Prince's Trust and the Duke of Edinburgh Award, and the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, being just three of them), are most likely to be charitable organisations as well. The Royal Television Society, to quote its website, is the leading forum, (in comparison of other forum websites listed on here like Digital Spy or TV Forum, perhaps?) for discussion and debate on all aspects of the television community, with affiliate access to the Hospital Club. Thanks very much for that token gesture! Now I know where to go if I am ill, injured, pregnant [sic], sic [sic], or just generally in despair! The Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham of course! The Society was granted its Royal status way back in 1966 and His Royal Highness, Prince Charles became patron of the society in 1997 (the same year as his late ex-wife, Diana, Princess of Wales was sadly killed in the car crash in Paris at the end of August that year), which is all you need to know. Oh, and it's open to all with an interest in television, so if you think that it is for the well-heeled members of society only, then think again. This is for everyone, young or old, rich or poor.
70) INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF TELEVISION, ARTS AND SCIENCES - That is a mouthful to digest, and it is also the international version of the American Emmys, which its original default name sounds to me like something that a nurse uses to sticks something up somewhere out of bounds. No, that is called an enemy, what I am I thinking of? Anyway, the IEmmys were founded in 1969, some 20 years after the original Emmys and they try and promote excellence in international television programming. Over 70 countries and 400 broadcasting companies take part - so that is an average of around 5.714 broadcasters per country, but I am not too certain if the United Kingdom happens to be one of them. Indeed they should do. If it isn't, then Lord knows what this is actually doing in this list. There are 15 categories for these awards, including comedy, current affairs, best performance by an actor and actress, But why is the acronym IEmmys rather than IAOTASS? Anyway, I lnow very little about this, so this is all that I can add on this at the moment. I have to say that I have never been fond of these awards ceremonies where someone with a golden envelope is on stage, saying "and the winner is..." Cue aforementioned person going from his table (with partner, half-finished desert, and dimly lit lamp), going onto stage, accompanied by some music associated with that person - music sung or written by that person, or a television programme theme tune if they appeared or presented that. On stage, you are supposed to take the bronze award and make a speech. "I would like to thank etc... Thank you very much", and back to the table. They all feel exactly the same!
71) TELEVISION AND RADIO INDUSTRIES CLUB - This one is a tric-ky one to write about as they say, so I would have to be careful here! As that proverb goes, you can never teach an old dog new trics. [sic] That's unless you happen to be a dog who is owned by Britain's Got Talent winner Ashleigh Butler, that is. I would rule out Bernie Winters' "brother-substitution" of dog Schnorbitz, or any canine who had "worked" with Barbara Woodhouse or any celebrity vet. However, this particular Tric isn't all that new, and no dogs (in the pet sense) are involved. In fact, it's a club for people in the television and radio industry, and it was also founded way back in in 1931. Because proper television in Britain didn't begin until November 1936 with the launch of the BBC Television Service (now BBC One of course), it was originally called the Radio Industries Club with the "television" bit added on a few years later. Its simple founding aim was basically "to promote mutual understanding and good will amongst those engaged in the audio, visual, communication and allied industries." Not Allied Carpets though. They have the Tric awards that were first launched in April 1969 at Grosvenor House, Park Lane, London, and the first three awards were presented to Val Doonican (I hope that he was in a suit and not a cardigan), Kenneth Horne (the writer presumably as the broadcaster of the same name died in February of that year, while the writer lived until 1975), and The Forsyte Saga for an award as well. I think they missed a Tric there. Geddit?
72) BRITISH UNIVERSITIES FILM AND VIDEO COUNCIL - If most people who were surveyed by someone who actually thought that the Oxford versus Cambridge Boat Race was elitist, then I wonder whether they would think of this project? These "bona-fide" students (prototypes for contestants on the Bamber Gascoigne-era University Challenge perhaps? Or even Stephen Fry?), and lecturers alike, being members of universities of course, and are studying or lecturing in broadcasting or media studies will find this useful. It also has copies of the London edition of the TV Times magazine from 1955 to 1985 with the listings retyped, otherwise known as TVTiP. However, before you salivate over the "forthcoming" the nostalgia of over 30 years of television listings and all that information being available, I have some very bad news for you: the sour note on all of this is that it isn't available at all to the general public, only students and academics and anyone who is like Brains out of Thunderbirds, and I doubt that they ever will do thanks to the IPC copyright on them, in which they have only granted universities and other places of higher education to use them. Such is life. Someone once said on an internet forum about television that this idea "smacks in the face of elitism", and one can see his point from a non-academic perspective. Let's face it, you can't take part in the annual boat race unless you are an Oxford or Cambridge elite. Or if you are called Trenton Oldfield - someone who ironically sounds like the name of a river.
73) BBC PENSIONERS' ASSOCIATION - Please note that this website is not a BBC one, in its official sense anyway. But you probably already knew that. Here is a question: did you work for the BBC in the 1970s, either making the tea or scrubbing the floors, or making high-tech programmes such as Doctor Who or Tomorrow's World, and are you now retired, probably living on your £10 a fortnight pension, with only a few years left to live before "natural causes" or hypothermia eventually puts you out of your misery once and for all? Are you a member of the surviving cast from Last of the Summer Wine? Pension day - those dreary Monday morning trips to the local Post Office in order to withdraw your allowance, or Giro (as it used to be, circa 1982), with around 15 pensioners, mostly women (because they live longer than men, worse luck), before you in the queue. The chances are you was not a former executive at the Corporation, and definitely not a former Director General. Perhaps you would like to join this obscure-to-nothing association? If you play your cards right, you might even get the irony of receiving a free Television Licence if you are over 75 into the bargain as well! And perhaps a carriage clock as well so you can count how many hours you have left. And £75 of Marks and Spencer vouchers too, with no chance of ever spending them. And a lump sum to cover funeral expenses if you live beyond the age of 85? Not quite. By the way, does an ITV Pensioners Association exist? I know that anyone who works for Channel 5 are too young to have a pension anyway.
74) NOTICEBOARD FOR FORMER BBC STAFF - Another obscurity that is like an internet needle in a haystack. Or a grain of sand on a beach. Basically, don't ever assume, especially further down this list that if the initials BBC appear in the URL that it will definitely be a BBC website because it won't always be, and this is one of those instances. This seems to be a Friends Reunited for people who used to work for the BBC. No, it doesn't go as far as school reunions for BBC staff members who went to school with others back in 1947 if that really happened, but it is worth browsing the forums in order to look at the "makeshift" obituary columns contained within those pages, usually written by the default webmaster, because the forum is so obscure that hardly anyone knows about it in order to sign up and become a member. "I worked on the Morecambe and Wise Show in 1973, in the make-up department, (making people look like Dracula or Frankenstein). What sort of pension should I have?" The next time you happen to watch an old BBC television programme from the 1970s or 1980s (mostly, BBC Two, BBC Four or UK Gold as it was called), have look at the credits at the end of the programme. You might see some familiar names that sometimes get mentioned on websites like this. You might even see your own name, which puts you with in "Contributor Access" territory if you want to spend £150 to get a copy of that programme for yourself. A name in the credits is a claim to fame, no matter what you did on the programme.
75) TRANSDIFFUSION - Founded by some people with interests in broadcasting back in the 1960s, this website explores the history of British broadcasting, from pirate radio onwards. You don't need to wear your anorak, National Health glasses and geeky expressions, but it does helps To be honest, although the word "anorak", meaning anything from a collector of strange and obscure things, to being boring, only obtained its double meaning in around 1995 - soap opera expert Chris Stacey first used the word as far as I can remember when he was on the newly launched Talk Radio UK to talk about television, if that meaning of the word had existed in the 1960s, it would have been more acceptable in society to be one as it would be to wear one, and we don't just mean the Parka coat with orange lining and fur trimmed hood that one uses for fishing and trainspotting. Kif Bowden Smith, a geek in National Health glasses who wouldn't have stood out in a 1960s school playground, never mind walking down the street during the days when the Beatles were topping the charts, was very much a child of the 1960s and was one of those people who fitted in unusually back then, and over the years, "radio tapes" as they were called of archive 1960s television and radio grew, until the internet came along and so the Transdiffusion website was born. I am not sure whether television or radio clips could become antiques in 50 years time just like furniture and silver has, but we will have to wait and see. As for the name Transdiffusion, perhaps it was a cross between Rediffusion and something else?
76) THE TEST CARD CIRCLE - Allow me to take you back in time to a typical 1970s BBC 2 continuity announcer, who would have probably said on-air back then, "our regular programmes start again at 5.00 pm, and as we are now closing down for a few hours, and so here is the test card, and some music". If you are a fan of Carol Hersee (who looks as though she should be in a Saturday morning Children's Film Foundation matinee of her time - remember, it was 1967 when that was made), or "watching" some early 1970s BBC 2 during the afternoon of a weekday (when the cricket, golf or even Open University programmes were rained off for the fifth day in a row), or the last thing at night when BBC 1 closed down, just after the Public Information Film. "That was a Public Information Film", declared the continuity announcer as we were far too stupid or tired for that matter, to realise that it wasn't a commercial. But this was long before the days of BBC News 24 (now the BBC News Channel) taking over until 6.00 am, then you have liked the test card. It's colourful pattern design, often accompanied by music or just a high-pitched noise, brings back the nostalgia of the first few years of colour television. I actually thought that the main shape of a test card was square (or rectangular at least) but never circle... Not surprising that it was ITV that first began broadcasting 24 hours - the Hersee test card has always been a BBC icon as far as I am concerned. Nowadays, the test card would be better than most of the programmes that we now see. Now, how do I do that high-pitched tone with my mouth?
77) MELDRUM HOME PAGE - Founded by Darren Meldrum, Esquire. It basically has not been updated or changed since the early 2000s (or the mid 2000s at its most recent), and probably will not be properly updated ever again, but it is still online, and it still provides an insight into television idents and other things. Cue Yours Truly getting excited over an orange striped Daytime on 2 ident from around 1983, because it was used to introduce early Vicky Ireland-era Words and Pictures on Monday afternoons. We hardly ever saw the orange 2 on a black (or was it a very dark brown?) background as we were mostly an ITV household in the evenings. The "What We Used Watch" page, which lists old and salivating television schedules from the 1960s to the 1990s, has had mentions on the page since around 2001 that it "has been temporarily withdrawn, but will return soon, updated and rewritten", which roughly means that it will never happen, but turning to the Archive website, doing all the stuff, and looking back at a page dating around 1999 gives us some results of that before. I suppose that even Rome wasn't even built in a Millennium. A spin-off of the website (and what feels a lot more developing in recent years), is the Private Parts section, which Is still going strong and has clips even more obscure at times than what one would see on YouTube, provided you have the right equipment (i.e. a Real Player) to get your satisfaction out of what you see. I quite liked the clips of the ATV region showing of commercial breaks during the evening of Tuesday 28th July 1981 during a networked showing of a Pink Panther film. The commercials include Frankie Howerd voicing Murray Mints, voiceover stalwart Michael Jayston giving his voice for Vosene, and the late Anton Rodgers telling us about Long Life beer, illustrated by a 15th century Royalist scene. The Meldrum Home Page pre-dated YouTube, so it's not surprisingly that in pre-2005, this was one of the few ways that clips could be seen online.
78) ANDREW WISEMAN'S (625) TELEVISION ROOM - Andrew Wiseman was a bit of a minor celebrity only a few years ago, and I think that his website had helped him to become that person, in a way. The website contains idents, flash files and everything else to do with television. Old regional ITV company clocks that work with your computer's clocks (that one may have seen in the final seconds before News at Ten started).Interestingly, the clocks shown a default time of 6.25 (am or pm, we don't know), and a date if seen of 25th June. I can see the pattern here of the time (6.25) and the date (6/25 in its American sense, can you see?) Twenty five minutes past six, and the twenty fifth day of the sixth month of the year. Also, six is a quarter of 24 and 25 is a quarter of 100, not that it makes and difference. Anyway, also on the pages, It even had a page on Public Information Films and Charlie Says, bot long after the animated video and its live-action version, Charley Live! came out in the late 1990s, as first mentioned by the defunct Cult TV magazine. I got them from a defunct Peterborough based video company, and on two consecutive Tuesday evenings in January 1999, I sat down to watch them, and was overcome with nostalgia from a coupe of decades before. He was once an "activist" on the defunct Channel 4 programme Right to Reply, especially when he campaigned against the use of logos at the corner of television screens, and he probably mourned the demise of that programme as if it was death of a close friend. In fact, I am sure he was on there more often than Roger Bolton was. I have to admit that I wouldn't have gone as far as that, but I can understand it. It's a good job he doesn't do radio in the same way as he did television (even though you don't have company logos in the same place), or he will be dominating BBC Radio 4's Feedback programme (also presented by Roger Bolton) as well.
79) MB21 - The website that came from Mike Brown, who was also the founder of the original Yahoo! UK Broadcasting webring back in the late 1990s. In a nutshell, this is what one would call "an anorak's paradise" of television transmitters (pictures, diagrams and maps), teletext and anything else. A television transmitter answer to the Pylon of the Month website, or if you like, television transmitter of the month. Eat your heart out, Harvey Brant! If the Crystal Palace you are interested in happens to be the London-based television transmitter (that always made the BBC national news when it falls off the air during its analogue days) rather than the London-based football club (they make no news at all when they do badly), then this website is just for you. I knew from the start that the MB actually stands for the website owner's initials (and not MB Games as the board game manufacturer), but I never knew what the 21 stood for, and I will probably never will do. Ironically enough, I was 21 years of age when I first saw his website, just a few days after going online for the very first time back in September 1999. The website also listed names of famous people and those who made the news who passed away between around 1996 and 2002 such as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and also newsmakers such as the forgotten child Jaymee Bowen back in 1996, who was known for some time before as "Child B", (Jaymee Bowen had no connection to Bullseye host Jim Bowen), despite the similarity in their names. But even the "obituaries" disappeared as well after a while, not long after the people who were mentioned on that page.
80) DIGITAL SPY - Now, then. Corporations can be too big and far too world-dominating. Think Microsoft, McDonald's and Amazon. Digital Spy is too big as an online appearance, and that is a fact. Admittedly, it is an interesting website, a super-hypermarket of forums (sorry, fora), giving sometimes frequent misleading and inaccurate news and information about all spectra of broadcasting in Britain and the world, with a bias on celebrity mothers, of the "Big Star's Little Star" (female celebrity parent such as Suzanne Shaw or Patsy Palmer, and their sorry offspring - sorry that their mother is a so-called celebrity), or the "All Star Mr and Mrs" (celebrity couples and their spouses who are not quite as famous) mould. Most of the gutter Sun newspaper type stuff sucked up into here, hence the fact that it is a little bit right-wing and disagreeable at times. Indeed, the entertainment forum was even sponsored by the aforementioned tabloid newspaper, which is one of the many reasons why I left in 2006 after being a member on that forum for just a few months, as well as the nature of how the other members were like. I basically couldn't stand the jungle of hatred and prejudice. The comparisons on the way members behaved was just like bullies in a school playground, ganging up on the victim. to be honest. It has a few toothless moderators and even toothless content. Those people who frequent the forum are are a lot more into Jordan (i.e. Katie Price) rather than Jordan (i.e. the Third World country) should feel right at home in this despot of internet forums. It's not bad dipping into it once so often, but these days I wouldn't really touch it with a bargepole if one still had any sense. This website could be better if it had attracted the right type of people and they had better comments to make, but it doesn't.
81) TV FORUM - It does exactly what it says on the tin (or the front page of the website), to quote that old Ronseal commercial, and it's better than watching paint or creosote dry. It's a forum, and they talk about television, it's as simple as that. It has a main forum for television discussion, a Newsroom forum to discuss news programmes (regional and national - Granada Reports, anyone?), newsreaders (Sir Trevor McDonald and Kate Silverton, to name but a few), journalists, (Laurence McGinty, Michael Brunson etc), reporters, and anyone who works on Gray's Inn Road in London, be it, ITN staff or National Union of Journalists members. Newsroom is also to used for big news stories, such as the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, the August 2011 England Riots, and any other earth-shattering news, in case Barack Obama snuffs it before his time is up. In the main forum, I loved the threads about television commercials that are annoying. Remember Crazy Frog and Linda Barker in those Currys adverts? What about the Frosties "they're going to taste great" campaign of 2006, which was subject to conspiracy theories online? You have either forgotten about it, or wanted to forget about it. Also on the forums are mocks of logos and the like, media websites and requests. It has been around since 2001, although the longest serving members have only been there since 2003, so perhaps a problem between 2001 and 2003 has prevented earlier posts from showing online? Before my time anyway. Both interesting, topical and sometimes controversial. I would not consider joining as a member because one can easily fall out with fellow members on there. Better to be a life-long "lurker" for privacy and security reasons.
82) THE MAUSOLEUM CLUB - This is a cult television website that was very little known in its early years, and I happened to come across it about a year after it launched, possibly via a Google search. It appears with a forum that is dominated with left-wing brain-boxes rather than anoraks who work within the industry, and so, they know what they are talking about, at least they think they do anyway. Founded by a Mr Wolf, who you really need to ask him what time it is when the clocks go back as they don't change the time on the forum during the winter months of GMT. Writer and political activist Louis Barfe, who stood for the wasted-vote alliance known as NOTA (None of the Above in Waveney at the 2010 General Election, with the least number of votes), and is now affricated to the Green Party, is another senior member on the forum. There are others, but I think that you need to visit the forum itself to find them all out. You get the anorak in evidence "why doesn't television from the late 1990s look as dated in the mid 2010s, as much as late 1970s television did in the mid 1990s?" Is the art of time, change and fashion an optical illusion, or is the past (i.e. ten years ago) not as alien as it used to be? Also, if you do sign up as a member, there are some "semi-official" please make sure that you have worked in the television, radio or production industry for at least five years, and whatever you do, do not forget to refer to your video recordings as "off-airs" as well, as suppose to live programmes that are "on-air" of course. Don't mention YouTube (well, you can), but don't put any YouTube links on there, unless: A) You are the copyright holder of the clip; B) You have permission from the copyright holder of the clip; or: C) No one owns the copyright of the clip, so you use it as you damn well please. Besides, old threads from five years ago and contain YouTube links would more or less link to clips that have long since been removed from YouTube. It is great for some Saturday night or Sunday morning nostalgia of 30 years ago, and members taking about their "off-airs" (there, I have done it again!)
83) ZETA MINOR - If this list was positioned in alphabetical order rather than order of relevance, then this would have been at the bottom of this list for all obvious reasons, and prior to regarding and choosing these, that is what had happened. This was an interesting rival for many years to the Mausoleum Club, which had got more views and members since it "opened up" to the public if you know what I mean. Many people have been members of both, although not always using the same usernames for both. This includes another one of those television forums that is called Roobarb's (as in Roobarb the Dog and Custard the Cat, and the constant battles between them both, when the duo first appeared on television back in 1974, and narrated by the late pre-Good Life Richard Briers). Zeta Minor (or should I say, Roobarb's, or should I say further, the Green Dog) wasn't originally founded as an open forum (that is, one would have to register and sign in to see the content, even if one didn't want to contribute to the forums) until a couple of years ago. I am referring to the part of the forum called "The Green Dog" which to me sounds like the name of an inner-city pub, probably in the East End of mid 1980s Yuppie London somewhere. Thankfully, all of that is in the past, and it is now an open forum, in as many meanings of that word. Oh, and I am not too fond of any website, whether it is about television or not, which has the white (or light) text on a black (or dark) background, just like TV Cream was in its early years - it's a website, not a negative!
84) OFF THE TELLY - Not "On the Telly", but "Off the Telly", which is probably named so that once we have watched a television programme, one should switch the set off and go online to see what people have written about what you have just watched. Now of course, you tend to post it on Facebook or tweet it on Twitter, or use a blog, and this is the reason why television critic-alike websites such as this one has declined over the past few years. Besides, the columns in the newspapers are still going strong, and will do for some time to come, which was also a kind of threat to this website. Amateur versus professional. To sum it all up: a television review website featuring wannabe television critics (perhaps that is unfair, but I do have a point). Well, it was one in its heyday, but not as much as one now. I do know that wasn't as good as it was back in the 2000s, when writers like Ian Jones, Steve Williams and the Kibble-White brothers were regular contributors. Some of them could have even gave Clive James and his 1970s Observer columns a run for his money into the bargain as well. And I don't need to mention Victor Lewis-Smith either. The problem with Off the Telly website is that it has had so many re-launches over the years (the second one circa 2005 was the best one), and a lot of the archive material (some of it well written) seems to be lost forever). Even the Archive website doesn't seem to capture some pages. For example, the Morning Glory feature about breakfast television that was more or less withdrawn afterwards, but at least Ian Jones released it as a paperback a couple of years later, and I have a copy sitting on my bookcase, although there are bits that were online which wasn't in the book, which seems interesting as the book had about 30 times as many words inside it. Still, a great piece of research work.
85) BBC RADIO FORUM - It is not part of the BBC website as we don't actually have broadcasters websites listed on this part of the page, but it is an "unofficial" forum about BBC radio and a chance to discuss how socially liberal BBC Radio 2 has become since the late 1990s, and liberal Jeremy Vine, (chatting up single mothers on air), after replacing the more virtue conservative Sir Jimmy Young as the lunchtime current affairs presenter. Well he was Margaret Thatcher's favourite broadcaster, wasn't he? (Save for TV-am, that is). So therefore, the "conservative" might have not been with a small "c" after all, perhaps? I miss the old pre-1997 sub-Old Boy Network BBC Radio 2 when people like Ray Moore, John Dunn and Derek Jameson were around - all are no longer with us now. Now it has become another BBC Radio 1 with former presenters on air such as Chris Evans, Simon Mayo, Zoe Ball and others, and people "in session" as well. There is still BBC Radio 4 however, home of Feedback and Last Word, repeated on Sunday evenings. Thank goodness for that. As for other parts of BBC Radio, I actually thought that Nick Grimshaw's name sounded like someone who would be a Coronation Street character (Gail's son in law or someone like that). The remainder of BBC Radio 1 is for inner-city area chavs in "Post Office key ring" earrings, and nothing like the original "legalised pirate radio" service that Tony Blackburn launched way back in September 1967. At least we can still hear him doing Pick of the Pops on Saturday afternoons, sometimes doing charts from 1967 as well. Even in Mike Read's day of the early 1980s, the station just about held on to taste and decency. And what is BBC 6 Music for? And who actually listens to it? That is my last word on this subject.
86) TV LICENCE RESISTANCE - If you have ever read Heather Brooke's book "Your Right to Know" (in which a copy that I obtained from Amazon actually lives on my bookcase in my front room, and it is not even a metre away from where I am writing this), and you have taken advantage of the information contained inside the book, or if you have used the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Communications Act 2003, or even the Data Protection Act 1998 at least once in the past year, in order to obtain information about yourself for other public bodies, then you may be interested in this forum, if the stance on this sort of thing lies on broadcasting, and in particular, the BBC. The "Resistance", so to speak, is a forum for those people who don't want to pay their Licence Fee, and also those generally interested in television. I am in the latter group as I am law-abiding from a Licence Fee perspective. I don't need to tell you about the type of subjects that are discussed, such as the waste of Licence Fee payers' money by spending it on BBC executives taking 500 yard journeys in minicabs. Or issue could be that people are saying that there are too many white journalists in our newsrooms, or a doll in a children's television programme who doesn't look Asian or oriental enough. "We need to represent ethnic minorities a lot more, even if it is by force", rued a spokesman. You will find out for yourself. There used to be a similar website with tvlicensing.biz as the URL and was also a forum on similar subjects, but has since closed down, and probably merged into this one. Have you ever been cautioned under the Communications Act 2003? It takes two to tango, as they say.
87) UK GAME SHOWS - Or as it used to be called back in 2000, the UK Game Shows Page. All the information that you need to know about your favourite game shows seen in the United Kingdom from the 1930s onwards. I quite like a game show because it combines education with entertainment, or "edutainment" if that words exists. That is why I tune into challenge because the old ones a better! Details about classic shows like The Krypton Factor, Give us a Clue (three words, first word, "the"), University Challenge (your starter for ten), Bullseye (you can't beat a bit of Bully), Play Your Cards Right (is the next card higher or lower than a five?), Blankety Blank (a chequebook and pen), and all that kind of stuff - they are all there! The problem is that some genres also come into the subject of game shows as well, even programmes that are documentaries, music programmes and comedy programmes. For example, they seem to think that the Eurovision Song Contest is a game show! Do they think that News at Ten was a game show as well? I suppose that Question Time sounds like a game show, with the audience members as quizmasters and the politicians sitting on the panel as contestants, waiting to answer (or deviate) from those questions being asked by members of the public. There is also a Contestant Calls page, which at the time of writing, has not been updated from the end of 2013, with everything out of date since the start of 2014. Basically, that tells you about appeals for contestants of new games shows (quite often un-transmitted pilots). The downside that you have to be over 18 of course, and live in the United Kingdom, Channel Islands of the Isle of Man, most of the time. Never mind. Perhaps next time?
88) VISIT 4 ADS - It is rather ironic that people who hate commercials interrupting television programmes every ten minutes these days as they watch them, are often the same people who just love watching old commercials on websites such as this. As long as you register and pay a "subscription tax" to the company responsible, or if you like to call it, a small Premium-type fee (just like TV Licensing in a way, but a little less forceful), you can have a chance of seeing a lot of television commercials that we have seen on screen in recent years. That is unless you usually go and make a cup of tea (or coffee, or even Ovaltine), or just go to the toilet as soon as soon as "End of Part One" comes up on screen. Well, it used to anyway as it just cuts into a more lucrative sponsorship credit, and then into commercials for next couple of minutes, and it's more like when it gets to "End of Part Five" (omnibus editions of Brookside), before the end of the programme or film. Commercial breaks are often three minutes and ten seconds for programmes like Coronation Street, and three minutes forty seconds for films and the like, so you could even time yourself if you like! For some reason, as the website is called Visit 4 Ads, I used think that it was connected or had some association with Channel 4 because of the number 4 in the URL, but I don't think it is. It is good, but is it really worth paying extra just to indulge in a hobby of watching old television commercials from a decade ago. You should not have pressed the pause button when the commercial break came on while recording that James Bond movie premiere back in the early 1980s. Several commercials could be lost forever. How we kick ourselves for doing that now, and there is nothing that we can do about it. Is it actually worth it?
89) TELLYADS - Or is it really Visit 4 Ads, take two? From a technology perspective, if Visit 4 Ads was the First Class website for classic advertising, this is definitely the Second Class one. On here, the commercials are covered in two groups of recent and historic versions. There are obviously more recent commercials than historic (giving the impression that it is up to date and following incumbent fashions, or the fact that we know more about these things closer to the present day), and that is what the collection focuses on. Because of the dominance of recent various, I believe that they are the ones that people go and play the most. The collection isn't as great as Visit 4 Ads, but at least you don't have to pay a fee. I am not really certain, but I have wondered lately whether all new commercials seen on television lately are automatically added to the collection of recent advertising? I hoped that the R Whites lemonade commercial was on there, but it doesn't seem to be unless I have been looking in the wrong place, which I often do when I was looking for something. And even the savour of historic advertising, the 1955 Gibbs SR toothpaste commercial is there as well - you can't have an advertising archive without that! I would be great to have some regional and local commercials on there that wasn't just for the London region. And as they say at the end of a commercial break "Part two" or "part six", or simply just "welcome back". Welcome back from the toilet break, that is. Oh no, I have missed that commercial for Andrex! That would have really been handy on the toilet...
90) BBC TV LICENCE - I admit that I have done a lot of wrong things in my life, and I know that I should not laugh at (or with) this website, or the person responsible for it, as this is very serious and a breach of Section 363 of the Communications Act 2003, and I should be deeply ashamed of myself to find this amusing, but I just cannot help sniggering at what is on this website. You do not need a Mensa member to tell you that this is not the actual TV Licensing website, which can be seen above at number 2 of course (the genuine article), but this is a collection of interesting one-sided correspondence from TV Licensing to someone who has decided not to pay for a new Television Licence since the start of 2006. Probably one of his New Year's resolutions for 2006 was to stop paying his Television Licence - something that he has kept all year, and for several years afterwards as well. It's a pity that people can't do that when they to give up smoking or other bad habits! Regarding correspondence, even the serial letter writers like Henry Root, Ralph Tritt or Robin Cooper would have responded to them in their own sweet way. The website's owner is basically saying in his defence that he no longer watched television channels and that he only used his set to watch videos and DVDs on. The Licensing Authority has not given up, eight years on, and still sends our "hero" letters once every three months on average, where he puts them online, sans personal details. I wonder whether he will give up giving up one day and buy a Licence for the first time in years because he would get bored with this campaign sooner or later? It's not worth it to do what he is doing. The website is almost like a satire of the Television Licence business.
91) PAY US FIRST - My first impressions of this website's title is that sounds like some sort of debt collector or bailiff, which thankfully, it is not. This is another website that is against the Television Licence Fee, and makes the analogy of having to buy certain newspapers, with the Grauniad as being the legal requirement the newsagent. Perhaps some lefties would prefer it if you crossed out the word "Grauniad" and wrote the words "Daily Mail" right in there instead? If you remember, Noel Edmonds said that he stopped paying his Licence Fee sometime ago. "Auntie's got her boxing gloves on", he said. "And they can't find me". So what about Edmonds? Edmonds was the man who worked for the BBC for 30 years, firstly as a BBC Radio 1 presenter in the 1970s as well as taking over from Tony Blackburn as the Breakfast Show presenter in the mid 1970s. In the 1980s he moved to television with Swap Shop, The Late-Late Breakfast Show (a probably reference to his stint on BBC Radio 1's Breakfast Show a decade before), the Saturday Roadshow where some features survived from the late-late breakfast, and of course Noel's House Party, which gave birth to Crinkley Bottom, the Gotcha Oscar and of course Mr Blobby. He left the BBC in 1999 after the House Party was axed, and apart from a stint back in radio, sitting in for Johnnie Walker's drive time programme in 2003 when Walker was being treated for cancer, he hasn't worked for the BBC since. His broadcasting duties mainly consist of Deal or No Deal on Channel 4, with previous series repeated on Challenge. The rest was history. But in answer to Edmond's claim that he no longer has a valid licence, the Licensing Authority said that he is still paying his licence according to their records. To be fair, Edmonds also has a home in the south of France. I am not certain whether France has the Licence Fee in that country, but perhaps his comments are in relation to the fact that he isn't in Britain when he is there, and so doesn't need to pay a British fee? Not sure if I get it either.
92) LICENCE FREE - A website name that could easily be misspelt or mistaken for "Licence Fee" of course. We know that "Fee" and "Free" may be similar words with one letter missing, but there is a big different if cost and money is implicated with what they are referring to! Licence Free is yet another website from the "I refuse to pay my Television Licence because of my human rights" stable. Whether it is because of 9/11 or nine-eleven - (er, sorry, September the 11th), or because of the Jimmy Savile scandal. Let's say that a person was abused by Savile simply because as a youngster they had appeared with him on Jim'll Fix It in 1980 or Top of the Pops around the same time, even though they probably wanted to see the Dooleys or the Brotherhood of Man rather than Savile. No matter what their protests are in the matter, everyone seems to have an excuse, or a damn good reason. (Hello once again, Communications Act 2003. How are you, my old friend?) Similar protests to those who had refused to fill in their 2011 Census form because of the ethics of Lockheed Martin, the company that produced the data. Hundreds of people were also jailed for a few weeks because the failed or refused to fill in their Census form back in 1991 and 2001 as well. Saying that, I do like the look of some of the pages on the website, and it could even rival the official TV Licensing website in that respect! It even has a Monkey Grinder on it. Not an organ grinder. Perhaps that is a bit too offensive to monkeys? What have they done to deserve this sort of treatment? It's a wonder that Nottingham's very own "best-loved" local civil recovery organisation Retail Loss Prevention doesn't go into collecting fees for Television Licences. Well, you never know.
93) CAMPAIGN TO ABOLISH THE TV LICENCE - There are a lot of campaigns on the Internet as well as a local of petitions and the like, but I would hazard a guess that less than 5% of them become a reality or a success, or the person who campaigns for what they want are granted their wishes, even if more than 95% of Joe Public in society agree with that person. There are also a lot of campaign websites as well, stretching all over the field from the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA or a misspelt "camera") to the Campaign Against Political Correctness, which is a website more on the same track as a campaign such as this. From looking at this website, it does seems a bit our of date as it refers to things in 2001 and 2002. Also, the use of the Teletubbies (mostly Dipsy) dates the website a bit to the early 2000s anyway. I am certain that BBC Two stopped showing Teletubbies in about 2005, just before CBeebies took over the reins to show the series. Anyway, Tinky Winky should have enough money in that handbag he carries round for a new licence. That probably just shows you how long their campaign has been going on. "Why not have a washing machine licence to fund the makers of Persil?" someone recently said, probably Jeremy Paxman, even if his surname rhymes with Taxman. Well, a washing machine may not need a licence in order to use them, but just like a television set, they both need "Ariel" for them to work properly. I shall get me coat as they say. But not the BBC's in-house magazine - not that Ariel of course. That would get things whiter than white, especially if all came out in the wash!
94) LIME MARMALADE - Nothing to with Paddington Bear's favourite fruit condiment, (does he really like lime?), between two slices of bread, or Marmalade Atkins, played by the late Charlotte Coleman, but yet another anti-Licence Fee website with a strange irrelevant title. Just a links page a bit like this one, although it has a collection of local newspaper website pages (mostly letters pages) about pensioners sounding off over the so-called "Telly Tax", and it is completely different to the Bedroom Tax as well. Also, pensioners say that they haven't even owned a television set since 1972 because they are far too busy to watch television, and at least three times a year, they get their frequent reminder to purchase a licence from TV Licensing. Can't they ever believe that someone in the modern world, no matter how old they are, has never owned a television set in four decades? Judges and barristers still wear wigs that went out of fashion towards the end of the 18th century, so that proves that some people haven't adapted the workings of modern life that most people take for granted. Do they think that he lives on another planet, or is deaf or blind or something? Even blind people are allowed a free Television Licence as far as I know. Each person is different from his neighbour after all. Local newspaper websites relaunch at least twice a year, so most of these will be lost, sadly. That happened to the Nottingham Post anyway, even if nearly all the contributors (letter writers) lived in Rushcliffe, Gedling or Broxtowe boroughs, but never Nottingham City Council areas. Not posh enough.
95) TV CREAM - There are a number of nostalgia websites online, and some of them do their best to recreate what life was back in the 1970s and 1980s. This is one of the best. It was originally called the Arkhive or something in the late 1990s, but later on, adapted a parody of the ATV logo, with "TVC" written top to bottom inside the circles. If you grew up as a child in the 1970s and 1980s (the latter for myself as I was born in 1978), and wore brown or denim flares for discos (a little bit before my time) or pink leg-warmers for keep-fit were in fashion (more or less my time, but not quite) when you grew up, then perhaps this website will provide you with a trip down Memory Lane? It's not just about television programmes where Blue Peter, Grange Hill, Tiswas and other programmes have prominent entries, (which is the main part of the website of course), but also things like what toys we used to play with (Stylophones, Rubic Cubes, Action Man, Transformers, Care Bears, Cabbage Patch Dolls, Lego, Subbuteo and anything in Zodiac Toys or the final 30 pages of a 1980s Argos Autumn and Winter catalogue), what games we played in the school playground (bullying was obviously one of them, I am sorry to say, but hopscotch and ball games were others), and loads of other things. Oh, and also Shakin' Stevens and perhaps even Margaret Thatcher as well - they would come into it somewhere along the 1980s side of the line. Why did we had to grow up? And when we went on a school trip (Twycross Zoo, London, Alton Towers etc), and it came to lunch time and eating our sandwiches, how come everyone in the class had a Bluebird lunchbox?
96) TV ARK - Unlike TV Cream, you can see the opening titles to the programmes themselves rather than just information about them! If you like old television idents - be it the Thames Television river ident (sans Kenny Everett bursting through it, circa 1980), or the silent and still Granada (symbol) Colour Production ident used before Coronation Street, or the HTV aerial ident with that wobbly sound that was similar to the start of Bread's version of "If". At least David Gates could sing unlike Telly Savalas who just read the lyrics. As well as that, they have the opening titles of all sorts of programmes including regional news programmes (About Anglia, anyone?), then I think that you might enjoy this website. There also used to be a forum on there as well which ended in about 2006, but the main part of the website will always be the clips. In order to avoid disappointment and frustration, could you please make sure that you have the correct version of Real Player on your computer so that you don't miss out on all the fun. I can remember the days of dial-up when it took longer to load up a clip as it did to play it, but hopefully, those days are now long gone. I don't think that I have a favourite clip on the website, being that there are so many of them, but I have to say that the obscure ones are a lot more interesting then and well-known or prominent ones. Pity that most programmes on there only have the opening titles and now whole programmes, but I think that you will need to look at YouTube if you need to watch that sort of thing online.
97) BROADCAST FOR SCHOOLS - Remember that enormous "Punch and Judy" theatre-alike television set which was hidden inside a teak or mahogany wooden (G-Plan or Schreiber, but never an Ikea flat pack) cabinet with doors like some sort of secret cupboard? This cabinet was on wheels, well casters anyway, and could be wheeled from room to room, with a little shelf underneath for the video recorder, (probably a Ferguson brand when it was a front-loader and perhaps a Betamax during the mid 1980s technology overlap with VHS), and anything else, but it always seemed to live in the Television Room of the school when it was not in use. Yes, it was used for Words and Pictures at 2.00 pm on Monday afternoons, and Look and Read for Friday mornings at some weird time such as 9.52 am, which was read like a bus or train timetable rather than a television guide. Not forgetting some ITV Schools programmes as well. Picture Box with Alan Rothwell? Stop, Look, Listen with Chris Tarrant? How We Used To Live with some 1930s Yorkshiremen? Middle English with some playwright? We all saw some of them, although the irony was that most people saw a lot more schools programmes when they were off school, with an illness, Lucozade and an unfinished breakfast, or suspended from school for breaking some rule, or generally playing truant, or whatever reason why they were not at school. (Don't tell the Education Welfare Officer, but I am now in my mid 30s, single and childless!) It's been well over 20 years now since I had hung up my school uniform for the very last time, (especially the grey pleated pencil skirt and the "Nicole Franklin" white knee socks), but I can remember it all if it was yesterday.
98) BAIRD TELEVISION - A website which is all about the inventor of television (and so by default, the founder of the latter 20th century B-list and C-list celebrity status as measured by tabloid newspapers). John Logie Baird, who was born in Scotland in August 1888 and died just after the Second World War in June 1946 at the age of 57, ironically when television started to come back on the air, so therefore the truth of the matter was that Baird didn't have much chance of seeing for himself or making much use of his contraption while he was still alive. Baird's new invention which was first used in the 1920s, was probably described at time as "a radio with pictures"! But the website hardly says anything about the legacy (or should I say controversy) that he left behind for us all to enjoy for future generations to ponder on. You get a lot more details about the invention of television by travelling to Bradford and visiting the National Media Museum like I have done. I often wondered what Baird would have thought about the standards of today's television if had still been alive, especially if knew what Channel 4 and Channel 5 and in the 1990s and early 2000s, Carlton Television had to offer, and whether he would have been a fan of the Broadcasting Act 1990 and the Communications Act 2003? Perhaps wall-to-wall soap operas and Reality TV wouldn't have been much to his taste? I am certain that he has turned in his grave at least twice in the past year. I am an early 20th century inventor - get me out of here!
99) BIRTH OF TV - This particular birth may have been a bit difficult, just like the task of writing about it. Its mother [sic] (or inventor) didn't even show signs of pregnancy, mostly because he wasn't female. It didn't even need to have a midwife visiting for the first few days of its life because although it had teething problems, it was more or less healthy. And there were no labour pains to speak about, political or otherwise. It didn't have an on-scale Apgar score because it didn't turn blue or pink, just black and white. And certainly it has no delivery of placenta. Instead, this is a look back to the start of television, as well as finding out when the first television services began around the world, and it began by experimenting with animating someone on a screen, but wasn't Walt Disney doing that already, giving Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck "a good on-screen birth" to them? America may have been far ahead of Britain when it came to television and technology, but ironically, it was someone from Britain (Scotland to be precise), who invented the thing all those decades ago! All the more reason for Scotland to remain in the United Kingdom, and to not have Alex Salmond have his own way, ripping the heart out from the country that we live in. Baird was definitely the "mother" as well as father of television, if not, Sir John Reith or even Leslie Mitchell probably was instead. Let's hope that the Death of TV is not for a long while yet. At least it has outlived its inventor, and will presumably outlive most of us alive now.
100) ASSOCIATION OF BROADCASTING DOCTORS - Do doctors make good broadcasters? Broadcasting and doctors - two words (three if you include the word "and") that are rarely seen in the same sentence together. Do broadcasters make great doctors? Can anyone make a good doctor and a good broadcaster, either separately or at exactly the same time? I don't know the answers to those questions, but what I do know is the fact that this website has more or less won the title in this list of "the most obscure broadcasting organisation in the United Kingdom", and perhaps the most obscure health and medical organisation in United Kingdom as well! I have to say that I do love the "near-absence" of this in reality, as well as the name of it. It is just about mentioned on Google and in the Directory of British Associations, but that's just about it. I don't think that we are talking about the regular cast of Casualty, Holby City or ER here, (or even The Young Doctors if you remember that of an ITV 3.30 pm weekday afternoon slot back in the mid to late 1980s, coming home from school and waiting for Children's ITV to come on as you did back then), but this organisation refers to real doctors (with real qualifications to prove it), who just happen to have a foot (or a stethoscope) into the field of broadcasting, or so I believe. When I was hospital back in June 1988, the only time that television and doctors were close to each other was when there was a television on the hospital ward, not that was any way of taking my mind off both the operations that I had in there. It's as easy as A, B, and D.
101) CHRISTMAS TV - A nice novelty themed one to finish this list off. This website brought the nostalgia spirit back, and one was to even read this and think "I remember that being on at the time. In fact, I might have even taped it at the time - I might still have it on video upstairs somewhere". Thanks to video recording Christmas television programmes, one can have the pleasure of watching Midnight Mass in the middle of July If one wanted to, or even the Queen on at 3.00 pm on any day of the year, Andy Park style. As we all knew as token 1970s and 1980s children growing up, on the big day, after waking up and unwrapping familiarly shaped parcels put at the foot of the bed by some Father Christmas impersonator such as one's mother, one then goes downstairs to watch television together, and see the movie premieres on just after The Queen has finished talking. And the MFI sale started at 10.00 am on Boxing Day (substituted for DFS, Sharps bedrooms or Moben kitchens, usually with umlaut these days), if you were watching the ITV film. Christmas Day used to be the one day in the year that the whole family would eat as much turkey and Christmas pudding, and Mars selection boxes, followed by a bout of diarrhoea or vomit afterwards. By the 1970s, the days when children only had an apple and an orange had gone, although the Three Day Week almost brought it back again. Well, it was like that back in the 1970s and 1980s anyway. And now on BBC 2 (up until 1999 before it went elsewhere), it's the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures where some Oxford or Cambridge graduate talking to young people in a series of Lectures based on the academic subjects of Mathematics, Science or Technology. And before you know it, Big Ben is striking midnight to wish is a very Happy New Year!
WORTHY RUNNERS UP:
1) COMMUNICATIONS ACT 2003 (LEGISLATION) - As I have mentioned before, this is probably my favourite one of the lot. I am a law-abiding citizen who either hates, or is unable to do a lot of adult-only (over 18 of course) things such as smoking, drinking and being in a sexual relationship, (which is something that I want to do), so I must be a fan of this. As everyone knows, the Communications Act 2003 was the main one that helped to "give birth" to Ofcom as a regulator to television and radio regulation, as well as overseeing the telecommunications industry. The "Big Brother" Nineteen-Eighty-Four factor, (even though it was some 19 years before the Communications Act) is also in place, as social networking, via Facebook and Twitter is also covered by its regulation as well. I would like to say that I am a member of Facebook (even though I rarely go on there due to my social phobias), but I have never joined Twitter, and I have only looked on there now and again for Tweets on relevant subjects. I even think that YouTube from a United Kingdom perspective also comes under this Act, probably because sometimes, one comes across some clips as "not avaliable to be viewed in your country", and the irony is most of these were made "in my country", unless YouTube thinks that as I am an English speaker that I must be living in the United States, which is where one is usually born and lives if one happens to speak English. It feels almost like racism to me. How many times in the past couple of years have we heard in the news that someone has sent an offensive, harmful or misleading via Facebook or Twitter causing "harassment, alarm or distress" and as a result, being a breach of the Communications Act 2003? A by-word for the 2000s onwards. I do think that there such a thing as Communication Abuse is one would like to express it in that sort of way, and this Act helps to draw into line a lot of the misdemeanours that can happen. Technically, one could argue that the Communications Act 2003 is regulating my life more than anyone else's - they seem to regulate my social perspective, and make sure that I will never be in a serious relationship, get married and have a family of my own. Well, it does feel like that to me.
2) HEALTH AND SAFETY EXECUTIVE - BROADCASTING INDUSTRY - At least Health and Safety is what I would refer to as a "natural" requirement and not a legal or bureaucratic requirement in life like the courts service or HM Revenue and Customs are. Whenever I think of the Health and Safety Executive, I always think of a bunch of workers, (no, I definitely said workers and not another word), in an orange or florescent green or yellow jackets, wearing industrial wellington boots, (coming complete by European Union law with a 56 page instruction manual for good measure), some industrial safety goggles and a hard helmet for extra protection, just in case either someone gets stabbed to death due to being accosted by some lunatic, or someone just pricks their finger on some sewing needle. Of course there needs to be Health and Safety authority in the broadcasting industry, along with risk assessment reviews and Criminal Records Bureau checks. After all, what with all those Spaghetti Junction cavalcade of coloured wires and things straddling along the studio floor, who knows who could trip over them and end up in hospital? It could be one of the Executives. Perhaps even holding a microphone can cause some danger as police might see it as a lethal weapon? You could probably hold up a bookmakers and rob them with it anyway. It also refers to the stunts that actors often do in films and in front of the camera, even if the Equity member doesn't exactly want to do a James Bond or a Superman in order of risking being killed in the process. Noel Edmonds' gunge tank on his House Party show could also be under the scrutiny of the Health and Safety Executive as well. What if someone is poisoned if it gets in their mouths? What if it is dangerous to clothes and skin? If you love the subject of Health and Safety, be it in the broadcasting industry or otherwise, then have a read of Alan Pearce's two books "Playing it Safe" and "It's Health and Safety Gone Mad!" in which he explores various instances of Health and Safety issues that have made the news, such as carrying a pot of paint on a bus. You can do that, as long as it is inside a bag of course. But don't put it over your head of course, paint or bag - that would be against Health and Safety rules.
3) PHONE PAY PLUS - A telephone service regulator that is heavily biased towards the rich, and that what I think of it as. This is regretfully included as a lot of television programmes use Premium Rate telephone numbers in order to supposedly raise revenue so that they can give away a supposedly wonderful prize that no one will likely to ever win, and by doing so, one has to answer a multiple choice question that is based academically on the age group of someone who hasn't even started school yet. If robbery and fraud is illegal then why isn't this? Is taste and decency something that went out of fashion in the 19th century? The far-right British National Party and the National Front do not have different electoral regulators to mainstream and left-wing political parties, so why aren't Premium Rate telephone services regulated by Ofcom, who are of course, telephone service regulators? I think that it could be something to do with either sleaziness or elitism. The problem is that when they were on the air, shopping channels that were owned by Sit Up Limited used to use them all the time, especially on channels such as Price Drop TV where ironically the price went down in a sub-Dutch Auction format, and everyone supposedly paid the lowest price. But add a Premium Rate telephone number to the system and one actually has an optical illusion that they won't be paying as much for what they are doing, when the reality is almost the opposite. Price Drop TV repeatedly said "don't pay more", which is like the British National Party saying "don't be racist". I need not remind you about the scandals involving the use of these telephone services in television and radio programmes between 2005 and 2007? Blue Peter misleading its young viewers in some things that would have merited a custodial sentence in John Noakes' day. But at least the regulator has a slightly better name than ICSTIS, (an acronym that should have stood for "I Can't Stand This Idiotic Service"), which sounds too bureaucratic and elitist in itself, especially to those with learning disabilities. Yes, let's make those who earn the least pay the most. It's only fair, isn't it?
4) PRESS COMPLAINTS COMMISSION - Considering that newspapers and the television and radio industry are identical mediums where television presenters can be heavily implicated in newspaper articles that are complained about, I think that it has its place here. I have to say that I strongly dislike the word "press" when it is used as a noun and is referred to the newspaper and media industry as I feel that it sounds too sleazy and tabloid-like, approaching the Sun newspaper league of newspapers. Tabloid as in the nature of newspaper coverage, rather than the size of the newssheet, with apologies to The Times. The word when it means "pressing a button" or as I am doing now, pressing keys on a keyboard in order to write this entry, I have no problem with, it is just the reference to newspapers when the word is used. I have always thought that Ofcom would be a better regulator for newspapers and magazines as I have said before, they are seen just like television and radio in forms of media. The Press Complaints Commission doesn't seem to be a complete regulator in the sense that only deal with complaints to do with privacy and the like, rather than offensive, violent, sexual or tasteless images. I know that if that was the case, Page Three of The Sun and its naked women image would have gone a long time ago, and Samantha Fox would have got a proper job. This has been the problem when it came to the phone hacking scandal that eventually (and thankfully) "claimed the life" of the News of the World and perhaps if a stronger regulator was in place that had the power of Ofcom, the situation probably would have been dealt with a lot earlier and nipped in the bud. And of course, the Advertising Standards Authority deal with the advertising in newspapers and magazines, so there is no problem there when it comes to regulation. The Press Complaints Commission may have the initials PCC, but compared to its other initial namesake, the Police and Crime Commissioner the weakness is more than apparent. Perhaps the latter would make a better regulator of this industry?
5) RADIO TIMES - The great-grandfather of television (and originally radio) listings magazines. Paul Daniels once said back in the 1980s that he hoped that the magazine would change its name to reflect the fact that they also contained television programme listings as well and that its current title was out of date. Perhaps he could do a magic trick to make sure that would happen? However, its rival the TV Times had prevented the former from using the "TV" part in the title when it launched in 1955, albeit in London only, to provide details of Independent Television programmes. Each region had their own version until the TV Times became a national "organ" in 1968. One had to get both the Radio Times and the TV Times for many decades as it was the only way apart from newspaper television guides that one was to get detailed information of all the British television channels. For many households, Christmas was the only time of the year that families actually did this, probably with Morecambe and Wise, Frank Spencer or Mike Yarwood on the front cover of the Radio Times. It wasn't until 1991 when due to changes in the law, the Radio Times started to provide ITV and Channel 4 listings, and TV Times started to provide BBC listings. It was also as a response to the number of satellite and cable television channels starting up throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. At the same time, a lot of niche television listings magazines mostly from the H Bauer stable such as What's On TV and TV Quick came onto the market, not to mention the seven day television guides given away with the Saturday edition of most daily newspapers, and later, Sunday newspapers as well. The Radio Times does cost a lot more than most television listings magazines, but it is good value. I used to get it every week, but even I probably get it at Christmas nowadays, mostly for the reading matter over the holidays.
