June 2011 ~ BrokenTV

Thursday, 30 June 2011

British TV Comedy Spin-Offs We’d Love To Have Seen

Mark X6/30/2011 05:15:00 pmcomedy, films 1 comment

With an Alan Partridge film in the works, the character has come a long way from presenting the sports on Radio 4's On The Hour. It seems that with this, In The Loop and the output of Sasha Baron Cohen (Reader's voice: "But those films are years apart!"), it seems like the concept...

Our Plaintive Wish

Mark X6/28/2011 05:28:00 pmand your Twitter stream is a nipple secreting comedy gold, Cue "Oh, then?" in the comments box, twitter No comments

Good news, everyone! Bob Mortimer is on Twitter now! And at times he makes for a rewarding follow, too. Not least some of the moments where he’s engaging in conversations with Mr Brian Butterfield, Peter Serafinowicz’s in-character Twitter account as the hapless businessman...

10 Old Telly-Related Magazine and Comic Covers

Mark X6/27/2011 05:45:00 pmmagazines No comments

Our new favourite website ever (for this week) has to be Coverbrowser. Home to over 450,000 front covers of books, comics and magazines from years gone by, it’s a little bit like having your very own time machine. But one that is only able to visit newsstands. And only look...

Things You Don’t See In Commercials Any More (2)

Mark X6/23/2011 05:14:00 pmadverts, YouTube No comments

ADVERTS FOR SUPERMARKETS TELLING US HOW MUCH THEIR SAUSAGES COST With thriftiness more important than ever, there’s no reason why the Britons of space year 2011 shouldn’t we be informed when 1½p has been knocked off the price of a six-pack of Penguins. No reason at all. Oh, wait. “Crossed out prices were charged in many Tesco stores including Stevenage.”...

Historical Moustache of the Week

Mark X6/22/2011 05:59:00 pmmoustaches, politics No comments

This is the point where we really, really starting phoning in our idea of “an update every day”. That’s a photograph of Thomas E. Dewey, 47th Governor of New York and Republican candidate for the 1944 and 1948 Presidential elections. This after he’s already been a candidate...

As Relevant Today As It Was Then (Well, Partly)

Mark X6/21/2011 06:02:00 pmpolitics, YouTube 2 comments

From the race for the 1944 US Presidential Election, a campaign film in support of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt bagging a second term. We really like it. As every schoolboy knows, FDR subsequently romped to victory, Thumping Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey by 432 electoral votes to 99. Yes, he actually received 25,612,916 votes...

Things You Don’t See In Commercials Any More…

Mark X6/20/2011 05:48:00 pmadverts, YouTube 4 comments

1. Stilted performances by CEOs. The most well-known exponent of the art of advertising your own company would probably be Victor Kiam, whose Remington commercials made him a household name in the 1980s (and indeed, go-to reference for comedians looking to do material about rich American businessmen). His slick, presentational style was probably helped...

Unexpected Source Of A Grimly Ironic Song About Impending Nuclear Armageddon Of The Weeeeek

Mark X6/18/2011 12:09:00 pmNuclear obliteration, YouTube No comments

This is an Anglicised cover version of a song originally by American singer-satirist Peter Scott Peters, which casts an arched eyebrow over the 1960s threat of the western world being destroyed by atomic bombs. And which architects of the satire boom are responsible for this?...

How To Upload A Rare TV Show To YouTube

Mark X6/17/2011 02:50:00 pminfographic, YouTube 3 comments

All that aside, this is still a welcome addition to YouTube: Marshall and Renwick’s wonderful LWT series from the late 1970s, End Of Part One. ...

Ratings Updaaaaaaaaate (Part 2)

Mark X6/16/2011 05:03:00 pmratings No comments

Carrying on from yesterday, we continue our look at the actual popularity of every single television channel in the UK (who report their ratings to BARB). As before, we’ve pored through the Barb top ten shows from every single channel that reported them, for each of the four...

Ratings Updaaaaaaaaate (Part 1)

Mark X6/15/2011 05:00:00 pmratings No comments

It’s been a while since we’ve done this. What are the UK’s most popular channels, then? Yes, the Big Five terrestrial players are going to top the chart, but what of the others? Is Dave bigger than BBC Four? Is Sky News bigger than Cbeebies? How is Sky Atlantic doing, then?...

The Goodies Sensi-Swap Service

Mark X6/14/2011 06:37:00 pmscanfest2011 No comments

With the OTT Book now on sale, what better time to take a look at some other wonderful telly-related books from the ages? We’ll be posting one (or two) page (or pages) from a different book each and every day until we forget to, we’ve covered all the TV-tie-in books in our collection,...