At The Bleeding Edge of Technology With BrokenTV: A Picture Special*

Sky's new TV on demand has launched for Sky HD viewers! We're Sky HD viewers!

"Sky+ has already given millions of people freedom from their TV schedule, helping viewers to enjoy more of the TV they want to watch."

Yes!

"Anytime on TV helps our customers get even more out of Sky+ by presenting them with highlights of the weeks' programmes to watch on demand - shows that they might not otherwise have found and which they can then transfer to their Sky+ box to series link and watch every week."

We like watching programmes that are good! Let's try it out!

So, after a short holiday, the 'having the red button do something from the TV guide' option is back. Anytime TV. We can barely wait to see the list of exciting programmes from all our favourite channels (apart from BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, BBC HD, ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, Channel Four, E4, More4, Film4, Five, Five US, Five Life, Paramount 1, Paramount 2, Bravo, Sci-Fi, UKTV Gold, UKTVG2, Living, Challenge, Hallmark or UKTV Drama, because they're not included in the service) that we'll be able to watch! Oh, and apart from shows like Lost, because Sky don't have the on demand rights to that, either.

Ooh, the info screen in the top corner looks nice, plus it's in HD, which is nice. Oh dear, we've only actually 'got' the channels two of those programmes are on. Never mind, Sky themselves have said the service is there to showcase the best of their output, so presumably they've giving us a 'taster' of what is on some of the channels we don't subscribe to. That would be a good and clever way of showing us exactly what we're missing by not upgrading our package. Let's scroll down a bit!

Nicely, it's bothered to chug away overnight recording the HD versions of things we might like to see. That was nice of them. We quite fancy seeing what Casanova is like. Who knows, if we're impressed enough by what we see, we may choose to pay for Sky's two whole channels of HD movies...

Sounds interesting. Can't wait to see what it's like, especially as most of the programmes listed for the bog standard channels are quite rubbish. Which is why WE DIDN'T WANT TO WATCH THEM THE FIRST TIME AROUND. Hopefully, it'll be really, really good. That way we won't mind the fact that the 300gb drive in our HD box will only ever use just over half of its capacity, even though we've bloody well paid for the whole thing. Fingers crossed!

Oh, for fuck's sake. That's the whole thing rendered completely useless, then.

SKY'S ANYTIME TV SERVICE: SOME NUMBERS THAT EXPRESS HOW GOOD IT IS

Number of programmes available to those who don't subscribe to the movie channels: A not very impressive six. Brian Wilson: Pet Sounds Live (Sky Arts), Gene Simmons Family Jewels (Biography), The Dresden Files (Sky One), Unlocking Da Vinci's Code (National Geographic Channel), Poetry: From Pete Doherty to Andrew Motion (Sky Arts), Corkscrewed (Sky One). All others require a Sky Movies subscription. Virgin Media's on-demand service has hundreds of shows, including repeats of Absolutely. Bah.

Number of those we'd want to watch: Maybe the Brian Wilson one, but only then if we're really bored.

Number of times our Sky HD box crashed while exploring the service: Twice. Hopefully fixed soon via a software upgrade, but still quite shoddy.

Overall score, then: 2/10. And that's rounding up to the nearest whole number, and even then being really generous.

GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR SKY HD BOX

Press services. Then '6'.

Change the top option to 'NO'. Then 'save new settings'.

This fixes the annoying 'record lots of rubbish programmes that you didn't want to record first time around, because they're rubbish, as well as tons of stuff you won't get to see unless you give Sky all of your money' bug, discovered earlier today.

(*'Bleeding' as in 'hell'.)

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The 'Bad Old Man' of Updates

Despite what some might say about us being the world’s second-most irate Sky+ users, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes, people send us free beta versions of crisps. This causes us to perk right up.

Like Christmas in March. (Yes, we're easily pleased.)

Yes, beta versions of crisps. Due to the benevolence of the Seabrook family (and due to us ordering a boxful of their wares in the past), we recently received several sample packets of a proposed new range of spicy crisps. Experimental crisps. But, coming from the House of Seabrook, these were crisps of a standard much higher than your regular Walkers. In short, then: the BBC HD of crisps. Which means they tenuously fall within our remit of writing about television but not really actually saying anything about actual television programmes.

There are four flavours in the box, and two packs of each.

Wasabi flavour

Exuding a pleasant spicy smell once the bag is open, you tend to expect more of a kick once you tentatively fling the first morsel through your jaw. Slightly surprisingly, the initial rippled slice of potato packs little of a spicy punch, although the taste is pleasant enough. This may lead one to become complacent, but crisptasters beware: as you make your heady way through the bag, you edge ever closer to the congregation of flavouring lurking on the surface of the lower crisps. By the time have reached the bottom of the packet, the whole experience may have become slightly wearying, unless your tongue has made contact with a crisp containing an especially large clump of flavouring, in which case you may be too busy wondering why you can't feel your tongue any more.

For the interests of balance, BrokenTV’s tasting panel comprised two other persons. Their findings were as such:

“Cor, these are really nice.”

“Eugh. These taste like aftershave.”

Balanced opinion there, we’re sure you’ll agree.

If This Flavour Were A Programme On BBC HD, It Would Be: Torchwood. Eager anticipation and early promise soon makes way for a slight sense of disappointment. You feel resigned to stick with it until the end of the series (or packet) just in case it gets better again, but deep down, you know the whole experience will leave you empty and unfulfilled.

Two Chilli Peppers Flavour

Package design not final, we imagine.

Compared to the (as far as we’re aware) unique choice of Wasabi flavouring, the Chilli flavoured crisp market already has a clear leader; Pringles Gourmet Thai Sweet Chilli & Lemongrass Flavour, a tube of which can frequently be found on the desks of the BrokenTV office. Are Seabrook about to encroach onto the territory of someone they clearly shouldn’t be dicking around with?

Well, no. There is a nicely distinct chilli flavouring to the Seabrook effort that is lacking in the brand with the moustachioed mascot, more akin to the taste you get when you pluck and consume the chilli pepper topping from a pizza. And, unlike the non-existent spiciness of the Pringle offering, it’s quite splendidly fiery. Providing the snack makes it to the marketplace, this could be the culinary soundtrack to many a Saturday afternoon spent in a cramped pub watching an illicit foreign feed of Premiership action.

If This Flavour Were A Programme On BBC HD, It Would Be: Expecting more of the same old, same old, only the find that things are going to be every bit as wonderful as you were secretly hoping, but had been afraid to express. Wales beating England in the Six Nations it is, then.

Mustard flavour

It’s mustard flavour. We hate mustard. Will this catch us by surprise, and prove to be enjoyable? No. These crisps are horrid.

If This Flavour Were A Programme On BBC HD, It Would Be: Hotel Babylon. You’re expecting it to be woeful, but you decide to check it out anyway. You know, just in case. But no, in the same way Hotel Babylon ‘stars’ Dexter Fletcher, and once guest ‘starred’ Chris Moyles, Seabrook Mustard Flavoured Spicy Crisps have mustard in them, and taste of mustard. Pleh.

Oriental Flavour

Quite a vague description of what is to come, wouldn’t you say? The list of ingredients on the back of the pack is certainly one to get the BrokenTV taste panel either salivating, or running for the hills. Cayenne, Pimento, Cinnamon, Fennel, Star Aniseed, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder. Yes the aroma released when opening the packet suggests that things may not be so bad after all. They might be tame enough to feed to a tiny little kitten, one might wonder. Five crisps into the packet, and you soon realise that they’re about as tame as being strapped to the bonnet of Ford Mondeo and driven face-first right through a selection of stalls in a Mumbai spice market. Only in a really, really good way. We’d suggest you have a drink handy.

If This Flavour Were A Programme On BBC HD, It Would Be: The HD broadcast of Kill Bill: Volume One. In short: The Winner.

How you can play this game at home.

If, for some ungodly reason, you’ve never bought a box of Seabrook crisps direct from the manufacturers, and you haven’t been sent a box of beta crisps, how can you get a wonderfully piquant crispy fix? Our preferred method is quite simple, and can be played at home.

What you will need for this hobby:

One packet of Sharwoods mini prawn crackers with chilli

One tub of Tesco spicy mango chutney

Our new readers may want to get used to this sort of thing. Or depart, never to return.

Method:

Simply dip the former into the latter, and then eat. Mmm.

If Doing That Were A Programme on BBC HD, It Would Be: Not Going Out. Given the ingredients (which, for the purposes of comparison, we’re going to say are Lee Mack, Tim Vine and Andrew Collins), you’re hoping this is going to be a very enjoyable experience. And it is. Hurrah.

Number of packets of crisps consumed while writing this update: 3.5

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BOÎTE DIABOLIQUE MUST NEVER DIE

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"It made once the turn of the world since and now it returns under our latitudes" (DVD Piracy, Part Two)

Blimey, eh? We lose our internet access for a few days, and what happens when we're not here? The entire internet (i.e. a few well known blogs) goes BrokenTV crazy (i.e. mention us, and the hit counter goes up for one day). If Google fancy buying us out for several squillion dollars, please leave a comment.

Why has this happened? Partly because Kotaku mentioned our Lost: The Spectrum Game spoof, which was entirely unexpected as it was pretty much a throwaway gag. Simultaneously, several blogs have picked up on an anti-anti-piracy advert we put on the site almost exactly one year ago:

BoingBoing have mentioned it, Wonderland have mentioned it, even one of France's most popular technology blogs (as far as we can tell, anyway) have posted it, among others. "C'est un coup de McFly," apparently. Plop that last site into Altavista's translation engine to find out what that means, and you'll get the super bonus of a copy of this blog translated into French, then back into English: "the insufferably smug Payne family cuts Christmas has big comedy gravel bank of aspirin."

But, something we'd forgot to mention at the time, was that we'd actually chased up the story, as if we were proper journalists or something. The fact that we'd promptly got distracted by a shiny object and never got around to telling anyone proves why we're not the Blogger equivalent of Cassandra, but we now aim to rectify the matter.

RECTIFICATION BEGIN.

Taking the contact address from FACT's binary white elephant website, we fired off the following missive:

From: [BrokenTV]
To: info@piracyisacrime.co.uk
Subject: Important piracy question

Hello.

Speaking as someone who has a collection of over 300 legally-bought DVDs, I've got one important question to ask you. If DVD piracy is such a crime, why do you insist on punishing the people who go out and buy their DVDs legally by making them WATCH A STUPID PATRONISING UNSKIPPABLE ADVERT, TELLING THEM NOT TO DO WHAT THEY HAVEN'T EVEN DONE, BECAUSE THEY'VE GONE AND BOUGHT THE BLOODY DVD FROM A SHOP, EVERY SINGLE BLOODY TIME THEY WANT TO WATCH ONE OF THEIR LEGALLY BOUGHT DVDS? Genuine question, mind.

It's almost as if you WANT them to start downloading movies and TV shows instead, just to avoid getting patronised to within an inch of their sanity every time they fancy watching an episode of My Name Is Earl or Rising Damp. You see, the point of trying to make people PREFER buying their DVDs legally, is to make buying them legally preferable to getting a bootlegged version down the car boot sale or firing up a bittorrent site.

Don't worry, I'm not about to start doing that, I'm just going to start buying region one versions instead. What with them being cheaper, having better extras, and not containing the visual equivilent of a gestapo officer banging on my door every time I watch a film, demanding to see a receipt for the DVD.

In summary: at least make the infuriatingly condescending things skippable. Really. If I wanted to be lectured at in my own front room, I'd move in with the Revd Ian Paisley.

Yours,
A Really Annoyed Consumer.

Three days later, the following reply rattled our inbox:

Dear [BrokenTV],

Thanks for your email. We do understand your feedback regarding anti-piracy trailers on legitimate DVDs and we are sorry that you feel this way.

The reason this is the case is that, from our extensive research, we know that many people who buy counterfeit products also buy legitimate products. Therefore, the placement of anti-piracy trailers on legitimate DVDs is still an essential way of targeting those who also buy pirated copies.

We are, however, reviewing our message and hope you can be patient while we do so.

Best,

[Someone Just Doing Her Job]
Communications Manager / Assistant to Director General

Well. We don't know about you, but we're utterly placated by the above mail-merged reply.

If, and let's be really generous with our figures here, 30% of the people who buy legitimate DVDs decide that paying a whopping £4.99 for a proper copy of Batman Begins is a frankly horrid state of affairs. Instead, they wait for the next car boot sale to come along, and spend £4 on a pirate version in a badly photocopied sleeve from there instead.

Now, all FACT have to do is wait until the evil 30% of the DVD buying public sit down to watch one of their few 'proper' DVDs. Presumably these are second hand DVDs they shoplifted from a Cancer Research charity shop, or maybe they just burgled someone's house for them, it doesn't really matter. As soon as they get past the unskippable copyright warning, they'll be faced with the anti-piracy trailer. How will they react?

QUICK QUIZ TIME!

Once Johnny Evil30%ofDVDbuyingpublic sees the FACT anti-piracy trailer, which of the following is he going to think?

(a) "Tch. They're right, of course. I wouldn't steal a car, or more accurately, infringe upon the copyright of a vehicle manufacturer, and then make an exact replica of someone else's car and use that instead. That's a perfect example of something I would never be likely to do. I feel shamed. I'm off to HMV to buy fifteen copies of X-Men 3. I only hope Jesus will forgive me."

or

(b) "Tch. That's quite annoying. I'm glad I usually watch pirate copies of DVDs, where I don't have to put up with that. I think I'll just stop buying DVDs from shops, and download them instead."

THE ANSWER IS...

It's (a), obviously. No, it is. Why? Because if it isn't, FACT (or Industry Trust for IP Awareness, or whatever they're calling themselves this week) are a bunch of massively stupid idiots who are clearly incapable of performing the sole task they have been appointed to do.

Now, we feel pretty bad about being nasty about their actions, especially as our poster is being passed around the internet like a sordid classroom scrawling of the teacher with a penis on his head. If, like us, you feel FACT have done exactly the right thing in assuming every single person who buys DVDs is a criminal, and talking down to them as such, why not get in touch with them? You can do so by emailing the following address: info@piracyisacrime.co.uk.

Don't forget to tell them how super they all are, and how if it wasn't for their actions, we'd all be off murdering puppies about now.

As for us? Well, we've noticed that a lot of child abusers tend to drive cars. With that in mind, we've decided to lobby Parliament and the motor industry into introducing a new measure. With any luck, from next year, every time you start the engine of your car, you will be forced to listen to a graphic three minute speech about child abuse before you can actually go anywhere. Don't like the sound of that? Tough shit, it's for the greater good.

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Reasons Why ITV Are Not Only Rubbish, But Also Seem Determined To Wreck The Fragile Self-Esteem Of BrokenTV's Mark X: Part One

May 1995.

Jacques.

Jacques Chirac is elected president of France. A Paul Rideout goal sees Everton beat hot favourites Manchester United in the FA Cup final. Former Prime Minister Harold Wilson dies. Ajax win the Champions League. The Supreme Court of Canada rules that sexual orientation is a prohibited grounds of discrimination under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In the USA, Dr. Samuel Beckett steps into a quantum accelerator and vanishes. Meanwhile, tired of doing a thankless and mind-numbing sixty-hour per week office job with four figure salary for an entire year, BrokenTV's Mark X notices an advert in MediaGuardian recruiting trainees for ITV's advertising sales department. Unperturbed by the fact his meagre CV containing absolutely no relevant qualification or experience will have to be printed out on a rubbishy second-hand dot-matrix printer, he applies for one of the positions. He posts his letter and waits. He is a chump.

February 2007.

Barrack.

A policeman is killed at the Serie A match between Catania and Palermo, leaving Italian football in turmoil. U.S. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois announces a presidential bid in Springfield. North Korea agrees to give up its nuclear program, for oil. Meanwhile, the once proud ITV are reduced to employing all manner of sub-chumps, tiny rodents and coloured pieces of felt to run their airtime sales department. SO IT WOULD SEEM.

THE EVIDENCE FOR THE ABOVE THING WE HAVE WRITTEN

Fact One: BARB Terrestrial TV Viewing Figures, Week Ending 4th February 2007

Finally, the majestic Harry Hill's TV Burp is the most popular comedy programme on British television. It's first showing, in an early Saturday evening slot, gathers an impressive 1.25 million more viewers than the next most watched comedy show, the interminably weak BBC sitcom After You've Gone, which airs in a prime 8.30pm Friday night slot. Just in case you misread that, this means that ITV1, yes ITV1, is home to the most popular comedy programme currently airing in the UK, and quite justifiably so. Savour that last sentence, because it's very probable the last time that statement was accurate, Rupert Rigsby ran a dilapidated but fictional town house, and Harold Wilson ran the country. Or, at the very least, Keith Barron was wandering around a mocked-up Spanish holiday resort in a TV studio.

Fact Two: How ITV Works

From Wikipedia:

"Unlike the BBC, ITV funds itself by showing television commercials. Despite the proliferation of channels, ITV is still the UK's biggest commercial broadcaster in the country. Its flagship analogue channel is ITV1."

So. It would stand to reason that, say, the nation's largest commercial broadcaster would happily be able to sell a great deal of advertising airtime for Britain's most popular comedy show, more than twenty years since it was last in a position to do so. Getting advertisers to advertise things in the space devoted to advertisements from such a show would not be the most... demanding of tasks, shall we say?

Yes, we shall.

Fact Three: The Number of Adverts That Were Aired In The Middle Of ITV1's Most-Watched Showing Of Harry Hill's TV Burp, On Saturday 24th February 2007.

One advert. That's just the one advert. One. Advert. And to make matters even stupider, it was this one:

Chewee Gum™. The Orange Drink™ of gums.

Cadbury's most woeful attempt at ramming a massive advertising spend for something nobody really wants down the necks of an apathetic British public since they tried to convince people to buy Fuse bars. Remember Fuse bars? The biggest ever marketing launch for a confectionery snack ever seen in the UK? A snack that subsequently went down the dumper a couple of years later and was promptly canned? And is now so long forgotten that there isn't even a Wikipedia page for it? No? Anyone? We only remember them because we had to sit through a video on the whole Fuse campaign during a marketing lecture a couple of weeks ago. Anyway.

Neatly sidestepping an entire rant* about the adverts for Chewing Product 23, or whatever it's called, how rubbish are ITV's airtime staff for that state of affairs?

The clear answer: very rubbish.

We've used the above data, and combined it with SCIENCE to compile a graph (which we're not going to show you here) that shows a clear trajectory from 1995 to Space Year 2007. If a laughably pathetic curriculum vitae printed on pound shop issue printer paper (and we weren't making that bit up, by the way) wasn't enough to land a 'prime' £14,000 a year job (in London, mind) in 1995, one would now need to send the words "ME WANTS JOB", smeared in blood-encrusted human shit, on the back of a page torn roughly from the back of Barely Legal magazine, without a stamp, to narrowly fail selection as a member of ITV's advertising airtime sales staff. This is fact. We can show our workings and everything. In fact, BrokenTV's Mark X is busy trying to remember which year he scraped a grade 'D' in General Studies and thumbing through the Yellow Pages as we speak.

(Yes, we're arguing in favour of more adverts. We've got Sky+, so we don't actually watch them, so we don't care.)

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*Selected highlight of said rant: What the ruddy FUCK are those fictional people DOING? They're not just paying fictional money to see an annoying stand-up comedian do a joke-free set about the insipid flavour of contemporary chewing gum, but they have fictional counterparts happy to QUEUE outside in the RAIN, waiting to SEE an annoying stand-up comedian do a joke-free set about the insipid flavour of contemporary chewing gum. AND the advert uses a slogan that sounds a bit like another word for 'wanking', as a pathetic attempt to generate an ounce of discussion about the horrid overpriced chewy mess. We're clearly going to fail the marketing course we're on (we're not doing it through choice, by the way), because we're not MASSIVE TWAT-FACED SPUNKBUBBLES.

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Lost: The Videogame - A BrokenTV Exclusive!

According to Wikipedia, a videogame version of Lost is being worked on. BrokenTV listener Adam Aitch has already likened the show to Spectrum classic Freddie Goes To Hollywood, but he may never know how close he is to the truth. UNTIL NOW. BrokenTV's crack team of web-ninjas have infiltrated Ubisoft's offices to being these EXCLUSIVE SHOTS of the forthcoming title.

Tip: use the rope to stop Hurley falling through the rope bridge near the start.

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Lost is back!

And only a few days after people who've downloaded it off of the internets got to see it. Yup, as we've also done for brand new 24, we've left the waters of digital piracy, preferring the still but legit waters of conventional TV. You don't even have to FTP any of the programmes over to your chipped Xbox if you want to watch them on your big telly, or anything. And we only have to avoid all forum threads on the programmes in question for a few days in fear of seeing spoilers. And, of course, because we're special and have got a shiny new telly and Sky HD box, we get to see them all in Science-o-vision, which is a very special thing indeed. Time for a **spoileriffic**

What We Think Of New Lost FAQ.

How BrokenTV Now Thinks Lost Is Going To End: One of the main characters will be strapped into the excellent Mind Control Chair.

The Most Grotesque Benefit Of Seeing Lost in HD: Not, as you might suspect, the close-up on the spinal surgery, but seeing Tom's nose, in full scaly detail. It's like what Sid James' nose might have looked like if Hancock's Half Hour was filmed in HD.

BrokenTV's Cheat Mode For Avoiding Adverts In Lost, If You're Watching It On Sky+, Like Any Right-minded Individual: Back-up, select, add five minutes to the current time, select. With an ounce of luck, you'll be back at the end of the annoying 118 sponsor bumper, and avoided all the adverts. This works for pretty much any other programme, too (apart from TV Burp, as despite it finally being one of their most popular shows, ITV can still only flog two minutes worth of advertising space for the middle of it, because they're rubbish).

In Case You're Not Sure What You've Seen Alice In Before, She Was In: Malcolm In The Middle, first three seasons. You really should have worked that out for yourselves by now. Thicky.

How Soon Will BrokenTV Be Wandering Into SpecSavers, Because Our Eyesight Has Got All Knackered From Watching HD Lost Sitting 24 Inches Away From The Screen?: About six weeks, we reckon. It's worth it, though.

That Diminishing List Of TV Shows BrokenTV Is Watching Primarily Via Evil Download Services: The Sarah Silverman Program, American Dad, My Name Is Earl, The Colbert Report, the decent Adult Swim shows just as soon as they return, Family Guy (which we're going to stop bothering with soon unless it picks up quite dramatically. The latest episode was terrible). A far cry from the fifteen or so we used to line up every week. We're even prepared to wait for new episodes of The Simpsons to show up on Sky One.

So, What's Best? Lost, or 24?: There's only one way to find out... Fiiii[snip]. Despite having to check that each episode of 24 wasn't written by Julie Birchall, so packed is it with cliffhangers based on the premise of "what's the *last* thing you think is going to happen right now? Well, that's *exactly* what's about to happen", it's still thunderingly good. However, our response to the first (well, seventh) episode of New Lost was decidedly 25% more animated than that of 24. So, despite a little bit of us dying inside because we've now noticed that Juliette has old woman hands (because we're watching in HD, don't you know), Lost is the winner.

Is BrokenTV Going To Stop Going On About Having HD Any Time Soon, As It's Getting Really Quite Tedious?: Heck, no.

Why, What's The Actual Difference Between HD and 'Normal' Telly Anyway, By Way Of An Illustrative Comparison?: Well, look.

Attribute clash and everything, see.

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Eager for Some Peep-Hole Panty Neck-Hurt Action?

Hurrah for Sky, eh? Around 400 channels, broadcasting in numerous languages, at qualities varying from 1080 HD to eighth-generation VHS NTSC-to-PAL, and it’s mostly dirge. On a given day, you can expect to see a dozen repeats of Friends, frankly weird Brazilian variety shows hosted by a club singer in a neckbrace-cum-microphone-stand, and one trillion hours of home shopping.

But, as Jimmy Cricket and his comically mislabelled wellies would undoubtedly say were he writing this blog, there’s more. A few swift presses on your Sky remote can open up a whole new world of viewing pleasure: hidden channels not yet deemed worthy of joining Psychic TV, Gems TV2 and O’seasproperty on the EPG proper. A carefree world where the normal rules of Sky+ do not apply. A grab-bag of content where a channel listed only as a four figure number could contain a pre-launch world of wonder, a screaming test card, or nothing more than blank void. Join us now, as we step tentatively down some creaky stairs (press ‘Service’ on our remote), worry that the batteries on our torch are beginning to fade (press ‘4’), wonder what that noise was behind us (press ‘4’ again), and repeat the secret incantations to open a portal into the netherworld (enter a frequency code from here and add some channels to the ‘Other Channels’ menu, then watch them).

Here are just two of our findings.

Trends TV
11.259 V | Symbol Rate 27.5 | F.E.C. 2/3 | Channel Name: 52117

What is it?

Seemingly due to launch some time soon, we’re not quite sure what the channel’s remit is, but we strongly suspect it’s along the lines of “The Cheapest General Entertainment Channel We Could Cobble Together and Still Qualify for a Place in the Entertainment Section, Where We Plan to Spend Fourteen Hours a Day Simulcasting Quiz Channels”. When we tuned in, the EPG claimed “9pm-11pm Movie Special: A movie show, with a selection of English title movies from around the world”.

What Was On?

What was actually on was some strange sort of American soap-opera/sitcom hybrid along the lines of ‘Mind Your Language’ meets ‘Robins Nest’. And not in a good way, like Soap. It is called Crossroads Café. It wants to be the next Cheers. With luck and the wind behind it, it’ll be lucky to get somewhere near the quality of Springer’s Day.

A cheap set, training film quality acting, more dodgy faux-foreign accents you can shake an episode of Relative Strangers at, and an odd pace that means it’s about 94% bad soap opera, 6% sitcom. The upshot of this is that the half-hearted canned laughter only kicks in about once every five minutes, which feels frankly odd. Pretending you’ve got a studio full of people heartily guffawing it up is one thing, pretending they’ve all been bussed in just to play spot-the-gag is another. It’s clearly made in order to teach The Foreigns to speak English, but we’re not letting it get away that easily. There’s a whole archive of 1980s BBC-1 Sunday morning output that can do the job a million times more effectively.

The action, such as it is, is infrequently broken up with info-breaks in place of adverts. Short sequences on How To Go On A Job Interview, or clips from Crossroads Café subtitled with what the lines were there for (“What is *his* name?” etc) pop up every five minutes or so, bookended by quite probably the worst animation ever (“Three frames of animation for a scene? We’re not bloody Pixar, you know!”). Unfortunately, the huge TrendsTV on-screen logo obscures many of the subtitled headings, so any Johnny Foreigner trying to learn English from these screenings will remain blissfully unaware of what The Queen’s Full-Stops look like.

Ident Watch: A ghastly low quality NTSC’d up CGI effort, with the channel title being beaten roughly about the text by someone having their first ever go at a trial version of Adobe After Effects.

Picture Quality: You know what YouTube videos look like when you make them fill your screen? Slightly worse than that.

Oh dear. Will our next venture into uncharted waters be any better?

Two out of ten.

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BritShorts
11.426 H | Symbol Rate 27.5 | F.E.C. 2/3 | Channel Name: Brit Shorts

What is it?

It looks to be a soft-launch of a forthcoming showcase for short British films. For now, it is broadcasting a series of short films from what we presume is their parent channel, France’s ShortsTV.

What was on?

Despite the title of the channel, some sort of utterly bizarre French-language animation. A woman visits a dating agency, then gets dressed up as a giant turkey to meet some bloke in an airport who doesn’t like her much. Then another woman travels with Santa (and his little dog) to visit some tiny body builders. She isn’t very happy, but then bumps into some bigger body builders, so she scarpers with them, in another sleigh that was just lying around. Santa gives chase, and turns her into a slug outside the airport seen previously. The dating agency woman leaves the airport, and slips on the newly beslugged-up sleigh-woman. At the airport bar, they all laugh about it afterwards, though. Roll credits.

Then, onto a grainy monochrome effort, again in French, where a car contains four drunken blokes. They soon accidentally run over and kill a boy scout. For a minute, they feel quite bad about it, until the one of them gets annoyed, and starts beating up the corpse. Then they just chuck the body away instead. Feeling that they’ve dealt with the situation effectively, they turn around, only to see the rest of the scout troop wandering along, wondering where boy one is. A rock soundtrack kicks in, as a montage of the men attacking the two scoutmasters begins. Then an argument between the men starts, until they are interrupted by the sound of nearby Gendarme whistling. One of them does a cheesy grin, and the credits roll. Possibly it was from the French version of Jam.

Then, another French short, about a small boy having his birthday party interrupted by half-a-dozen women in leggings. They seem to be acting as some sort of co-stepmother. Retreating to his room, he begins to think about Star Wars. Moving to a Star Wars poster on his wall, we can see he has drilled a hole giving a view of his co-stepmothers’ bedroom. Jump cut. As a track-suited man with an afro peers through the hole at the pervyness therein, Boy mends the head on his Luke Skywalker action figure. The man is so pleased with the view, he damages his neck somehow. Nonetheless, he is still pleased by his experience, and duly pays Boy up. As he walks out of the room, the corridor is lined with more men, eager for some peep-hole panty neck-hurt action. Cut to a conference being given by one of the men from the corridor, now in a neck-brace. As he completes his speech, the other men in the room applaud. They are also wearing neck-braces.

Then, another one started. It looked like it was going to involve an old woman getting undressed for a bath, so we promptly put Match Of The Day on instead. Brr.

Ident Watch: Four shorts in, we didn’t see a single one. Poor show.

Picture Quality: Good. Despite our mobile phone camera making them look poor.

Once it gets going fully, and once there are some shows we can actually understand, this could be one to keep an eye on. Until then, a bit like a non-stop French version of the Japanese Jam Films series. A good thing.

Seven out of ten.

Meanwhile; exciting BBC HD news! They took the BBC HD dog off the screen for tonight’s premiere episode of Party Animals, the new political drama from the people behind This Life. As you might expect, it was basically This Life but about people who work for politicians, and was subsequently terrible. Hopefully, they’ll ditch the logo for some good programmes and hopefully some movies, too.

And what of the Celebrity Big Brother Fame-O-Watch? Well, here you go. We’re not really going to write any more about it now, because it’s all over, so we can stop caring. It’s a bit like how Germany versus Italy is a must see television event if they play each other in the World Cup Finals, but if they’re meeting in a European Championships qualifier, it’s all you can do to glance at the Sky Sports News Infobar to see the result.

So, in summary: blah Shilpa blah blah Jade getting lot of increased attention for obvious reasons blah still won't buy any records by Towers Of London blah. All info taken the morning after the final, but we've not had time to upload it until now. And yes, we *are* still in love with Shilpa Shetty.

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An Article About 'Branding' That Doesn't Make Us Want To Kill

You see, the above is The Right Kind Of Promotion. And so is the excellent "Trumptonshire / Beating Up A Nonce" teaser trailer. Brilliant promotion, for one of the best programmes on television.

And while it might be the second and final series, Wikipedia has some seriously wonderful news, assuming it isn't just made up by wiki-japesters:

"In December 2006, it was reported that the BBC had commissioned a Life on Mars spin-off series, to be titled Ashes to Ashes after another David Bowie song of the same name. The Times reported that this spin-off would pick up the lives of Gene Hunt and other characters from the series in 1981."

All we'll need now is a proper 'The Hexagons' spin-off series from Look Around You, and we'll be in retro-heaven.

The Wrong Kind Of Promotion? Bloody Skins, obviously.

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Celebrity Big Brother In Numbers: Part Three

Celebrity Big Brother, eh? Even if you're one of those crushing bores who like to loudly tell everyone within earshot that they've never bothered watching it, because it's ridiculously vapid and tedious, you know (how do they know that if they've never watched it?), you can't help but have heard about the main story making actual proper global headlines. For the benefit of any readers who have only come out of a year-long coma within the last hour, here's what they've all been talking about: "How are the assembled peoples of the CBB house faring in BrokenTV's Celebrity Big Brother Fame-O-Meter after seventeen days in and around the CBB house?"

Well, we've had our crack team of ninja Excel monkeys hammering away at their keyboards for almost ten minutes, and can now gladly reveal their findings TO THE NATION. Apart from the 18% of it who seem to be pro-bullying, pro-racism, or both (ONLY JOKING).



The outlines in white are the standings from the previous round of numberfumbling, reflecting just how well the housemates have done at getting strangers on the internet typing in complete gibberish about them [citation needed] since their arrival in the house. Pop Fact One! Monosyllabic berk and pretend football agent Jack not only hasn't got a Wikipedia page about him, there isn't even a 'create page for this person' link for him. Pop Fact Two! Jackieieieiey's page is already pending deletion at the behest of the Wikimods, which probably says something about something.

So, interested in taking a look at a ranked chart of exactly whose Wikipedia word count has grown by the most? Of course you are. So here we go:



As you can see, Bollywood star (and lady who BrokenTV's Mark X claims is going to be the future Mrs X, in much the same manner Sven-Göran Eriksson claims he's going to be next Chelsea manager) Shilpa tops the list, closely followed by the Lidl Sid Vicious. Credit is also due to now-slightly-less-lovely-than-we'd-thought-a-week-ago Cleo, who has climbed from having no Wikipedia profile at all, to attaining the third-largest wordspurt. At the other end of the scale, one-time 20% of the Jackson Five and all round good egg Jermaine Jackson shuffles along in last place, ahead of Tabloid Carole and Swearing's Leo Sayer, which is a shame, because we've really taken to JJ during the whole recent unpleasantness.

Can we squeeze another graph out of all this? You bet:



Yes. Measuring the figures by increased percentages of verbosity, the Aldi Iggy Pop takes the honours with a remarkable 622% growth since day zero of the CBB house, although it should be noted that with an original Wiki total of, well, nothing, Cleo has technically won this category with her increase of infinity%, except Excel doesn't really like plotting that sort of thing, so we've discounted her from the chart. Leo, Korpulent Ken and Jermaine stutter along in the relegation places.

Meanwhile, two thoughts about events of the last 48 hours:

THOUGHT ONE: We’ve only just watched the eviction show (and only the first of the two), but we reckon Jade came out of it about as well as she could. Internet chatter suggesting she was faking her reaction once the penny dropped, but we don’t think she’s that good an actress, she seemed quite genuine. Channel Four are more at blame for not taking their course of action much earlier. And clearly, she wasn’t racist in the first place, but being a pretty horrible proud-to-be-fick bully isn’t much better. It would have been nice if she’d had the gumption to realise how she was coming across to the viewing public, or preferably not acted in that way in the first place, if Shilpa was more than happy to forgive and forget, everyone else really should too. And the duplicitous Danielle is much worse, anyway.

THOUGHT TWO: Nice of Channel Four to state that Jack didn’t call Shilpa a four-letter racist slang term (there are some words we don’t want appearing in our search keywords list, thanks), and that he’d only called her a c-word. Call us old-fashioned, but calling a perfectly friendly, well-mannered, polite and all-round nice woman that word is one of the few things in society that still offends us, so it’s hardly an improvement. nb. This only doesn’t apply if you’re playing a character called Hank Kingsley in an episode of The Larry Sanders Show, but in every other instance we’re prepared to demand pistols at dawn.

BrokenTV's prediction for the final week of CBB: Jack to whimper like a lost puppy for two days then scarper, Shilpa to suddenly get no votes for the next round of nominations but mainly because they've all guessed what's going on and not because she's ace and lovely, and the viewing figures to tail off dramatically as the housemates become suddenly reticent to say or do anything in any way controversial. And Dirk to win.

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Big Brother Race Row EXCLUSIVE: New Development

In the latest development in the Big Brother racism and/or bullying scandal that has clearly put the WORLD on the VERY BRINK OF WAR, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie have just released the following statement.

"Our concern has rapidly mounted about the broadcast behaviour of individuals within the Big Brother house. We are totally against all forms of racism and bullying and indeed this behaviour is entirely at odds with the brand values of our good selves. As a result we feel that as long as this continues we would like to retroactively change the name of our jolly 1970s BBC situation comedy for which we are so well known, to its original working title Superchaps Three. Thank you."

Superchaps Three, earlier today.

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