TV Licensing - too much stick, not enough carrot

TV Licensing's ads have always been threatening in nature, but in recent years the stick they use to coerce people to cough up seems to have grown out of proportion.

It's easy to understand why - the proliferation of media channels means that the Corporation is aware that the tax is unpopular and difficult to justify when there is so much choice elsewhere. A stick showing the consequences of non-compliance, as well as desperate attempts to engage with audiences who are served elsewhere by employing people such as Russell Brand, has been the BBC's remedy.

Sadly, the Corporation has managed to get both of these tactics wrong as shown by the sacking of Proximity London for sending out inaccurate warning letters to members of the public that over-claimed on the number of evaders that had been caught in their localities.

It's striking how swiftly the BBC has moved following the breaking of the story in the Sunday Telegraph; perhaps the BBC management has learnt from the dithering over the Brand affair. However this is another example of just how the BBC's Board of Governors failed to govern during Gilligan, the BBC Trust has got a lot to do to restore that particular virtue in the Corporation.

Only then can Proximity's replacement adopt a strategy that describes why the licence fee is worth paying rather than threatens the consequences of not.

Lembit Opik - saviour of the Daily Sport?

Just one day after Gordon Brown announced that he had saved the world, the Daily Sport has hired Lembit Opik MP as its new political columnist presumably in the hope that he will do the same for it.

Opik - well known for his colourful personal life helped, it is rumoured, in some part by his House of Commons nickname ‘Tripod' - says in the accompanying press release: ‘I can't wait to get started, this is the perfect partnership'. And judging by the accompanying picture he's probably not lying.

Given that the Daily Sport's circulation has been in freefall and now hovers around the 77,000 mark, his contribution to the nipple count will be welcome.

When Oliver Postgate goes to sleep.....

Unashamedly soppy this but anyone over the age of 30 will surely feel a pang of sadness with the news of the death of Oliver Postgate, creator of classic children's shows such as Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine and The Clangers, at the age of 83.

His creations, which he narrated with his distinctive reassuring voice, were from that decade of industrial and social strife - the 70s - although they seem to originate from a gentler time. This is because they are from an era when children's programming wasn't created by computers or by focus groups, didn't feature characters that ticked ‘inclusive' boxes and where they weren't merchandised to oblivion before the next big thing arrived.

Because of this, and in spite of the now rather quaint production values, they remain timeless.

Leave John Craven alone!

Viewers have come to accept that Mark Austen and Fiona Bruce will occasionally lapse into Pip ‘n’ Fern on their respective news bulletins by cross-promoting other programmes on their channels.

ITV does it for Tonight, the BBC for Panorama, Channel 4 for Dispatches (Five is precluded because it doesn’t have any other factual output) and to a certain degree it’s a pretty legitimate way to puff a forthcoming programme that contains a degree of investigative journalism. And, after all, they are only doing something that has been happening in chat shows and magazine formats promoting light entertainment programmes or soaps for decades.

But I was struck by a very clumsy attempt on the otherwise innocuous and ostensibly factual Country File on Sunday morning to puff the BBC’s struggling Sunday evening family entertainment show Merlin.

While it’s acceptable for news programmes to promote factual content and lighter pieces to promote soaps, using a programme for the rural community to show-in the mention of completely unrelated-show seems a bit desperate. What next, The Sky at Night promotes Tittybangbang?

Karen Matthews attempt to manipulate the media was inevitable eventually

The media, and the newspapers in particular, have revelled in two of the most distasteful stories of the year - Karen Matthews' abduction of her daughter Shannon in order to claim a reward and what Boy George gets up to in his spare time.

In Karen Matthews' case and that of the rest of her under-class peers also involved in the appalling scam, I've got a colleague who draws comfort by saying that ‘at least they are only ruining one household'. In this instance this is unfortunately not true - seemingly extending across the bleak Dewsbury sink estate where Matthews was apparently related to a series of unpleasant characters with curious names.

Unfortunately, to some extent, the media is responsible for this by appearing to wallow in the expected human misery that normally ensue from these tragic incidents with extensive coverage of the child, the police search and the inevitable pictures of the distraught family.

By then offering a large reward to demonstrate how compassionate and caring they are for information leading to the child's safe return (which tragically enough is rarely paid), it was perhaps just a matter of time before some God-awful person like Karen Matthews and her revolting extended family sought to bolster their state handouts by attempting to cash in.

Newspapers are normally quick to attribute blame when children are abducted. Perhaps in this instance they should accept some of it.

Why everyone should be made to visit Lapland New Forest

Is it so wrong to derive just a tiny bit of mirth from the plight of those people who were stupid enough to pay £30 to visit Lapland New Forest to what most right-minded people would have guessed was not going to live up to what was advertised?

In truth it probably is, but it’s been difficult not to find some humour in the stories that have emerged from the muddy field at Matchams Leisure Park in Dorset. The Sun, in particular, deserves real credit for sending one of its reporters to the camp and getting her photographed on Santa’s knee. Santa, we are told, ‘smelt like a burger van’, while the elves that herded her into his grotto (described as a ‘plywood shed)’ were ‘spotty’.

Apparently, visitors were disappointed that the attraction bears no reality to the marketing on the website: there was no ‘winter wonderland’ scene, the ‘bustling’ Christmas market was nothing of the sort, the ‘log cabins’ were sheds and the ‘tunnel of light’ was some fairy lights strung around some trees, reported the BBC.

Naturally children were upset, people were angry and refunds were demanded. But aside from showing British journalism at its best – in other words when it is being mischievous – the sorry affair does provide some useful lessons about the true meaning of Christmas; it is overpriced, people will be disappointed, it’s likely to be wet and, most crucially, Christmas advertising should be treated with a large pinch of salt.

Welcome home Martin Bowley

Great to see that Martin Bowley, former chief executive of Carlton Media Sales, is making a return to mainstream media as managing director of Digital Cinema Media.

It would be easy to dismiss Bowley as one of the old ITV dinosaurs of yore but since he was perhaps unfairly denied the top job following the merger of Carlton and Granada, of which he played a key role, unlike his contemporaries he has continued to evolve most recently running the somewhat obscure but undeniably profitable mobile entertainment company PlayPhone.

Bowley is one of those rare beasts; a consummate salesman and showman who manages to be great company and has therefore built up strong relationships with all sectors of the marcomms industry - advertisers, ad agencies and media buyers - so his appointment is a welcome choice and provides some much-needed colour in what looks like being an otherwise grey year.