Austerity conditions have been imposed on Ofcom's staff in its lavish Thames-side headquarters; they'll have to forego a pay increase while members of its executive committee will not be considered for a bonus this year. Poor old chief executive Ed Richards will have to continue to make do with...
Channel 4's potty-mouthed cook Gordon Ramsay has found himself in trouble with Ofcom for managing to get 115 versions of the f-word into the first 40 minutes of his 'Great British Nightmare' programme - that's nearly three a minute. The broadcaster's defence is that its audience would...
Talking to contacts this morning in light of ITV's £2.7 billion losses, it's hard to detect too much sympathy around for those who control the broadcaster. Plenty for those among the 600 who will lose their jobs as it restructures but beyond that there is a feeling that ITV has played a part...
ITV’s management can quite rightly be accused of crying wolf all too frequently in the past as it sought to protect its dominant position, but if there was ever any doubt that Rupert Howell was over egging it when he said that it was ‘scrapping for its life’ it must surely be dispelled by its results...
God knows how long Ofcom came up with its decision that Domino's Pizza's sponsorship of The Simpsons on Sky One breached its codes that are meant to restrict the promotion of HFSS foods to children. Given that the adjudication extends to six and a half pages and includes various definitions from...
Meant to mention this last week, but congrats to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), on the new Data Protection Promise. Good to see the safeguarding of personal data getting a much-needed boost – particularly as 99 data breaches (no, not Luftballons!), were reported to the ICO in the final...
Anyone else watch Mark Thompson's and Michael Lyons' performance before the Commons culture, media and sport select committee? There was pitiful little evidence of either wearing a hair shirt - in fact, neither looked that they were particularly bothered to be there. Thompson said that the BBC...
Astonishingly there are more people out there who find the sight of Gordon Ramsay humanely catching then killing a puffin and eating it more offensive than that of a Palestinian man being shot in the head by an Israeli soldier. That's the latest revelation to emerge from Ofcom, which subsequently...
Last year Jeremy Clarkson was criticised for calling a car "a bit gay". Ofcom didn't like it, but this hasn't stopped Vanity Fair which has launched a gay car blog. On the BBC's 'Top Gear' Clarkson asked a man in the audience if he would consider buying a Daihatsu Copen...
Listening to BBC Director General Mark Thompson’s hair shirt speech yesterday, it occurred to me that there’s a rich irony out there. While advertisers and agencies take a rigorous regime for granted, our public service broadcaster has been playing fast and loose with the truth. In our quest...
