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March 29, 2024, 01:16:19 AM

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Radio Murdoch arrives to kick Radio 4 while its down

Started by idunnosomename, April 27, 2020, 04:43:02 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

buzby

Quote from: idunnosomename on April 28, 2020, 11:59:14 PM
actually watching the pingu's dream again all the walrus shots look oddly manipulated as if the puppet was never on set. his flipper looks like a completely different job. but not like you could easily do CG post hacks back in the early 90s. buzby please solve big german Swiss stop motion mammal puzzle
FTFY.
The walrus was a physical puppet built to a much larger scale than the rest of the Pingu maquettes. It was built for a demo reel that Otmar Gutmann had made in 1980 to demonstrate facial animation and animating to a voice track, which is why it needed to be so much bigger.

It had presumably been sitting in his workshop until 1991 when the idea for Pingu's Dream came up. The walrus head was dusted off and refurbished for the episode. There is a scenery break in the middle of the set that the head and flippers were positioned behind. The flippers were new separate pieces and not part of the original maquette, which is why they look odd.

Blinder Data

If you're interested in the motivations behind Times Radio, this is worth a read: http://www.mattdeegan.com/2020/04/27/times-radio-launch/

Looks like they're tapping up Mariella Frostrup? TBF packing the roster with the sexiest voices is one way of attracting listeners.

kaprisky

If The Times are launching a radio station then surely they're going to need some jingles:

If stepping outside makes you afraid-io
Listen to Times Radio!

(4-notes played on a xylophone for the ident)

It will probably be the radio equivalent of The Sunday Correspondent or BSB, albeit without major damage should it fail. I'm not sure how they are to attract new listeners on a digital-only platform which can easily be ignored. They'll need a soap opera and a comedy show at least.

dissolute ocelot

Channel 4 tried something similar around 2007 but it ended in ignominy very quickly. The original Talk Radio was another, earlier attempt at commercial speech radio, but after a couple of years in the mid 90s it switched to sport and later to audience-baiting insanity. I'm confident that this will also end in failure.

Even though the Times group probably already produces enough podcasts to fill a few hours of radio a day, people are increasingly listening to podcasts (!) not live broadcast radio, and Radio 4 only persists because of its millions of 70 year old listeners who've forgotten how to retune their radios and regard anything new with loathing/contempt/diarrhoeia. So they won't be switching. Obviously a vanity project, and probably a cheap one, but Murdoch's not stupid to waste even small amounts of money with no return.

idunnosomename

DAB was a fucking mess wasnt it? Add that to the tally of BBC being fucking stupid all the way up to alienating listeners with its godawful SOUNDS app

pigamus

Quote from: dissolute ocelot on April 29, 2020, 01:23:02 PM
The original Talk Radio was another, earlier attempt at commercial speech radio, but after a couple of years in the mid 90s it switched to sport and later to audience-baiting insanity.

I remember the original Talk Radio very well because of what happened to Samantha Meah. She had a lot of fans on Radio WM, including me, and we were all delighted for her when she went off to her big new career in London. Then they sacked her after six weeks because of her accent. Publically humiliated. It was awful.

beanheadmcginty

Fuck me, I would've staked my granny on Pingu being Polish rather than Swiss. Another vital Buzby nugget tucked away.


idunnosomename

well I thought Otmar Gutmann was based in Germany before Pingu but I knew it was Swiss. fuck me he died in '93. he was only 56

buzby

Quote from: idunnosomename on April 30, 2020, 12:12:09 AM
well I thought Otmar Gutmann was based in Germany before Pingu but I knew it was Swiss. fuck me he died in '93. he was only 56
I think he moved to Hausen am Albis near Zurich in the 70s and set up Trickfimstudios there. Unfortunately he sold the rights to Pingu to a merchansing company, so even if he had lived he wouldn't have seen any money from it.

Since he died there has been some historical revisionism regarding Pingu's creation - the producer at the Swiss TV station who commissioned the pilot episode in 1986 says that she came up with the idea of it being about penguins (as Gutmann wanted to make a series about sea lions, using the head from his demo reel as an example), and graphics department at the station designed the look of the characters. However, at the end of the demo reel I posted is 'Hugo', a short film he made in 1980 featuring a penguin that looks very similar to how Pingu ended up.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: idunnosomename on April 29, 2020, 01:27:33 PM
DAB was a fucking mess wasnt it? Add that to the tally of BBC being fucking stupid all the way up to alienating listeners with its godawful SOUNDS app

Yep, the codecs were about 10 years out of date when they started going national. Despite mainly being sold in portable radios it absolutely rinsed batteries compared to a normal transistor radio (and still uses more power than wifi or a mobile phone pulling the data over the mobile network, which requires it to regularly transmit to ask the server for the next chunk of radio) the compression algorithms meant you needed a decent bitrate to sound good, but the operators got tight, compressed everything too much and put a lot of stuff in mono. Then they started moving to DAB+ meaning older radio's couldn't receive the newer multiplexes.

They pushed it hard because Ofcom want to kill Band II (FM) and sell the space off for something else. I imagine they'll use internet radio streams as a justification to do this eventually instead.

Gurke and Hare

Quote from: buzby on April 29, 2020, 10:44:55 AM
It was built for a demo reel that Otmar Gutmann had made in 1980

Cor, thanks for that, it's lovely.

Phil_A

Quote from: dissolute ocelot on April 29, 2020, 01:23:02 PM
Channel 4 tried something similar around 2007 but it ended in ignominy very quickly.

They had some kind of pseudo-radio podcasting setup going on for a while didn't they, I think that was where the young Tom Ravenscroft made his first nascent steps into broadcasting.

At the time I just remember wondering who the audience was for it, it had practically zero promotion and the listenership must've been miniscule.

idunnosomename


imitationleather

Probably means The Sun's days are definitely numbered.

jobotic

They have Harry Cole in there now. The pool of talent is bottomless.

Blinder Data

Harry Cole! I don't expect him to last long - I expect he'll embarrass himself with a libellous story he can't stand up and will get the boot.

It also indicates that the Sun and therefore Murdoch's views on Labour/Starmer are not close to changing.

Fambo Number Mive

I wonder if they will play any music. If they do they'll probably play a load of counterculture music from the 70s and 80s as part of their ploy to pretend they aren't the Establishment.

Or here are some other suggestions for bands they might play:

Centre-Right Said Fred
The Clash of Capitalist Propaganda With Reality
The White Stripes On My Suit


Fambo Number Mive

Launching 29th June.

Amber Rudd and her daughter Flora Gill to present "specially commissioned shows". Yuk.

One reason why many politicians don't care what the public thinks of them is they know that establishment media will still love them as long as they aren't left wing.

Former Labour advisor Ayesha Hazarika also has a slot.Gloria de Piero and Tom Newton Dunn will present a show called G&T together.

Ghastly.


idunnosomename

it does sound even worse than i imagined. anyway at least Ayesha "hipster analysis" Hazarika made the right name for herself at the beginning of the COVID crisis

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Fambo Number Mive on June 02, 2020, 01:29:44 PM
Launching 29th June.

Amber Rudd and her daughter Flora Gill to present "specially commissioned shows". Yuk.

One reason why many politicians don't care what the public thinks of them is they know that establishment media will still love them as long as they aren't left wing.

Former Labour advisor Ayesha Hazarika also has a slot.Gloria de Piero and Tom Newton Dunn will present a show called G&T together.

Ghastly.



Applies equally to PLP luvvies too of course. Will they get Jess Philips on for 'balance'?

idunnosomename

#51
fucking amber rudd. jesus wept


https://twitter.com/timesradio/status/1267800681441890304

vom city

KennyMonster

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on June 02, 2020, 03:38:17 PM
Applies equally to PLP luvvies too of course. Will they get Jess Philips on for 'balance'?

What, dancing with her friends without falling over?

idunnosomename

nice summing up from the new cab hero we all like now

https://twitter.com/JosieLong/status/1267773337037615105

I mean, even though she is on Radio 4 a lot and might just be bigging up are beautiful bbc

jobotic

Coren acting the cunt there. As if he was capable of anything else.


Sebastian Cobb

It'll just be another source that the right and cenrists add to their pool of 'trusted sources' that will not entertain leftwing people, meaning they'll continue to be sidelined to places like Novara and The Canary, which aforementioned right and cenrists will refuse to entertain because they're 'left-wing rags' or fake news.

steveh

As it's on DAB it still has to conform to Ofcom's due impartiality rules, so across all programmes there needs to be a political balance.

Cuellar

Quote from: Fambo Number Mive on June 02, 2020, 01:29:44 PM
Gloria de Piero and Tom Newton Dunn will present a show called G&T together.

Ha ha fucking perfect

Fambo Number Mive

According to Wikipedia Digby Jones will also be a presenter.