TMi

Saturday mornings have always had a unique place in the history of children’s television. Read more

Top of the Pops

I can’t remember the first time I watched Top of the Pops. I can’t have been any older than about three or four, because one of my earliest memories is of mounting my own episodes with my sister. Read more

After viewers, more like

ITV1′s immediate axing of Saturday night series It’s Now or Never attracted a fair amount of headlines this week, such is the embarrassment, but not many people seem to have noticed that they’ve also yanked off another series after one episode – the repeat of Afterlife that was on at 9pm last Sunday and was supposed to be there for the next five weeks. Read more

“What am I supposed to tell the Panorama audience?”

Hooray - Panorama is going back to peak-time. I’m not celebrating due to any great love of the programme, to be honest, but because I was heartily sick of the endless complaints about its previous slot and the fact the BBC couldn’t be bothered doing anything about it. Read more

The strip club

It’s possible every night this week to sit in front of the terrestrial channels and watch the same programmes as the night before. With the World Cup over, everyone seems to be attempting to fill the chasm with just one or two shows. Read more

I don’t want my ITV

Oh, for goodness’ sake, what are they doing at ITV1? It seems that everyone is so concerned about the financial side that they’ve just plain forgotten that they’re supposed to be running a television channel – if the current schedules are anything to go by. Read more

A big “how’re you doing?”

There’s a comment on OTT’s Growing Up With The Telly feature about Peter Purves’ departure from Blue Peter being, “as though your parents were suddenly getting divorced”. It’s a perceptive point, because editor Biddy Baxter always said that BP should be “a rock” in its viewers’ lives, always there no matter what was going on elsewhere. That’s why the departure of Matt Baker is so notable. Read more

The most depressing story in television history

Sometimes reading Broadcast magazine can be the most depressing thing ever, and this week is no exception. We’re all aware that the team behind Saturday Kitchen, including Anthony Worrall Thompson, have defected to ITV, while BBC1 are continuing their show with a new host, James Martin (the ITV1 one is going to be called Saturday Cooks, fact fans). Read more

Better for you, better for all of us

What on earth is going through the minds of ITV Sport? Read more

Bit of Bully “unbeatable”, say lab

Everyone in OTT Towers knows that the best line on Off The Telly is Ian Jones asking “Where are the quizzes?” while discussing BBC1′s mid-’80s Saturday night line-up. The thing is, it can never be said enough, because the undemanding quiz show you can watch over beans on toast and shout out the answers to is, when it’s done well, always welcome. Read more

Popworld

What’s the most appropriate way for the presenters of a pop show to depart? A few special guests to wave them off, followed by endless blubbing? Read more

That’s after your own programmes

As Steve pointed out before Christmas, Nationwide, or something like it, is due for an experimental return to BBC1 this summer. Read more

Saturday arcade

Not sure why the imminent ending of Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow has become news all of a sudden, expecially when it was announced about 12 months ago. However with only a few shows left, I wonder what’s going to replace it come the autumn. Read more

“He appears every Friday night… like Urkel!”

To be honest, I’ve never understood that joke, but I love the way Homer says it. Read more

“Here they come now, Norton and Tate…”

So Paul Jackson is ITV’s new Head of Entertainment, which is a good move I think because he’s clearly got bags of experience. Read more

“If you ask for Durex in Australia…”

Are there four words in the English language more depressing than Jon Culshaw’s Commercial Breakdown? Read more

2005

Too much of anything is bad for you, as Stephen Fry once thundered, because that’s precisely what too much means: a quantity which is excessive. Too much water would be bad for you, because it would be too much. Fact. Read more

The real Trevor McDoughnut

Although for the past few years he’s been fronting an increasingly rotten news programme on autopilot, it’s still something of an end of an era to see Trevor McDonald reading the ITV News for the last time, as he did last night. Read more

“I was being affable…”

Curb Your Enthusiasm is still very funny, but if there are any more episodes like the one on More4 on Sunday I might have to stop watching it. By the end of it I was a nervous wreck, because everyone seemed to be hugely unreasonable and I hated everyone in it, apart from Larry. The rabbi, Cheryl’s mum, the survivor, the Survivor … Larry was right and they were wrong. Read more

I dunno what a folly is

Intriguing news in this week’s Broadcast that BBC1 are to bring back Nationwide – or, at least, an hour-long magazine show between 6.30 and 7.30 containing national and local news and fronted by, it says here, “a Natasha Kaplinsky-style presenter”. Of course the main reasoning behind it is to stop the nation turning over en masse to Emmerdale at seven. Read more

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