- Peter Rippon
- 24 Aug 06, 04:52 PM
Eddie Mair's PM blog has been launched with great fanfare. Well OK Eddie was testing the software and managed to post a test message so we've decided just to keep going.
We invited listeners to the PM Newsletter to come up with a phrase that encapsulates PM that could act as a strapline for the blog. We will put up a different one each day. I hope you enjoy them. Among my favourites are:
From Sammy Loutro PM: "The creamiest gobbets scooped straight from the middle of the News Cheese"
From Wolf Marloh PM: "The Today programme for Australians"
From Mohawk Dave PM: It's better than daytime telly"
We've decided to do a blog because I strongly believe the intimate relationship PM listeners have with the programme is similar to the sense of belonging successful online communities have. The massive take up of the PM Newsletter has reinforced that view for me. The newsletter will continue, for now, but the blog allows listeners to talk to each other without us getting in the way and not just when we are on air.
What can you expect from the blog and how will it evolve? It could be the vanguard in showing what radio can offer in the 大象传媒's Creative Future, or it could be a dump for endless inane, barely literate, drivel. Your guess is as good as mine.
Peter Rippon is editor of World at One, PM and Broadcasting House
A daily guide to pronunciation of names and words in the news from Martha Figueroa-Clark of the 大象传媒 Pronunciation Unit.
"Today's pronunciation is Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja. Our recommendation is AIR-ki TOO-uh-mi-oy-uh. As with all our advice, this is an anglicised pronunciation and is not intended to represent a native pronunciation. This is so that the pronunciation flows as naturally as possible in an English-language broadcast."
- David Kermode
- 24 Aug 06, 12:40 PM
At the risk of becoming the resident blog bore ("becoming?" I hear you say), I want to return to my theme of interaction again.
As I've said before there's nothing new per se in audience interaction - people were writing in to That's Life 30 years ago - it's just much easier to do it these days. But it's those very means of doing it that have also made life more complicated too.
Last week, Susanna Reid, our main stand-in presenter, told me she'd been tempted by the new Carphone Warehouse Talk Talk broadband package, announced amid much fanfare on Breakfast back in the spring. She said she'd had a nightmare with it and had been driven to distraction.
A potential news story? "大象传媒 presenter has problems with computer"? Err, no.
However, we sensed from what we'd heard elsewhere (including a recent report on , to be fair) that many of our viewers might be in the same boat.
So, Susanna , which aired on Wednesday.
A few people told us it was "indulgent". Someone even said it looked like a "vendetta".
It's certainly true that the power to put something on the television because you're cross about it is a privilege not to be abused. But we sensed it would resonate, and it did. We've had hundreds of e-mails from people who have had similar problems. Largely the complaints are about Talk Talk, but other broadband providers have also been driving our viewers wild.
A few people said Talk Talk provided a great product - and we were careful to include those comments. We followed it up this morning, and we're planning something for next week on the difficulties people face switching between providers.
Two things strike me about this:
1) Technology has the capacity to make people really cross in a "can鈥檛 live with it, can't live without it" kind of way.
And 2) people like to sound off and we can help with that. But all they really want is someone to fix it. If only we could...
David Kermode is editor of
Press Gazette: Channel Four News reporter Alex Thomson supports the 大象传媒's Orla Guerin in her reporting of Bint Jbail. "What Orla said about the town centre is absolutely 100 per cent true. Orla is an extremely experienced and professional correspondent," he says. ()
Guardian: Obituary of 大象传媒 producer Iris Furlong. ().
Daily Mail: Letters on George Alagiah's comments on multiculturalism. (no link available)
