Ofcon

Ofcon; As predicted Labour won’t get involved with the issues over regional ITV. Let’s face it, who thought they would? After all, Labour and Ofcom are virtually lovers, with ITV as the mistress. All equally pathetic, lets remember when the General Election comes the words of Ofcom that Labour endorse: You the viewers matter not one jot. And seen as they treat us with contempt we should equally treat them the same way by voting elsewhere.

Casualty Of Stupidity; Apparently the BBC want to move the production of Casualty from Bristol so that its no longer a London production. I’ll try and get my head round that one later.. since when has Bristol been near the Capital of Britain?

Blue Peter at 50; Blue Peter is fifty years old today. Yes fifty years of ‘here’s one I made earlier’, Blue Peter badges and cons. Long before the phone-in scandals of last year Blue Peter mislead viewers when it held a competition to name the show’s new puppy. Sadly the mutt died after just a few editions, before being named by viewers, so producers quickly found a replacement puppy and voters were non the wiser! The name chosen for the dog was Petra who was, perhaps, one of the most famous Blue Peter dogs alongside Shep and Bonnie.

Over the years Blue Peter has had many presenters, some more memorable than others. Athena Turner, Diane Louise-Jordan, Yvette Fielding and Richard Bacon continue to do presenting work while Janet Ellis, mother of ‘pop’ singer Sophie Ellis-Bexter, is a regular panelist on Five’s The Wright Stuff. John Leslie meanwhile is still in the public spot-light for all the wrong reasons, having the dubious honours of bringing Abi Titmuss to the public attention. Isn’t that nice of him?

Famous Blue Peter moments include;

• Lorraine Heggessey, controller of CBBC at the time, apologising to viewers after the sacking of presenter Richard Bacon, who had admitted to taking cocaine,

• The Blue Peter gardens being trashed by yobs in the 1980’s.

• And an Elephant using the studio as a toilet – while Peter Perves and Valerie Singleton look on horrified.

STV to stay Scottish; Director of Broadcasting at ‘Scottish Television’ Bobby Hain has criticised ITV boss Michael Grade for recent comments he made in which he suggested STV should become part of the ITV brand.

Hain said that Grade was trying to make changes “to make life easier for himself” in an article in the Sunday Herald. Meanwhile Grade is back in the headlines this week after he suggested stars of the network should take a pay cut. “When Tesco goes through an economic downturn, it goes to its suppliers and says you have got to help us – everybody works together to get through it.” He told the Sunday Times.

This Was Your Life; The show that just won’t go away, This Is Your Life is set for yet another revival. The show started in 1955 on the BBC before ending in 1964. It was then re-launched by Thames TV and ran continuously until 1994 on ITV before switching back to the BBC. With dwindling audiences the show was finally axed in 2003, only to be revived last year by ITV once more.

The new series is being planned by media boss Mark Burnett, who is in talks – according to The Sun – with both ITV and the BBC. The original show was presented by Emmon Andrews followed by Michael Aspel and most recently Trevor McDonald.

Hill’s Turned Off; Harry Hill has said that he no longer watches television for enjoyment, and only tunes in for research purposes when working on his hit ITV series, TV Burp. Just as well really, as ITV no longer make programmes for entertainment purposes either, their priority seems to be to make any old cheap tat in the hope it gets good ratings and a lot of profit.

Who’s Down?; Since the death of Richard Whiteley Countdown seems to have had a bit of bad luck at keeping its hosts. Des Lynam found it tragically difficult travelling to Leeds from London for a few weeks a year, while Des O’Connor has also decided that the Yorkshire based show is just too much hard graft.

So the search is on yet again for a new presenter of the long running game show. So far names flung around include Rory Breminer, Bradley Walsh and this week Alexander Armstrong and Jeff Stelling were also added to the list. Personally Christopher Biggins seems the most ideal candidate, he has that Whiteley charm.

Danced Out: Jessie Wallace is the latest to leave Strictly Come Dancing. Obviously people didn’t like the cat dance.