The Voice vs BGT

Say what you like about the state of the British tabloid newspaper and what ‘it’ regards as ‘news’ currently but it doesn’t pick a front page story if it isn’t going to engross a potential reader into picking up the paper and then parting with some change to read said story.

And lo, it came to past yesterday that a dispute between a middle-aged man, a septuagenarian man, a woman that says “beautiful” a lot and two TV shows and TV channels was splashed across the front page of the Daily Mirror as the “battle of primetime, Saturday talent shows” started to warm up.

This is the TV equivalent of Blur vs Oasis back in 1995 with Amanda Holden launching a “death slur” at Sir Tom Jones (“death slur” certainly being an out of proportion description), Jones biting back about the essential purity of his show and Cowell sitting back ala Sir Alex Ferguson, pulling the strings and making his puppety rivals, and indeed his own puppety people, do exactly what he wants them to do; generate some 'buzz'.

But here’s the thing, ITV and Cowell are obviously rattled by the BBC’s challenger for two reasons. Firstly, Cowell sat out Britain’s Got Talent last year in what was widely perceived to be a failure of a series but whose launch still got more peak viewers than last night's party starter. You don’t return from the USA to bolster a show that was still pulling in the viewers if there isn’t an exterior challenge to your superiority.

Secondly, Britain’s Got Talent historically began towards the end of April, reaching a overblown conclusion as May drew to a close. This time around, it began on exactly the same day as The Voice was launched, presumably in  a bid to nullify the effect of the latter reaching its final stages when the former begins in earnest. It’s all about viewer numbers of course.

But, well, actually, it isn’t now, what with on-demand services and Sky+. The figures may show that Britain’s Got Talent had a higher peak audience and that The Voice had more viewers in the 20-minute slot in which both shows were being broadcast but all of that is neither here nor there as, in the world of Sky+ and on-demand, people can and will watch both shows. 

There is no real winner here. Britain’s Got Talent will inevitably get a higher peak viewing figure as it’s in the optimum slot where people are not eating dinner, the kids are still awake, people on a night out are still at home and so on.

The Voice probably got that 20-minute slot of dominance as viewers wanted to watch the end of it whilst Sky+-ing through the adverts of Britain’s Got Talent to catch up. One wonders whether advertisers will continue to pay extortionate fees to advertise on Britain’s Got Talent if so many viewers of both shows (4 million or so with some basic maths and assumptions using these figures) can Sky+ through the adverts to catch up with the broadcast (hence the peak five-minute slot being around 9pm) or go on-demand, but that’s another story.

The really interesting part to come out of last night is just how different two things that are essentially the same can be.

The Voice has made a big song and dance out of its format of the ‘coaches’ (like judges but not) not being able to see the contestant and so judging them solely on their voice (an admittedly ingeniously simple idea in marketing and pitching terms). This concept of it as a ‘nice’ alternative to Britain’s Got Talent´ is continued as very few acts are sent home and even the ones that are packed off are lavishly complimented on their talent and given a handshake from will.I.am for their troubles. Perhaps the only nasty thing about it is the logo which occasionally gets spun around over the visuals, inferring a solid “up yours” directed at Cowell in the most ostentatious attempt at subtlety ever and the balls-out lying about there being no sob-stories. There was. Lots.

On the other end of the scale, Britain’s Got Talent powers on over the seas of ordinary people’s dreams, captained by the Dark Lord Cowell, crushing the hopes of people all around the country with said people giving up their time voluntarily for the privilege. Even the good ones are ridiculed for their looks before they display their depths of talent (note Jonathan the operatic singer last night), showing how Black Mirror wasn’t a dystopian parody but actually a documentary about contemporary life (to paraphrase a Daily Mail line about 1984). But hey, come on, we don’t always like ourselves for it but we come back every week as it crushing a soul underneath a size-9 does make some good TV. Michael McIntyre was just too nice and we can’t be having that so back came Cowell and in came David Walliams who does a good line in bastardry beneath the cheeky exterior.

In many ways the two shows complement each other perfectly and in whichever order one watches them (Sky+ again) can probably provide you with an insight into what kind of person you are. If you watch The Voice first, you need the dream destroying aspect of Britain’s Got Talent to get over all of the faux-niceties of the former. Meanwhile, observing them vice versa provides you with a nice fluffy detox.  It’s all up to you.

Thoughts ahead of Blackpool

A gloriously sunny day with temperatures touching 20C and a game of football to look lustily forward tomorrow can only mean one of two things; it’s August or it’s nearly April.

If it were August, we would be full of anticipation and dreaming that starry-eyed dream of glory and promotion before, nine times out of ten, those dreams are broken before the clocks go back let alone when they go forward again.

Nine times out of ten that is, if you support someone other than Reading. For someone my age, coming into this stage of the season with something to play for is to be expected rather than to be shocked at (not that I’d take anything for granted as a Reading fan). Over a decade has now passed since we haven’t had something to play for going into the last eight games of the season.

So yes, it is nearly 20C, it has been sunny all day long and we can look forward lustily to the game against Blackpool tomorrow, still with those glory-based dreams in our mind, unbroken by the bitter winter of football now passed.

But now, now its crunch time. The winter months build character in a squad of players but now is the time when that character and those lessons learned are tested to the extreme and many are found wanting.

Without wanting to put too much of a point on it, it is now crunch time big for Reading. At the very base level, there are eight games left to secure promotion. Insert squeaky bum time reference here, naturally. Eight games where the pressure is at its intense.

Factor in that of those eight remaining games, seven are against the current top twelve in the Championship and three of the away matches are at St Mary’s, Upton Park and St. Andrews. More pressure. It’s not exactly the easiest run in but you’ve got to prove you’re better than the rest and there is the opportunity; come through those with your dream still intact and you’ve earned your glory.

On top of that, Reading will be going into the game against Blackpool in a situation they haven’t faced in 11 games;  coming off the back of a defeat in their last match (against Peterborough) in addition to being the hunted rather than the hunting in the race for the two automatic promotion spts.

Blackpool will be a similar proposition to the Posh; open, expansive attacking football. One look at the stats shows this with the Tangerines knocking in more goals than anyone else on their travels but also conceding the third highest away from home. However, it wasn’t the openness that did for us on Tuesday night but some uncharacteristic bad defending.

A similar proposition to Peterborough perhaps but there is the notable added advantage of being at home. We’ve lost just once in the league at the Madejski since the middle of November (and that in dubious circumstances vs Hull).

Looking at historical precedent, 70 points is very close to being the benchmark for a play-off place but the noises coming out of the club have been anything but settling. The players sound up for the run-in and determined to see it through and the bringing in Benik Afobe to bolster the attacking ranks sends out a message to those around us that Reading are up for the fight in the sunshine, just as they were in the rain and snow.

The Anti-Social Network @9pm, Monday, BBC3- 8 out of 10

And so once again I return to a favourite reviewing ground of mine; the BBC3 documentary at 9pm on a Monday evening. Great to be back.

So, let’s run The Anti-Social Network stacks up against my BBC3 documentary checklist (patent pending). Celebrity presenter? Check. Fellow celebrity guests? Yup. Real life people like you or I interviewed? That’s there too. Content aimed at a young adult audience? Oh yeah.

Formula stuck to but that isn’t much of a problem. These days BBC3’s documentary making style has come on leaps and bounds since the bottom-of-the-barrel-scraping that was Hotter than my daughter. Hardcore issues are tackled and brought to a wider audience.

The celebrity in question hosting this show is Richard Bacon who, I’m not saying it to kiss arse, is a talented broadcaster from the hard broadcasting of Five Live in the afternoon to the slightly less hard broadcasting of...ummmm... “Richard Bacon’s Beer and Pizza club” on ITV4.

Everyone in the entire country now knows what trolling is as its no longer a phenomenon stuck to the Internet. It’s all over the national newspapers, including the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph which means old people now know what it is now and have something else to fear.

As the show explains a concept we all already know, there are two types of trolling. The first is random, usually anonymous abuse toward both celebrities and regular people over the Internet. This consists of largely mindless drivel but also real threats, all delivered from safely behind a monitor.

Most of us who post creative items on the Internet (whether as a writer or artist or whatever) have been there; this blog has a couple and another blog I write for takes on loads of awful, terrible, lame attempts at trolling. Easier enough to deal with but rather unpleasant to deal with.

However, other trolling of this type is seriously vindictive and includes abuse aimed at Bacon, his wife and his son. Elsewhere, it led to a 15 year-old boy hanging himself due to online abuse.

The other type is just as harrowing and involves tribute pages to young people who have tragically died being hijacked and causing distress to family and friends.

The documentary itself is, in a similar way to Britain’s Gay Footballers, the issues covered are largely common knowledge but greater exposure to the issue is always welcome, particularly when it’s done well.

And done well it is, aside from the frequent intermittent footage of iPad and Mac use (Apple had better of paid for this product placement) and Bacon on his phone to show off some modern technology to appeal to we yoof. Largely, the public infomercial element of the show isn’t too overbearing as to make it unbearable.

There are some fascinating insights into the murky world of trolling where there is something of an arms race between trollers and the law going on. As the former take over innocent people’s accounts, creating fake accounts, covering their tracks and so on, the police struggle to catch up with them. They’re success is obvious as only two trollers have ever been arrested under the 2003 Communications Act.

There is also the awesome sounding passion of troll hunting, such as a man by the (fake) name of “Michael Fitzpatrick” who tracks down trolls but fears for his safety as a result. The almost military planning that goes into trolling tribute pages for children Fitzpatrick outlined was particularly disturbing.

Bacon accuses suspected trollers but when they are confronted they do pretty much what they expect you to do; deny, deny, deny. Obviously it’s easier to be assertive and in your face when sat at a keyboard and not in person. Either they deny or their strange justification from trolling that largely a sympathetic comment from a random person on a tribute page isn’t right so needs readdressing. Twisted logic thy name is the Internet.

Making a statement

Ten days ago, I wrote a meandering, dreadful piece of writing about the perceptions of the 1-0 scoreline in football. Really, do not read it at all unless you do literally have all the time in the world to burn.

The main point of the piece was to talk about how 1-0 wins in football are talked up by managers, pundits and commentators (no one-size fits all use of the word “media” here, friends) as “the sign of a successful team”.

This cliché is, inevitably, bollocks. The only time a series of wins by the odd goal looks good is come the end of the season, when hindsight becomes 20:20 and one can look back at that run of wins and say “yeah, that was where the confidence was built and promotion/title was really won”. At the time of those wins, confidence is never there, in the stands at least, to think a win is inevitable.

Much more confidence in your team comes from when you give another club a real dicking. It demonstrates a marked superiority, particularly when you add a clean sheet to the offering too. You can see both on the pitch and on paper that you are a lot better than a fellow team.

And so we come to Reading.

As we’ve quietly gone about our business since the turn of the year, picking up 31 points from 39 available (or 43 points from 51 since December 10^th), we haven’t  really destroyed anyone. Largely single goal or two goal wins have been the order of the day, built on solid defensive performances.

Whilst looking impressive, multiple games in which one unlucky break or piece of magic and the story could be completely different have, for myself at least, doubted how good we might actually be.

Nothing quite breeds confidence like some good solid numbers combined with an impressive performance. Winning well whilst playing badly is good and winning at the very least is also good but a superb performance married with a huge margin of victory is the business.

But, the game against Barnsley was so much more than some confirmation that we can destroy a team when we want to. There were a myriad of other factors to consider.

With our winning run coming to an end in midweek at Doncaster, it was interesting to see how we would bounce back from the smallest of setbacks. My own theory was that the pressure might have been released a bit as the overbearing nature of wanting to keep that run going would be lifted; an extended unbeaten run is a far more common occurrence than a long winning one. That would appear to have been the case.

Secondly, as is so often said, being the hunted is quite a different kettle of fish to being the hunter and Saturday marked the first time this season we were in that position with Reading going into the game second ahead of West Ham. Against a team in a decent run of form, we responded to this new challenge by hitting four goals, taking our goal difference above that of third-placed West Ham and briefly going top of the league.

On the other hand, our East London rivals have felt the pressure and slumped to three draws in a row. It would appear our squad has taken on the experience of last-years late-season pressure and how to cope with it. Pushing on for the whole 90 minutes to grab an extra goal to secure that improved goal difference also shows this experience coming to the fore.

There is still a long way to go this season and I’d still make us third-favourites for promotion thanks to our tricky run-in and the quality of our rivals but quietly going about our business is what we do and there still seems to be some reluctance to take our promotion push based on a “better-than-the-sum-of-our-parts” team approach. Long may it continue that way.

1-0s and time-shifting perspectives

The final score in football is always the most important piece of information to come out of a game. The way in which the score is achieved is quite irrelevant. As long as you get the right result, that is all you need. Even West Ham fans with Sam Allardyce, perhaps the most contrasting manager to an assumed historical ethos around right now, appreciate that.

But the problem with scorelines are that they can be deceptive and misleading. A 1-0 win can come as a result of utter domination from one team and putting away just the one chance or utter domination from that same team and the opposition doing a “smash and grab”. That’s the thing with numbers; they only tell you so much.

In theory and on paper, a 1-0 win is the perfect scoreline for the victorious team. It would appear to indicate minimal effort expended to get the advantage and the prevention of your opponents from achieving their primary aim of scoring.

However, the now clichéd “football is played on grass not paper” argument is the correct one here as anyone who has ever sat through a 1-0 win will attest. That slender advantage is under constant threat; every time the ball gets even remotely close to your team’s penalty box your heart beats increases and your bowels get that feeling usually reserved for that split second between saying a chat-up line and finding out whether it landed or not.

This might just be my in-built pessimism, developed over 15 years of supporting Reading, kicking in but even with a resolutely and proven solid defence, a 1-0 win never looks secure until the final whistle. A team that’s conceded just the one goal in the last seven games or so should be able to hold on to the slenderest of leads as they’ve done it before.

Indeed, we have on the majority of the games in our recent winning run which looks great, once the results have been secured. Sat watching it, one can’t help but feel that the odds of probability mean the equaliser has got to come soon, even with the best teams.

It’s commonly assumed that 1-0 wins that are ground out in the middle of the season are what indicates a successful team on the march to promotion or a title. But they sure as hell don’t feel that way when these wins are being accumulated, even on a regular basis as Reading are doing right now.

Maybe just the Reading pessimism again, seeing as only in THAT season have I ever approached Reading games with a lot of confidence in a positive outcome, but I can’t shake the feeling we will get found out soon. I said the same thing last season mind and Reading are an awful lot more well rounded side than this time last year.

1-0 wins may well be the benchmark of a good team but you just don’t know if the team is really that good, at Championship level anyway, until the season is drawing to a close. Come the end of April, we may well be saying that this period right now is where we won promotion but, right now, each single goal lead still brings the same fear.

Some thoughts on KONY2012

Waking up this morning, in a cosy warm bed with the opportunity to sleep a little more, have a shower, eat some breakfast or watch some TV all available to me, I went on Facebook and Twitter, my usual way of starting the day. How modern of me.

Quite often, there is always a dominant theme going on that people are talking about. I fully expected it to be the Arsenal game last night on a nationwide trend or, more locally, the Reading game last evening (as that’s a shared interest of myself and friends) and the ongoing Student Union elections at my old university, as I remain both interested and in touch with people involved there.

However, this morning, it was none of these things that were the dominant topic on my social media networks of choice. The overwhelming focal point of interest was an embedded YouTube video entitled “KONY 2012” and accompanying messages saying how moving and powerful it was.

For the first six hours of my day, I did not watch it. The reason? My entrenched cynicism.

I could recognise it was a campaign of some sort, most probably for a good cause with universal appeal. However, my cynicism prevented me from watching it as it looked to me, initially, that it was something of a basic approach to looking deep and caring. The kind of thing people could share on their Facebook to show how in touch with issues they are. An easy, almost lazy, way of showing how right on you are and that you want to make a difference, but only if that difference isn’t too difficult to achieve and you can do it by clicking “share” on YouTube or buying yourself a bracelet. A very worthy cause taken on and popularised, very briefly I assumed, that would not go anywhere.

After a while though, I saw that this video was not going away and my interest was very much growing, in retrospect, considering the aims of the project, a very apt way of me eventually watching it.

And yes, just yes.

This is the kind of thing the Internet has the power to do, connect people across the globe on a campaign. The “Cover the Night” events are not everyone’s cup of tea but that is merely one form of the attack plan of Invisible Children, in my opinion.*

For those of us in the UK, we haven’t gone through the massive ‘getting-in-touch-with-the-politicians’ campaign that the American branch of Invisible Children did that resulted in the military advisors being dispatched to Uganda. If you see the “Cover the Night” campaign as condoning vandalism (or similar arguments) you don’t have to do that to support that event.

Get in touch with politicians or just talk about the issue with people at work or online. That’s the point, not even to spread the word of the campaign itself, but to make Kony’s name known.

Is it something of a trend? Possibly yes but that should not make one iota of difference. If turning a campaign for a good cause into something that’s trendy among people rids the world of a Joseph Kony, that end justifies this particular means a billion times over. Posering that people are jumping on a bandwagon to look cool or look worldly is neither here nor there; getting the world talking and more people caring about the subject is all that matters.

Will all of the people who have currently pledged to go on the “Cover The Night” events across the country actually turn up? The fact is that in the modern age, attention spans are short and we all have leapt from one idea to another without following the former through. But, hopefully a fair number will turn out but even a handful is a handful more than would have turned up they had not seen the video in the first place.

Will it result in Joseph Kony appearing before the International Criminal Court? I have my doubts on this due to way the world seems to work. As the video says, the pressure applied by US military advisors helped the first time around so there is hope there.

Ultimately, the best thing for Kony is not being talked about, the worst is being talked about. Make that happen.

*For the record, I myself am unsure about whether to attend a “Cover the Night” event. Deep down, I would like to think so but I am equally as sure that I am as big a product of the Twitter generation (i.e. move on from things swiftly) that I may well lose interest, a depressing self-recognition that I might be able to alter.

EDIT; And thus we have the problem with the Internet and viral marketing. Much has come to light since this blog was posted about the activities of Invisible Children and their operation. This has changed my view of the situation somewhat though I still believe there is scope for large-scale campaigns using the Internet to orchestrate them.
I most certainly got caught up in the emotional pull of it all, which was of course the aim of the situation. This is clearly a huge issue and one that the international community has been attempting to combat over the years. It is also a complex one that a single aim group would struggle to solve.
Lastly, it is a shame however that, when people show an interest in a campaign such as this (despite it's faults) they are shot down for showing passion for something by others.
Remember kids, showing an interest in something isn't cool. Apathy and lethargy are what you should aim for.

Three positives and three negatives from the new series of 10 O'Clock Live

We’re now four episodes into the new, streamlined version of last year’s hugely trumpeted, all-star casted 10 O’clock Live so now is probably a good time to see what’s been good so far this series and what could do with some improvement.

The Pluses

1. Streaming down to 45 minutes worth of content

The first series weighed in at only 10 minutes longer per episode than this series but the slim down has done 10 O’clock Live the world of good for three main reasons.

Firstly, the over-reliance on David Mitchell for both serious interviewing and humour has been reduced now that he anchors just the one leg of the show, instead of his previous three. Although this meant cutting the usually amusing “Listen to Mitchell” segment, it does allow a stronger debate with the experts section and means he can contribute to the roundtable discussions more (more on that later).

Secondly, as a result of the loss of “Listen to Mitchell”, Charlie Brooker now has the sole ‘ranty’ section of the show and with good reason to as it’s what he does best. Dropping his to-camera, fast-as-a-bullet-but-still-eloquent rants from two to one an episode has allowed him to refine his piece and the show is not overloaded with to-camera shouty-ness.

And thirdly, 55 minutes of live, largely unscripted television is a difficult enough task for long running programmes, let alone a new kid on the block. As such, the show felt overextended with not enough content spread too thin. Whilst the reduction in running time has meant certain positive elements of the programme have had to be cut, it is to the benefit of the show as a whole.

2. Increased frequency of group, roundtable discussions

Along with the reduction in running time, using a roundtable discussion (technically a square-table discussion I guess) to bookend each segment of the show before the ad breaks has given greater structure to 10 O’clock Live, helped bridge the gap between the political and the humour aspects of the show and given the presenters greater scope to showcase some rapport and eliminate any lingering clunkiness from the first series.

3. Better usage of Lauren Laverne

As the only presenter with real experience of how live broadcasting works, Laverne was given the role of leading the show in the first series of 10 O’clock Live and she has, rightly, been given even more responsibility this time around, being charged with leading the discussions and steering the show in the right directions.

Whilst her pieces aren’t quite as humorous as the other presenters (naturally, as she is a broadcaster by trade rather than a humorist) and she sometimes struggles to keep the discussions on the straight and narrow (in fairness, God’s own job with three men trying to out-humour each other), her role in the programme is the most important of all the presenters and she has risen to the challenge.

The Minuses

1. Questionable usage of Carr

The first series of 10 O’clock Live had a clear role for Carr which consisted of; get the show off to a flier with some near-the-knuckle topical jokes at the start and interview someone newsworthy that week (a skill which he proved surprisingly adept at). Towards the end of the first series, a strange, weekly attempt at putting Carr into a sketch came into place, an element of the show I was hoping would be quietly dropped seeing as Carr is a comedian and presenter, not a comic actor.

However, this second series, his interviews have been abandoned to be replaced solely by these weekly sketches which, if last night’s was anything to go by, are getting worse; even worse than that ill-conceived Vladimir Putin impersonation in the first episode, somehow.

Better use of Carr’s talents should be made. The ambiguity of his political leanings should be made better use of in an otherwise very left-leaning presenter line-up.

2. Equalling out the humour/politics ratio

Perhaps the biggest challenge still facing the show is consistently keeping a balance between the humour and political aspects that the programme wants to get across.

By vacating the Thursday 10pm slot, Channel 4 has rightly pulled 10 O’clock Live out of the firing line of juggernaut Question Time and so might be able to gain some politically-minded viewers from the rescheduling.

However, segments like the Putin sketch feel a bit too lightweight (almost patronising) for a show aiming to attract a more political audience, if indeed, that is the aim.

3. Continued issues around the live aspect of the show

Whilst this is less of an issue than in the first series, where the presenters lack of experience on live TV (despite their Alternative Election Night together) was clear to see, there still remains some slip-ups, whether it be with slight fluffing of lines or presenters appearing in the background of someone else’s piece.

But this might be something of a harsh criticism as it is live TV and there never will be a 100% gaffe-free live TV show as we’re all humans and we make mistakes. That’s why they put editing suites at TV studios…