Writing Activities In A Range Of Media

Inquiry After Toon Keeper Attacked By Fan


The Football Association is likely to launch an inquiry after the Newcastle United goalkeeper, Steve Harper, was attacked by a Sunderland fan in the 1-1 draw


New Sitcom To Coincide With 3 Top UK Drama's US Debut

BBC2's new sitcom, Episodes, could not have been more impeccably timed. The Matt LeBlanc comedy about the travails of a pair of British writers taking their hit show to America coincided with US adaptations of three of the most acclaimed UK dramas of recent years – Shameless, which launched on pay cable network Showtime last week, Skins and Being Human, which both make their Stateside debuts tonight.

The next series of another homegrown drama hit, the BBC's Torchwood, is being co-produced with US cable channel Starz – adding American stars including Bill Pullman – while Episodes is itself a co-production between Showtime and the corporation.

It may also not have escaped your attention that Piers Morgan will launch his CNN talkshow tonight, promising a different sort of TV drama.

No wonder the New York Times's TV critic Alessandra Stanley referred to the "Britishification" – hardly the buzziest of buzzwords, but it'll have to do – of American television.

Nearly 30 years after Chariots of Fire Oscar winner Colin Welland famously announced "The British are coming!", it really does seem to be boomtime for British TV drama across the Atlantic.

The Impact Of WikiLeaks

1. WikiLeaks "changes everything". So says Christian Caryl in the latest New York Review of Books, as the media, technology and foreign policy worlds ponder the effect of the industrial dumping of US government cables. For several years American analysts in particular have been trying to make sense of the information free-for-all facilitated by the internet. Julian Assange's perhaps inadvertent contribution is to have brought a previously arcane debate into the forefront of global politics.

So what exactly has the WikiLeaks affair changed? It is just over a month since the third and by far the largest tranche of State Department documents was sprayed into the public domain by a curious mix of techno-anarchist geeks and some of the world's most prestigious newspapers, including this one.

The tensions between WikiLeaks and the Guardian were set out in painful detail in a Vanity Fair article that juxtaposed the values of traditional journalists with those of Assange and his crew.

Assange's personality has been much trawled over and is, in the long term for journalism and democracy, irrelevant. What matters is what he has done, and what his pursuers are doing, to the related issues of freedom of expression, freedom of information, confidentiality and accountability.

Review of trailer for The Green Hornet :

The Green Hornet is a 2011 action comedy film starring Seth Rogan and Jay Chou who potray pulp hero and masked vigilante The Green Hornet and his Side-kick Kato. The trailer is 2:00 of hilarious action where Seth Rogan is at his comedy best with a superhero twist, which is bound to attract long term fans of his work although original fans of the Green Hornet will probably not take to the Action-Comedy.


Review of 'Websites That Suck' video :

An amusing review of the obviously outdated website 'Scene-Clean'. The heavy use of sarcasm used while zooming in on the 'Marvellous' factors make this review an entertaining look at how this particular website is thought out of into todays ever-advancing technological culture.


Review of 'Good Website Design'

This is simple Point of View style video by Christopher Mellor. The video consists of helpful and informative tips on simple website design. He also looks and the basic guidelines and rules needed to create a successful but basic website.

Record Labels Plan Strategy To Beat Music Piracy

Ten years after piracy first began to ravage the music industry, Britain's two biggest record labels will finally try to play their part in stopping it, by making new singles available for sale on the day they first hit the airwaves.

Universal and Sony Music – home to Take That and Matt Cardle, respectively – hope the effort will encourage the impatient X Factor generation to buy songs they can listen to immediately rather than copying from radio broadcasts online.

David Joseph, the chief executive of Universal Music, said: "Wait is not a word in the vocabulary of the current generation. It's out of date to think that you can build up demand for a song by playing it for several weeks on radio in advance."

Songs used to receive up to six weeks radio airplay before they were released for sale – a practice known as "setting up" a record. But the success of selling the winner's single immediately after the X Factor final has made record bosses think again.

"What we were finding under the old system was the searches for songs on Google or iTunes were peaking two weeks before they actually became available to buy, meaning that the public was bored of – or had already pirated – new singles," Joseph added.

Sony, which will start the "on air, on sale" policy simultaneously with Universal next month, agreed that the old approach was no longer relevant in an age where, according to a spokesman for the music major, "people want instant gratification".

Cardle, who signed to Sony via an agreement with Simon Cowell, sold 439,000 copies of When we Collide when it made the Christmas number one, the track having gone on sale just as the X Factor final ended on television.

Industry insiders believe instant sales will make it easier for records to climb the charts as excitement about a new song builds, developing a trend first seen when download sales joined the mainstream.

In the past, heavy pre-release marketing had tended to mean a new single crash-landed at its peak position on its first week of release – making the top 40 a dull narrative of short-lived new entries leavened by falling songs and fading glamour.

Jessie J's Do it Like a Dude went on sale and on radio at the beginning of December, and the 22-year-old's R&B single climbed steadily to reach number 5 last week. As more singles follow suit, the charts will briefly become uneven as songs adopting the old and the new marketing policies mix.

Piracy remains a crippling problem for the British music business, where the overall market fell by nearly 6% in 2010 and album sales slumped 7%, despite the success surrounding Robbie Williams's rejoining Take That and Simon Cowell's television-fuelled hits factory.

Although pirating songs from the radio is as old as tape recorders, the record companies believe the move will show ministers that they are playing their part in fighting copyright theft.

Universal and Sony have both notified Ed Vaizey, the minister for culture and the creative industries, of their plans.

250 Word Summary

Twoof Music biggest record labels are going to spearhead the attack on music piracy. Sony and Universal are to combat the ever-increasing theft of music by releasing their latest singles the second it hits our radios. It a move that will hopefully encourage listeners to purchase the single instead of downloading it illegally. In a generation where ‘Wait is not a word’, Sony will start their “on air, on sale” policy next month, at the same time as Universal. Those on the inside believe that as the buzz around the new single builds so will the chances for albums to climb the charts. The music industry has been crying out for some internal changes that will aid record labels and ultimately the artists themselves as the past have proven that relentless pre-release marketing has resulting in a promising first week position but then an inevitable slump throughout the following weeks. This has made the charts a show of short-lived releases and one week wonders. The overall market dropped by almost 6% in 2010 and album sales fell 7%. Although piracy is as old as tape recording off the radio and as technology advances so will methods to access music and this shows a promising step in battling music piracy.

50 Word Review

Two of musics biggest record labels has taken a promising step in stopping music piracy by making their latest singles avaliable for purchase the second they hit the airwaves. The battle to encourage listeners to purchase music instead of downloading illegally starts this month.