Category Archives: PortfolioTelevision

Debating the BBC (and more!) in Wales

Blog, Industry, Media, Portfolio, PortfolioTelevision

Broadcasting in Wales: the Future of the BBC Charter, an event organised by the Wales Governance Centre. will scrutinise the future of the BBC in Wales (6pm Tuesday 15th March, Millennium Centre, Cardiff).

At a time when the future of the BBC’s Charter is being debated in public, and with politicians in Cardiff Bay  and Westminster looking at the future of the media, this is a crucial time for broadcasting in Wales. This event will look at the key topics emerging from these debates and how they might influence the future of the BBC in Wales.

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Pitch Your Ideas Workshop

Industry, Portfolio, PortfolioPrint, PortfolioTelevision, Uncategorized

I never fail to be impressed by how well participants in this workshop grasp the pitching principles I offer. I am convinced that most people are aware of what it takes to make a good sales pitch but perhaps have not had the opportunity to pull what they know together and also to reach for the sales person hidden inside each of us. And it’s fun – as you can see  in the photograph above – happy faces at the end of the workshop I delivered on 10th March! Continue reading Pitch Your Ideas Workshop →

ACS & DOCS Cardiff University

Portfolio, PortfolioTelevision, Teaching, Television

Another fascinating group of people on my workshop for academics about involvement in tv documentary on 1st March.

This three-hour session for Cardiff University Graduate College covers what an academic needs to know about how tv documentary gets developed, commissioned and made and how academics can contribute successfully and enjoyably. Universities commonly offer training in how to engage with news via sound-bites but seldom on what it means to be involved in long-form output or series.

The feedback was uniformly excellent.

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The Wales Report – Broadcasting in Wales

Portfolio, PortfolioTelevision, Television

On the day of the IWA’s Cardiff Media Summit I fronted an analysis of the challenges facing broadcasting in Wales shown on The Wales Report BBC One Wales ahead of Huw Edwards’s interview with BBC Director of Strategy, James Purnell.

hb jp
Huw Edwards interviews James Purnell

BBC ‘committed’ to Welsh broadcasting     BBC News

IWA summit
IWA Cardiff Media Summit 11th November 2015

See article on IWA Audit and associated issues:

Analysis – IWA Wales Media Audit   BBC News

S4C ‘cycle of decline’ funding fear   BBC News

‘Lamentable’ lack of BBC Wales TV programmes in English   BBC News

 

What’s in it for Wales? Tony Hall’s new BBC

Blog, Industry, Portfolio, PortfolioTelevision, Television

“This is the story I want to focus on this evening.” said Tony Hall, Director General of the BBC in a speech given to Cardiff Business Club on Monday 23rd November. “The BBC as a home for distinctive quality and creativity, supporting the best talent and brightest ambition – a driving force behind the UK’s extraordinary global competitiveness in the creative industries.”

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IWA Wales Media Audit and Cardiff Media Summit

Blog, Industry, Media, PortfolioTelevision

IWA montage

“get reading this thorough and classy piece of work”

I had the pleasure of chairing the second Cardiff Media Summit on the 11th November at the Wales Millennium Centre. The first summit was held in December 2014, a half-day event. It was clear then that in order to address the problems and take advantage of the opportunities facing the media in Wales there was an urgent need for objective facts as the basis for policy recommendations. Just under a year later we have the IWA Wales Media Audit 2015 , launched at the summit.

This is an update to the Media Audit done by the IWA in 2008. The 2015 Audit offers information about provision in Wales of press, online and broadcast media, includes a review of all major policy statements since the last audit and, drawing on the information gathered, makes 37 recommendations. Continue reading IWA Wales Media Audit and Cardiff Media Summit →

Is the BBC Trust getting the message from Wales?

Blog, Industry, Media, PortfolioTelevision, Television

The BBC Trust held a seminar in Cardiff ‘as part of the Charter review process’ on 20th October. It was open to the public but the majority of those present were media workers, academics or correspondents. The Western Mail report on it is accurate but conveys nothing of the atmosphere among the attendees which was, at times, mutinous and, finally, outspokenly critical. These sore spots have to be examined or they will go on festering to no good purpose.

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Beyond Rhetoric – IWA Media Policy for Wales

Blog, Industry, Media, PortfolioTelevision

 

“as slow to be set on fire as a stomach”

I wondered, while listening to Rhodri Talfan Davies speak this week on two occasions at the National Eisteddfod, if some version of that sentiment ever entered his mind. It certainly entered mine. It’s a striking phrase coined by George Eliot to express her frustration at her contemporaries’ failure to grasp the spirit of the times. How slow we are – those of us not touched by genius such as hers   ̶   to see the writing on the cultural wall in front of us. A new dispensation is coming and we need the ideas to meet it.

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