I am a Sky News viewer. That’s my guilty confession. I don’t so much sit and watch it as have it on in the background when I’m at home. It’s essentially moving wallpaper for my living room, often ‘watched’ without sound.

I choose Sky News because it’s the least distracting of the news channels. That used to be true of BBC News 24, but there’s something about the presentational style now that distracts me. I don’t know what it is, or whether that’s a good thing for attracting viewers who actually want to watch, but it’s turned me off.

I also like the fact that they respond and change scripts when I send them moany emails pointing out the factual errors in their medical reportage, whereas the BBC generally ignore me.

So, as a Sky News viewer, the iPad App has been marketed very heavily at me. Frankly, I’m fed up of seeing the adverts.

The app is fairly new, and has received a lot of praise from all over the place: Tech Radar basically loved it, Zath thought it was one of the iPad’s best apps, and Crowded Brain gave it 9/10.

The app is often praised for its innovative presentational style and ‘immersive’ experience. It has two main gateways, both of which are video focussed. There is a traditional ‘order of importance’ approach, where videos and headlines from stories are dynamically (read: messily) arranged with size and position indicating importance. Hit a video and it starts to play, while contextual information flies in from the sides. The contextual information is generally more video content on the same story, textual content, or interactive graphics.

Alternatively, the ‘timeline’ view gives me a virtually minute-by-minute index of what has been presented on Sky News over the last 24 hours, and allows me to jump to any bit of it, with the contextual fly-ins as above.

Conclusion: I hate it.

I really do very strongly dislike this app. I just don’t think I’m a person who enjoys consuming news through video. I might have Sky News on all the time, but I guess I don’t really watch it. Save for some recent very big stories, few newsworthy items lend themselves to videos – moving pictures rarely add all that much to understanding. I’d far rather scan-read a written article than spend three times the time being spoon-fed a simplified version of the issue via video.

I didn’t realise how strongly I felt about this until this app came along. I rarely click the videos in online news articles, but they don’t bother me – I just ignore them. But when you go down this Sky News route of removing almost everything but the video it becomes painfully clear that this isn’t the way I like to consume my news.

I’ll concede that the app is visually striking – though I wouldn’t necessarily call it attractive. I’ll concede that it’s innovative – I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. But I’ll conclude that it’s not for me – when it moves to a subscription model, I won’t be paying.

This is the third in a series of posts reviewing iPad Apps. Yesterday’s review was of the iWork Apps. Check back tomorrow for my review of Who Wants to be a Millionaire HD. Yes, really.

Yes, you read that title right. And why not? I’ve liveblogged Eurovision before, after all.

Anyway, I’m late, so will get started…

Oh, the grammatical absurdity of that post title.

There was a time when I wrote on this blog daily. That time has clearly passed, but if I was still doing it, I’d have written something about i yesterday – The Indy’s new not-quite-free-sheet.

And if I’d have written something, it would not have been unlike what Jonathan Rothwell has written over on Crashed Pips. I agree with most of what he’s said, so it seems pointless to repeat it.

I liked i. But I say that as someone who’s never been keen on Metro‘s acres of dry agency copy. It’s not something I’d go out of my way to buy on a daily basis, but when I have to go somewhere on a train, I often snoop around WHSmith before boarding and find nothing that I want to read. Now, I’d buy i. It’s interesting and diverting enough to part with 20p, and small and disposable enough to stuff in a bag.

Yet I didn’t like everything.

My biggest complaint about it is the printing process used. Like The Independent, it’s printed with that horrible ink that comes off on your hands, your clothes, and gets everywhere. That is something that would put me off buying the paper in certain situations.

They need to change to whatever printing process The Guardian or Metro use, where the ink stays firmly where the printer puts it.

I also dislike the TV Guide, whose organisation strikes me as pointless. I don’t like TV in categories. I wouldn’t identify as a fan of ‘American Drama’, or ‘Comedy’, or ‘Documentaries’ or whatever idiotic bins they throw programmes into.

In American Drama, I’m mad about The West Wing, but couldn’t give a toss about The Wire, Lost, or Law and Order. When it comes to comedy, I won’t miss The Inbetweeners, but would switch off My Family, Harry and Paul, or Only Fools and Horses. And for documentaries, I’d pay good money to see The Secret Life of the Motorway on BBC Four, but would want a licence fee refund for Make Me a Man, The Boy with Three Heads and Eight Sets of Eyebrows (or whatever idiot trash they’re pumping out these days), or Help Me Anthea, I’m Infested.

I don’t watch TV in ‘Genres’, I watch stuff I like. So giving me a page divided into genres is unhelpful.

Also, they need to get TV Reviewers who understand that writing a review of the previous night’s TV is not actually what they are being asked to do. A good TV review is almost a meditation on life, and certainly doesn’t depend on having seen the previous night’s TV. Get Nancy Banks-Smith in to do a masterclass or something.

But the TV Guide is the part of the paper that’s had the most positive reviews as far as I can see, so maybe I’m just unusual.

Oh, and ‘Caught and Social’? Puns only work when they’re funny.

Yet all-in-all and rants aside, I hope that i sticks around. And, given what The Independent has become these days, I wouldn’t be upset if i replaced it.

Back in 2003, I pointed readers in the direction of a Guardian interview, by Decca Aitkenhead, with a teenage mother called Hannah White. She gave birth to Ebony in the middle of her GCSEs, and still managed to get great results.

The comment thread on my post turned into something of a support forum for teenage mums, which offers fascinating reading in itself. Hannah came along and contributed from time to time, but towards the end of last year it kind of petered out.

But now, Hannah herself has posted on there again, letting us know that she’s now got her degree and has started working full time in neurosciences, as Ebony has just turned five.

I just think this goes to show how the stereotypes of teenage parents can so often be wide of the mark.

Congratulations, Hannah, and all the best for the future. 🙂

I’ve been intending to post for ages on the subject of patronising, irritating, and most certainly excessive Government advertising. I have found recently that it’s impossible to watch a single commercial TV programme without seeing at least one Government funded advert, whether it be for direct.gov, the road safety Think! campaign, the NHS Stop Smoking campaign, car tax renewals, Fire Kills, the Know Your Limits alcohol campaign, the ubiquitous Change4Life, the Act FAST stroke campaign, Act on CO2, the Food Imports campaign, the irritatingly clever Get On ads, or any one of the miriad campaigns the Government is funding at any one time. Listening to the radio is worse. And even Spotify has been invaded.

Government posters are everywhere – the recent slightly threatening Policing Pledge ones are spreading like a rash, but my personal favourite is the Food Standards Agency one shown here. Apparently, choosing something with fewer saturated fats helps me reduce my saturated fat intake. Well, duh.

These adverts are even invading cash machines. I’d never really noticed cash manchine adverts before – are they new? – until one had an NHS advert on it, with someone sneezing in my face.

But all of this came to a head yesterday. Whilst wandering round Eldon Square, I found no fewer than three government supported advertising stands. One was for Change4Life, there was one advertising the local NHS Walk-in Centre, and one talking about reducing CO2. All in the same shopping centre, at the same time.

This is nannyism taken to another level.

What on Earth is the cost of all of this manifest advertising? It surely must be huge.  Now no-one in their right mind would argue with some of the campaigns – fire safety is important, the Act FAST campaign is a major attempt to get people to re-think stroke, and road safety is in everyone’s interest. But there’s a difference between informing the public and forcibly ramming things down their throat.

The Conservatives have posited Government advertising as one of the big areas in which they can reduce waste. Frankly, the sooner they get the chance, the better.

ITV’s financial woes have rarely been out of the media trade rags recently, and the story reached new levels of idiocy this week when the Express claimed the broadcaster was considering a move to a subscription model.

As far as I can see, ITV’s problems could be significantly eased by more successful exploitation of its sucessful brands. While the ITV brand itself doesn’t have nearly the kudos of that of its public sector rival, it does have some huge brands.

Take The X Factor. It is a multimedia juggernaut, winning viewers, selling newspapers and gaining the general attention of the populace for weeks on end – now, pretty much, year round. Yet ITV only really exploit this format to the max on TV. Looking at the recent history of the format, every iteration has included more democratisation – from Popstars, with no interaction, through Pop Idol, which introduced the public vote, through to The X Factor, which is really the first of the shows to maximise the participatory process with extended auditions.

Further democratising the format could bring in huge revenues, slash costs, and make a more engaging show: Simply take the format online in an engaging way.

ITV are notoriously crap at web-based engagement, so let them keep their grubby mits at arms length from the project. Democratise it through holding auditions on a specially commisioned YouTube channel. Have people upload their auditions, let the online public vote, and invite the top 500 or so to traditional auditions.

This change in format allows a whole load of advertising to surround the videos, it works in the favour of newspapers and magazines who can boost their own web profits by pointing people from their publication to their publication’s website for links to the videos (or even embedded versions, HeatWorld style), and it engaged the largely web-enabled target audience.

It introduces whole new story arcs – see Peter, he did an excellent Bohemian Rhapsody on YouTube, but at the auditions it becomes clear that’s all he can sing – see Jane, she wasn’t rated highly by the online viewers, who couldn’t see past the poor production of her video, but the judges see the ‘next big thing’ in her – et cetera, ad infinitum.

Once the audience is built for the audition stage, maintaining it for the later stages of the competition should be childsplay for  the ‘media masterminds’ on The X Factor team.

Philip Schofield’s 100k+ Twitter followers show that there’s an appetite for real exclusive extended content beyond the ITV hits, even when backed up by a fairly standard iViva site, barely better in design than ITV’s own pisspor Dancing on Ice site.

I don’t watch Coronation Street, but if I did I’m fairly sure the last place I’d look for exclusives on the next big story line is the official site – not least as I count seven flashy adverts on the homepage, and am prompted to install Microsoft Silverlight for anything much to happen.

Surely there’s a market for a magazine and website combo, again controlled at arms length from ITV, but in which ITV could have a stake? With the popularity of all the soaps, the ‘unofficial’ Soap Mags which sell like hot cakes could surely never compete with a title part-owned at ITV which is being drip-fed bona fide confirmed hints of storylines to come? Combined with genuine interest back-stage exclusives, there surely must be a market? Especially if ITV were arms-length enough that the soaps could be treated with the slight ‘guilty secret’ irreverance they deserve.

Now, I realise, it’s commonplace to suggest that in these financially hard times ITV needs to consolidate its core services, whereas I’m suggesting diversification. I’ll leave it to the good readership of sjhoward.co.uk to explain to me why my against-the-grain idea is idiocy, rather than a brilliant solution.

It was with deep regret that I learned on Friday evening of the death of one of radio’s greatest dry wits, Humphrey Lyttelton.

I’ll always remember him as the wonderful host of one of Radio 4’s best shows, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, though Radio 2’s The Best of Jazz was the soundtrack to and from the journey to many of my own music lessons in my youth.

His is one of those friendly voices which has been ever-present from my earliest years to the present day: It a voice I shall greatly miss.

May he rest in peace.

Everyone knows that Sky News like to be first with the breaking news, but (just as has happened tens of times before on their news channel) their website might be jumping the gun in its reportage of Prince Philip’s health:

One suspects that the headline “The Duke of Edinburgh, The Very Model Of A Modern Royal Consort, Dies Aged 86” might not be welcomed by the Palace right now: I’m not sure if anyone from Sky News reads this site, but if so, you might want to remove this ‘suggested link’ from this page if ever you want any form of Royal interview or exclusive ever again…

As we all excite ourselves about a new episode of The Apprentice tonight, here’s last week’s final scene reimagined… in Lego.

[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/apprentice.flv” title=”The Legoland Apprentice” picture=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/apprentice.jpg” ratio=”4:3″ /]

Silly, I know, but it’s one of the funniest videos I’ve seen in a long time. Especially the inspired ending.

» Video Credit: Original video by the BolegBros.

In today’s complex world, it can become difficult to know who’s supporting who, which way the political wind is blowing, and who to believe when it comes to news reportage. Take The Daily Mirror, for example.

It is often asked why The Mirror performs so relatively poorly compared to it’s long-time rival, The Sun, which is the most popular and far-and-away the most politically powerful paper in the UK. There’s not a person in Westminster who is unaware of what ‘The Sun Says’ on any given issue, yet The Mirror is largely ignored.

Before every general election, the politically complex Sun is fought over by Labour and the Conservatives, desperate to secure the support of Rupert Murdoch and hence the paper, thus receiving a huge boost to the electoral campaign. The Mirror is always left behind.

So, in these difficult times, it can be hard to follow quite who The Mirror is supporting at any one time.

Take today’s paper, for example. The front page story? A relatively extensive report on minor traffic violations by David Cameron on a bike. Frankly, not a dissimilar level of reportage to that when Tony Blair became the first serving Prime Minister to be interviewed by police, that time in relation to very serious charges.

And on the inside pages? Gordon Brown expresses his love for the ‘misunderstood’ Amy Winehouse, Coldplay, U2, and Leona Lewis: He’s really “down with the kids”. It’s Cool Britannia Mark II, and even less believable than the first time round.

I’m well aware that newspapers have always had political allegiances, but this particular juxtaposition struck me as so utterly ridiculous as to be worthy of comment.

» Image Credit: The Daily Mirror‘s front page, 21st March 2008.