As I write this, the seconds are ticking away towards the first live show of BBC’s surprise ratings hit, The Voice .  Locked in a battle with ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent , *The Voice *is proving that Simon Cowell’s rule over Saturday night primetime TV is slowly being eroded.

The recent attention given to the various troubles associated with the Murdoch media empire, not to mention anxieties about the continued expansion of new media giants like Facebook and Google has had the effect, perhaps, of slightly occluding the workings of more traditional state-funded national broadcasters, whose power in part accrues from their proximity (even at the length of a long arm) to the body of the nation state, an entity whose

Ten years ago, I published a Television A-Z (Miller, 2002). A cute conceit, I thought, and one likely to attract attention. It didn’t. Complete failure. Hopeless joke, Toby. I tried revised versions a couple of times (Miller, 2004 and 2010), with identical results.

SP – Steven Peacock  JJ – Jason Jacobs **SP: **The recent news of Luck ’s cancellation, cited as due to the death of three horses on the show, leads us to the race sequences. The death of animals in unnatural circumstances, especially within the controlled arena of the film set is perplexing at best, reprehensible at worst.

So Mad Men is coming to these shores next week? I should be glad, of course I should. The return of one of the best shows to come out of America since The Sopranos should be celebrated. In New York, the fifth season has apparently been greeted with themed shows and parties, people dressed in 60s garb, smoking cigarettes and drinking whisky sours. After a hiatus of 17 months Mad Men is, no doubt, going to be under much scrutiny.

SP: I’d like to start, if I may, with the most immediately arresting and confusing element of Luck , one which has been highlighted by plenty of reviewers and critics in the UK: that of its narrative and language. Many have commented on the difficulty of following the story and understanding the performers’ delivery of dialogue.

BBC4 is featuring interviews at the moment, examining this most basic taken-for-granted of TV. They’re doing the inevitable extracts series ; rescreening samples from the archives ; putting up classics on their website ; getting interviewers to interview each other (Mark Lawson does Terry Wogan for instance); and even showing a series by David Frost.

Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries Research Seminars 2011/12 5-6pm, Wednesday 14 March Zen Room, The ATRiuM, 86-88 Adam Street, Cardiff CF24 2FN Dr Lez Cooke (Royal Holloway University of London) – The Forgotten History of British Television Drama Abstract: In recent years there has been a return to an empirically-based television history that seeks to revise the ways in which

Dateline: the “What is Television?” event in Portland, Oregon . This marvelous conference is under the benign and brilliant direction of Janet Wasko , a trusted leader in the field. On this opening morning, I’m sitting between Dan Schiller and Sarah Berry . Dan got us all moving last night with a stellar presentation on the digital depression.

With business seemingly everywhere on television, from the risks of the retail and restaurant trade to pitching for investment or competing to become the next ‘apprentice’, ***The Television Entrepreneurs ***draws upon popular business-oriented shows such as The Apprentice and Dragons’ Den to explore the relationship between television and business.

So My Big, Fat, Gypsy Wedding is under attack for being racist? This week’s outcry over Channel 4’s advertising campaign smacks of a certain hypocrisy and no small amount of double-dealing in my eyes. Accused of stereotyping gypsies as it pulls in the channel’s highest ratings this year, complaints over Channel 4’s poster campaign has reached a crescendo with billboards being defaced all over Leeds.