Above should be an excellent vintage discovery from Google Video - Saturday Live, a music-and-comedy programme that I remember from Channel 4 in the mid 1980s - this programme (all 90 minutes of it) being hosted by Peter Cook, no less.

Particularly enjoyable because how poor the programme was technically - I remember it being hugely cool at the time - and the bizarre comedy. Only Peter Cook would do a piece based on Harold Macmillan (a prime minister that I doubt anyone in the target audience would remember). The ‘right-on’ Ben Elton is awful, diabolically awful, irredeemably awful, and the audience clapped anything that was against ‘Thatch’ without even thinking what was being said. Bizarre. But some of this is really quite funny. Still. Excellent.

The one thing that stands out for me is that the entire show was live - and 90 minutes?! Grief. That’s longer than anything you’d see these days; the comedy sketches are almost unacceptably long for today’s television, too - compare with Rory Bremner’s programme, for example. Part of that was presumably a desperate plan to fill the space; part of that might have been the different audience expectation.

Also interesting - 90 minutes, live, and the programme still ended, exactly, to time. No mean feat.

And sadly, only 13 people had watched this video before me. I hope, by sharing it, it gets it an extra audience, all over again.

(PS: Interestingly - this appears to be a video recorded in the control room at LWT, which shot the programme; there’s no network idents and the commercial breaks are very strange indeed.)

Photo: Xerones @ Flickr, cc licenced

Watching the stories about the floods in Yorkshire, it’s been interesting to switch between Sky News and BBC News 24.

BBC News 24 is talking to journalists, rescue workers, firemen, policemen, etc. The questions from the studio are the standard “What’s the latest where you are?”.

Sky News - Anna Botting, who is live on-air - is talking directly to people who are trapped. People stuck upstairs, workmen who are ‘really quite cold now’ in their warehouses, people stuck in their cars. The journalist’s questions are sympathetic, interesting, warm.

Which do you think is the most interesting?

Clue: it’s not what the BBC is doing.

When we bought a flat-screen television last year, I wasn’t quite prepared for the hassle it would be to get rid of the big widescreen Sony CRT television we had (which I still maintain gives a better picture, but enough of that for now).

I called local hospitals. Nobody wanted it.

I talked to local charity shops. They can’t take electrical items (by law, apparently).

I put it onto eBay, as “to pickup only”. It got no bids.

Today, I took it to “Auctioning 4 u”, a shop that eBays stuff for you and takes 33% of the final price. They wouldn’t take it.

My only option was to take it to the tip. But it worked. So I didn’t want to do that.

In desperation, I posted a note to my Facebook page. I got three calls within the hour offering to take it off my hands. So, gratifyingly, at least someone wanted it.

I’m quite pleased it has a good home, and that I’ve not had to chuck a perfectly good television on the tip: but amazed at how much trouble it was to get rid of it.

Sky Anytime’s main screen, from Digital Spy’s preview

Since I took the plunge a while back with a Sky HD box, I’ve had this service called Sky Anytime (or, as it’s known on the EPG, ‘Anytime TV’).

As an idea, it’s quite a clever way of competing with Virgin TV’s on-demand service. There’s a hidden bit of my hard-disc on my HD box: and magically the Sky system throws lots of programmes onto this box when I’m not looking. The theory is that this goes alongside my recorded programmes to give me additional choice - and it’s certainly video on demand, because it’s been downloaded to my box.

Anyway, we watched ‘The New Braniac’, with ex Virgin presenter Vic Reeves on it. I never really met Vic when he was working at Virgin, but he was a good presenter on this show.

Interestingly, the show had the ad-breaks properly edited out of it (no black screens, no double programme idents), and only had one ad (and one programme trailer) at the start: for Adidas. A longer advert feature was at the end of the programme. No interruptions in the middle. And cleverly, the HD box recorded the HD version of the programme for me (I’m presuming that standard boxes get the standard version). I’m impressed.

The only drawback is the lack of content: no BBC content, no ITV content, no Channel 4 content: not much, indeed, except for Sky, Turner, and Discovery Networks. I’ve no idea how the rights work here; but I do hope to see more on this service soon. (Oh, and radio would be good, too.)

CC licenced from Thomas van de Weerd - that’s Joost in the background

I can’t quite work out whether I can blog about Joost - the free software that gives you lots of on-demand TV straight to your PC or Intel Mac.

Assuming we all can now, then I’m really enjoying the content on Joost now - there’s a ton more content. For example - Boothby Graffoe, in an episode of Just of Laughs is just excellent, and there’s three Muse videos on there, so I’m quite happy. And the quality is just fine; and when it works, it works fantastically. It’s so good I’m seriously thinking about upgrading the MacMini under the telly to be an Intel one, just so we can have Joost on the television too. It’s way better than YouTube.

The ads are now quite interesting: I’ve seen ads for Vauxhall cars, as well as for Virgin Money. They’re all short - sometimes only three or four seconds. They work really well, though are rather irritatingly repeated.

To get Joost, you need an invite. The good news is that I (like virtually every other user) has unlimited invites. If you want one, just contact me or comment on this blog. It’s really good. And it’s free.

This ties in to what I did today - I went to a secret location where we played with all of the TV platforms, just so I could understand how these things worked - particularly for radio. I saw Sky, Telewest/Virgin, TopUpTV, Tiscali, BT Vision, and a few others which are probably a little more secret. What was interesting is Tiscali’s service, which has a beautiful set-top box, a really nice remote, and some quite innovative features, albeit a sad lack of interactivity for television. Virgin TV, in the guise here of a Telewest box, was poor and slow - and I can’t for the life of me work out who watches a poor selection of music videos on Virgin TV for 40p each.

What I found most interesting was the poor attention paid to radio on these platforms. I can watch ‘Lost’ at any time I want on Sky Anytime TV; I can watch similar programmes on Virgin, Tiscali, or BT Vision. However, I can’t access any radio content apart from live stuff. Why can’t I enjoy The Archers at any time of the day or night? Why is the Hit40 not available to listen-to again, when I can enjoy the best of the TV channels? Why is it virtually impossible to record radio? Why is the EPG detail for Virgin Radio written so badly? Depressing, particularly given the figures for radio on these platforms.

So, the biggest French political news this year: France has a new president.

A quick flick through at 10.15pm tonight…

Sky News had live coverage of Sarkozy’s speech.
Euronews had live coverage of Sarkozy’s speech.
CNN had live coverage of Sarkozy’s speech.
Al Jazeera had live coverage of Sarkozy’s speech.
BBC Parliament was taking TF1 with live coverage of Sarkozy’s speech (while BBC News 24 simulcasts BBC One’s national news)

…and France 24, the international news service from France, had a pre-recorded sports report, a promo telling us it concentrates on news from France, followed by… a package from New Delhi in India.

And the prize for most non-existent live coverage of the French election goes, surprisingly, to its own news channel.

Well, and Fox News. But then, you’d expect that.

A fascinating blog entry from Rick Segal - demonstrating very clearly that many within “big media” don’t get it.

Best line of the piece: after showing “Them” how easy it is to bypass these ‘US-only’ IP blocks, “Them” reply with: “Nobody is going to know how to do that. Besides, if you were to tell people, we’d sue for damages.” Yep, threaten with legal action if you tell someone how to do something. Um…

(I have shared this, like other blog posts I enjoy, in my item-roll, which you’ll find on the right-hand side of my main blog, or you can subscribe via RSS. I find the best blog entries, so you don’t have to).