Of course, Leeds’ loss could be Manchester’s gain if ITV and BBC wind up on the same site in Salford. Now that really would be a Media City - and if it goes ahead I’ll be buying shares in Starbucks and Prêt a Manger...
Granada escaped less lightly in the case of University Challenge, however, after a howler that made Strictly Come Dancing’s voting fiasco look like a minor technical hitch and led to 2009 winners, Corpus Christie College, Oxford, being stripped of the title. The BBC2 quiz show, produced by Granada, has been told to tighten up rules for entering after revelations that winning teams included ineligible contestants. Oxford’s loss may be the University of Manchester’s gain - its team is now officially series winner - but this was a Pyrrhic victory.
Meanwhile, in Liverpool radio station City Talk is hoping for a musical bail-out, asking Ofcom to allow it to change from all-speech to - God help us - ‘soft pop’ for non-peak times. City Talk blames the credit crunch but, frankly, there is no excuse for foisting Phil Collins on an innocent listener at any time. Although I would pay good money to hear the Daily Post’s head of business talking about the UK downloads top 10 on the regular Sunday morning LDP Business Week show.
Finally, there was sad news this week as it emerged that Liverpool music entrepreneur Rob Williams had fallen to his death while snowboarding in Switzerland.
Alpine ski tragedies always attract plenty of media coverage, but this rescue drama was also played out on social microblog Twitter. It started when one of the group, Michael Acton Smith tweeted, “of our ski party got stranded in the Alps tonight... ski patrol on the way” and grew from there.
I followed the search via tweets and the messages of support, and later condolence that were expressed, were very moving. It’s amazing how much emotion can be packed into 140 characters.
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