Evening Standard: Analysis - After Jane Root, what next for BBC2?

By David Rowan

YET another senior BBC executive quit this week - but this time, rather than say sorry, the corporation took the unusual step of ladling out praise. Jane Root, leaving to run the Discovery Channel in the States, has been "an outstanding creative leader" as BBC2's boss, announced Mark Byford, the acting director-general.

According to Jana Bennett, director of television, the BBC is losing "an exceptional creative talent who has inspi red pro gramme -makers" by commissioning such shows as The Office, Great Britons and Eroica. Yet for all Root's achievements as the corporation's first woman channel controller, her critics say she has left BBC2 with an identity crisis. Having pursued ratings at the expense of "serious" programmes, they say, the channel can no longer claim to be distinctive.

It is a worrying charge for a broadcaster heading towards charter renewal with neither a chairman nor a director-general. Its lobbyists, fighting to preserve the licence fee, make much of BBC2's unique role as the "highbrow" public-service channel whose arts, current affairs, drama and comedy output fill a gap left by its commercial rivals.

From Coupling to The Kumars at Number 42, Perfect Strangers to Restoration, BBC2 has taken risks that have twice earned it "channel of the year" awards since Root took over in 1999. But its critics claim that the arts and serious documentaries have been sidelined in pursuit of ratings, leaving it to BBC3 and BBC4 to develop innovative programmes such as Little Britain and Monkey Dust.

"I'm not sure what BBC2 is for any more," laments Edward Mirzoeff, the award-winning documentary filmmaker behind 40 Minutes and The House. Last year, he demanded that BBC2 remove his name from a series after he said Root wanted to "MTV-ise" it.

"It has lost its way as a channel. It was a combination of Jane Root and Greg Dyke - Greg's aim was to be popular, and Jane, who comes from a documentary background, simply abandoned that area." Sir Jonathan Miller, the broadcaster and stage director, believes the channel has misguidedly pursued "a vulgar preoccupation with the largest possible audience".

Miller, who walked out in disgust during a BBC2 recording of What the World Thinks of God, says: "It doesn't necessarily have to hand everything over to celebrities, or spurious polls of popularity. There is a large audience for serious instruction, but nowadays the channel regards that as elitist." Roly Keating, the BBC4 controller, is seen by some as an obvious successor who might redress the balance, having made films for arts shows such as Omnibus and Arena.

Others in the running include Daisy Goodwin, editorial director at Talkback, who is more widely known for her poetry compilations, and Roger Mosey, the BBC's head of television news, who has argued for the "wisening up" of news over "dumbing down".

Keating's appointment would please David Herman, who has produced more than 100 programmes for the BBC, including Late Review and Face to Face, and now criticises BBC2's "lost direction" in his column in Prospect magazine.

"The Root era will be remembered as a regrettable moment in BBC2's history, when there was a loss of nerve," Herman argues. "Yes, she's increased ratings to 11 per cent - although that will drop when the BBC loses The Simpsons to Channel 4. But she's done that by dumbing down the channel. She's allowed serious arts, talk and history programmes to be shifted over to BBC4, and instead we've got The Big Read, with B- and C-list celebrities such as AA Gill talking about books, instead of intellectuals. All of which raises the question: what do you need BBC2 for?" Mirzoeff, in turn, describes The Big Read as "unutterable crap - pandering to the lowest common denominator".

BUT Root, 46, is unfazed by such complaints.

"The world is changing, and that's hard for some people to accept," she says. "I don't think our arts coverage has diminished - we've had some fantastic cultural programmes in the past year, such as Mozart, Love Again (about Philip Larkin) and Eroica.

"We've also reached out to audiences that would not automatically be interested in the arts. Sixty-six per cent of schools participated in Big Read events, which is amazing.

Arts programmes can't be just for people who are in the know." In fact, she says, there has been "a real revitalisation in current affairs and arts", much of it at peak time. Throughout 1998, she points out, the channel broadcast a total of two hours of current affairs programming at 9pm. "Last year, it was roughly one hour a week. Think of The Third World War, Al Qaeda, This World ...

There's a real sense that the current affairs department is firing on all cylinders." It is the channel controller's job, she says, to be "inventive and brave" by commissioning new formats such as If... which are intended to cover "difficult" subjects such as economics. "And if you can get a couple of million people to watch a complex programme on pension funds, then you're doing something right." One concern, expressed by a senior BBC documentary maker, is that BBC2's current obsession with "formats" inhibits quality programme-making.

"With John Birt, it was, 'Never mind the story, what's the issue?'," he says. "Now it's, 'Never mind the story, what's the format?' If someone wanted to make a film about gangmasters, which involved not very appealing visuals but that people should care about, it might, if it's lucky, be buried at 11.20pm." "It's undoubtedly the case that we want to do big things with documentaries," Root responds, again reeling off a series of examples.

"Fighting The War took four years to get access. There's still a place for the wrily amused 40 Minutesstyle documentary, but there are fewer of them, as what people remember is the big things." How, then, does Root respond to accusations that the channel is no longer "special"? "Just look at what we've done in the past two years," she says, again followed by a list. "The If...programme, Mozart, the [Stephen] Hawking drama that's coming out ... the idea that we're not being brave doesn't bear up if you look at the schedules. The tough thing this year is to decide what to put forward for Baftas." Jonathan Miller remains unconvinced. "I'm old enough to remember the Third Programme, when Isaiah Berlin or Bertrand Russell were allowed to talk for an hour.

This justified the BBC's position by remaining faithful to the idea that information and instruction are an important service." "Some people are never going to like what you do," says Root. "But it's better to be brave and daring than to try to keep everyone happy." Among the contenders ...

Roly Keating. The controller of BBC4 has a background in highbrow arts programmes. Keating, 42, also gave BBC4 its first million-rated hit, The Alan Clark Diaries. Daisy Goodwin. As editorial director of Talkback Thames she has found time for the arts - although her best-selling poetry compilations are anything but highbrow. Roger Mosey, 46. The head of BBC TV news recently argued that the corporation could protect us from the "poison" of multi-channel television.

He is also in the running to replace Greg Dyke.

(Evening Standard, March 31 2004)

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The Times: Tech column - VoIP/Online books

By David Rowan

IS BT about to become redundant? If you believe all the hype about the new "free" internet-based phone services, it is only a matter of time before we are all chatting to each other over the web. After all, if we can download movies and listen to the radio on our PCs, why should our voice calls not be sent almost instantly over the network? The technology, based on a standard called voice over internet protocol (VoIP), is well enough established to be saving business customers millions of £on their annual phone bills. Now, with broadband usage rising, the rest of us are being invited to join the party.

This month, a new UK trade association was launched to promote the "revolution" that internet-telephony firms say will lead to "far cheaper prices". The group, the Internet Telephony Service Providers Association, points out that six million people (mainly in Asia and the US) are already making voice calls over the web, and sees the nascent UK market as ready to take off. As if to prove the point, Skype, a London-based start-up that offers free web-based phone and conference calls, has just raised £11 million in second-round funding.

The company, founded by the people behind the Kazaa file-swapping network, promises better sound quality than with ordinary phones through technology that is "super simple" to use. Word is spreading fast: Skype's software has been downloaded 9.5 million times in seven months. When Michael Powell, chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission, tried it some months ago, he declared that he "knew it was over" for the telecoms industry. But even if free phone calls become the norm, we will still have to pay for our broadband connections. That is why upstarts such as Skype and Vonage may actually increase the big telecom companies' profits, rather than obliterate them, as more of us finally switch to broadband. The phone networks will also push us to trade up to their own monthly VoIP tariffs -hardly a huge leap for those of us who pay a fixed monthly rate for most landline calls. BT is testing the market: its Broadband Voice service, targeted at cable firms' broadband customers, starts at £7.50 a month for those wanting the equivalent of an extra phone line.

Old business models may be dying fast, but don't hang up on the phone industry just yet.

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Stephen King nearly turned the publishing industry upside down with his online serialisation of The Plant. It won vast publicity but did not attract enough $1-a-chapter contributions. But now Matthew Reilly, who has sold more than two million copies of books such as Ice Station and Temple, is serialising his next work, Hover Car Racer, on a dedicated website from next Sunday. You will not pay to read the eight instalments, but will have to sit through rather prominent advertisements.

Reilly's publisher, Pan Macmillan, is hyping this as "the future of reading". In fact, if he were really up to speed, Reilly would have packaged the novel for readers of mobile phones. A Japanese author, Yoshi, did that for his romance The Story of Ayu, e-mailing 1,600 characters at a time. It attracted 20 million website hits, went on to sell a million in print and is now being made into a film.

So maybe it is "m-novels" that represent publishing's future.

(The Times, March 30 2004)

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Interview: Stephen Glover, columnist (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

STEPHEN Glover didn't much enjoy I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! But what really made him grumble was the "crazy" daily coverage in our "dumbed-down" broadsheet press. Tarnishing his morning Times and Daily Telegraph alongside cutesy animal stories and David Beckham photos, it was further proof to Glover that Britain needed a serious daily newspaper. And if no one else would provide one, The Spectator's media columnist was raring to go.

Since he confirmed last month that he was seeking £15.4 million to launch an uncompromisingly upmarket daily, Glover has prompted much mockery among his putative rivals.

"Its readers certainly wouldn't make very good guests at a dinner party," the Telegraph's editor, Martin Newland, sneered yesterday, adding that the "Glover jihad" would end when the cash inevitably ran out. Media analysts, too, have doubted whether Glover can build the 100,000 circulation he seeks in today's cut-throat market. "I can't see anyone who would put any money in it," one agency manager told Media Week. "And I don't think it would be welcomed by advertisers." Will the paper - provisionally called The World - ever become more than fodder for media columns? Glover, currently pitching the intended tabloid to investors, is determinedly upbeat.

"We're doing quite well, and I'm optimistic we'll get there," he says.

"The point about raising money is that once you're moving forwards, you're likely to raise all of it." He will not reveal how much is in the bag, but says that once all the investors have confirmed, the paper will be on the newsstands in little more than six months.

"We have a professional management team on board, and it's all systems go," he says. Which month, then? Nothing will happen during the summer and Christmas advertising lulls, he says. Does that suggest spring 2005? "You could infer that," he replies, "but it's not impossible before that." Although The World began as a journalistic dream, Glover, 52, points tantalisingly to a " confidential" 70-page financial prospectus as proof that he has adjusted to commercial realities. As well as editorial recruits such as Francis Wheen and Frank Johnson, he has hired Vicky Unwin, formerly of PR Newswire, as managing director, and Emap's chairman, Adam Broadbent, to chair the company.

One prospective investor, who decided against backing the venture, nonetheless found the business plan extremely persuasive.

"I'm pretty sold on the project, though whether they can raise the money when a major title like the Telegraph is for sale is a different matter," he says. "Their research does show a huge lapsed newspaper readership among As and Bs, for whom 'less' in newspapers might prove to be 'more'. Just look at the success of The Week." The big question is whether Glover, who writes for the Daily Mail and was a founder of both Independent newspapers (whose troubles he documented in his book Paper Dreams) has genuinely identified an untapped market.

"There is undoubtedly an appetite among a significant minority for a serious paper," he insists. So where are they all now? "On the whole, they'll come from existing titles - they're probably reading The Times, Telegraph or Independent - or possibly none at all. There are about 11 million ABs in this country, of whom seven million don't read any newspaper." These are not "identikit" readers, he stresses. "There was a rather sexist comment in The Economist that they're typically 40-year-old males, but I don't believe that. It's rather patronising to think no woman wants to read serious journalism." Compared with the " supermarket" offerings of the broadsheets, The World will be "Fortnum & Mason". Glover neglects to mention that the upmarket store is suffering a serious financial crisis.

Is he so naive as to believe that £15million is enough to launch a newspaper? Nonsense, he says: this carefully costed sum even has contingency built in. "We've worked out the costs in fantastic detail - how many words every writer is expected to produce, how much rent we'll pay. We have a distribution partner and a printing partner so those costs are fixed." ALAS, he will not reveal the figures, but points out that the total is effectively half what he helped raise to found The Independent. "And we don't have to sell 400,000 - we're more of a niche product. I'd argue that the gap for our paper is now clearer than ever." Glover says he has already received 200 letters from journalists in pursuit of the 100 or so editorial jobs - "Ten or 20 of them quite major figures, two or three real stars". They will receive share options - and, according to those who have seen the business plan, some of the highest salaries in Fleet Street, with an editorial budget said to be £10 million. Money will be channelled towards domestic and foreign news at the expense of pictures. Politically, Glover says, the paper will be "broadminded" - "it really mustn't be a daily Spectator. What unites these disenfranchisedreaders is a revulsion with what's happening in politics." There are those who attribute Glover's crusade against "dumbing down" to simmering resentment at The Times, which by cutting its cover price in the Nineties caused The Independent severe financial pain. Indeed, he asserts highmindedly that the broadsheet "decline" began when price cuts led people to start reading The Times "who were never natural Times readers" - and, to its discredit, it accommodated their lowbrow tastes.

Glover's Spectator column has also frequently criticised the paper's editor, Robert Thomson, and his predecessor, Peter Stothard.

Is this the bitterness of an aggrieved former Independent executive? "I don't think so," he says. "I've never met Robert Thomson, so it couldn't be anything personal. It's just about what's happened to his paper." The Times has its own pithy response to Glover's claims: "Serious newspapers require serious investment," sniffs a spokeswoman.

Will he make it? The potential investor familiar with the business plan says that "serendipity" might come to Glover's rescue.

"The image he conveys might be a bit too fuddy-duddy and Right-ofcentre for most investors - more AN Wilson when they want Rod Liddle. But his paper might make a very attractive consolation prize for a bidder who fails to get the Telegraph."

(Evening Standard, March 24 2004)

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The Times: Tech column - Hit Song Science/A Flight Risk/Virus flame wars

By David Rowan

TO UNDERSTAND how bad things are for the record labels, listen closely the next time a phone goes off at the cinema. Those eight-second homages to Beyonce or Springsteen -otherwise known as custom ringtones -now account for 10 per cent of the global music market. Sales of these synthesised bursts of sound have even overtaken CD singles.

It cannot say much for music buyers' expectations if they are prepared to spend $3.5 billion (£1.9 billion) a year on ringtones rather than on the original recordings.

Still, studio bosses are taking no chances, and are using computer software to help choose which songs to release next. Hit Song Science (HSS) is an artificial-intelligence program that examines a song's mathematical patterns its chord progression, rhythm and melody - to determine whether it is likely to sell.

The program compares the song with its database of 3.5 million recordings, and rates its closeness to hit songs of similar types on a score from 0 to 10. The major record labels seem convinced that HSS can help to predict hits, and are using it to rate album tracks for potential singles and even to "polish" those singles in the studio.

Polyphonic HMI, the Barcelona-based company that owns HSS, cites Anastacia's current hit single, Left Outside Alone, as an example of its effectiveness. The track, it says, was calibrated in post-production "for optimal mathematical patterns" -so the version you hear on the radio has been restructured to emulate previous hits.

It is not, perhaps, how Lennon and McCartney worked, and sceptical songwriters have berated Polyphonic HMI for ignoring the creative human touch. But the company responds that almost all art forms, from novels to sitcoms, conform to patterns that computers can identify. There may be another benefit, too. If Hit Song Science could persuade Simon Fuller to retire Pop Idol, we might all have reason to be grateful.

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IF YOU'RE bored with speculating who is behind the Belle de Jour weblog -and even its hilarious confessional progeny, IAmBelledeJour.com (with claimants ranging from "Ann Widdecombe" to "Julie Burchill") -then here's another mystery. A year ago a weblog entitled A Flight Risk was launched at shes.aflightrisk.org. "On March 2, 2003 at 4.12 pm, I disappeared," the diary began. "My name is Isabella V., but it's not. I'm twentysomething and I am an international fugitive." For obvious reasons, Isabella says, she cannot be too specific, but having been "born into privilege and to a family with considerable power and influence in the world", she had fled with large amounts of money to avoid "sinister forces" at home.

Her apparently ruthless family is in hot pursuit, but with her own armed guards, and endless international flights, she remains a step ahead. Is she for real? Her website message board seems divided.

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MEMO TO virus writers: switch on the spellchecker. A lively "flame war" is ensuing between the authors of the Bagle, Mydoom and NetSky viruses, whose software code contains crude insults directed at each other. "Bagle -you are a looser!!!!," shouts NetSky. "Hey, NetSky, f*** off you bitch, don't ruine our bussiness," responds Bagle. MyDoom's author, meanwhile, denounces both rivals in terms unrepeatable in Times 2. All very adolescent - but couldn't they simply text each other?

(The Times, March 23 2004)

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The Times: Why we can't trust food labels

Pack of porky pies: How food labels mislead us. By David Rowan

Not feeling too chirpy? You need the new Body&Soul Rejuvenating Better-Health Sex-God Bio Bar.

Recommended by the Bulgarian Sexological Association, these 80 per cent fat-free wellbeing bars are clinically proven to help your body resist stress, preserve youthful good looks and revitalise your soul. Now available in a new Guarana Lite energy variety with genuine bifidus effects, this is the only naturally sensitive bio bar that works towards maintaining a healthy heart. And, of course, you'll become an irresistible lover - but do read the label ...

As regular readers of Body&Soul will know from our regular Behind the Label column, food companies make an extraordinary number of health and nutrition claims for some of the least likely products. Shoppers are regularly faced with countless questionable claims, from high-sugar chocolate drinks that claim to be "positively healthy" to stodgy children's cereals that are a "good source of calcium" (but only if served with calcium-rich milk). These days it pays to be not just savvy but sceptical, too.

Part of the battle is spotting those emotive but legally meaningless terms that litter the supermarket shelves. Take the word "fresh", as in "oven fresh", "garden fresh" or "ocean fresh". These terms can mean whatever the manufacturer wants them to. Similarly, the phrases "natural goodness" or "naturally better" are no guarantee of quality. They, too, serve largely as marketing tools.

The current rules are a mess. As the Food Standards Agency (FSA) advises, there are no official definitions of "light" or "lite"; terms such as "bio", "value" and "economy" can mean exactly what the manufacturer chooses; and a "no added sugar" product might still be high in sugar-rich ingredients. And, even if a ready meal is described as healthily "free from artificial preservatives", there is no guarantee that it is not packed with excessive levels of unhealthy preservatives such as salt. Amid such marketing-led assertions, it is not surprising that CocaCola felt able to label tap water from its factory in Sidcup, South London, as "pure still water".

Last October, the Consumers' Association conducted a survey of health and nutrition boasts made for some popular branded goods. Its criticisms were withering. Heinz spaghetti in tomato sauce, for instance, claims to contain the equivalent of one portion of fruit and vegetables per can - thus contributing towards the Government's "five a day" message. But the Consumers' Association pointed out that the product would fail to meet government health guidelines because it also contains too much salt, which is linked to high blood pressure. It also criticised Kellogg's for claiming that Frosties builds healthy bones and boosts concentration, energy and heart health -vague claims, it said, for a cereal notably high in sugar and less nutritious than some competitors.

"We're concerned about the extent of misleading claims now made," says Michelle Smyth, of the Consumers' Association's food team. Particular bugbears include the Food Doctor's Get It On "sex, fruit and seed bar", which states: "The nutrients in this bar may balance hormones and with added ginkgo biloba support the flow of blood to the extremities". "Such vague claims are ridiculous," Smyth says. "Consumers need to be aware of the overall value of a food, so that if something is advertised as low fat, flip over the pack and look at the small print."

Last summer, the FSA asked local trading standards officers to investigate how accurately terms such as fresh, natural, pure, traditional, original, authentic, home-made and farmhouse were being used. Its conclusion: four out of ten samples used the terms misleadingly or ambiguously. Under FSA guidelines, a "farmhouse" product, for instance, should be made in a house on a farm, or more specifically in the farmer's main dwelling. Yet about three quarters of those examined were produced in industrial premises.

"Traditional" foods, too, should be made from a recipe, ingredients and cooking methods that had "existed for a significant period". Yet the FSA pointed out that Lairds Larder Original Scottish Recipe Traditional Vanilla Fudge contained such modern ingredients as hydrogenated oil, emulsifier and glucose syrup. "We have legislation which prohibits false and misleading claims, and the agency also issues guidance on nutritional claims which local authority enforcers use in conjunction with companies," says Rosemary Hignett, the FSA's head of food labelling and standards. "But the position is less clear regarding health claims. It's difficult for local-authority enforcers to know how valid such claims are."

The good news is that the European Commission proposed a new set of rules last July that would ban with vague or misleading health and nutrition claims. Instead, there would be strictly defined limits to what could be said; a "fat-free" product, for instance, would need to have less than 0.5 grams of fat per 100 grams, while a "light" product would need to show a 30 per cent reduction compared with the standard variety. There would also be a ban on general wellbeing claims such as "preserves youth". The proposals are due to go before the European Parliament next month and if approved could become British law within a couple of years. But the food industry is lobbying hard against new restrictions.

The Consumers' Association welcomes the proposals as a way of letting shoppers know that claims are "true, accurate and backed by science", although it believes there should be extra guidelines to ban misleading claims aimed at children. "The important thing is that labelling should give a clear message to consumers about that food's characteristics. Our research shows that consumers are unhappy when positive health messages are shown prominently on a package when the small print mentions the adverse effect," Hignett says.

The Food and Drink Federation, which represents the industry, is not convinced. "The Food Standards Agency already issues guidance about terms that need to be used," says the federation's spokeswoman, Christine Fisk. "The consumer will lose out if manufacturers are unable to communicate a product's benefits".

In the meantime, when faced in the aisles with "naturally relaxing" Feel Good branded drinks, or yoghurts that claim to be "good for your inner harmony", stop and do some reading. "Look at the nutritional claims with a sceptical eye," advises Hignett. "Unfortunately, the evidence shows that when people see a positive claim on the front they don't look at the factual evidence given on the back. But that's what matters."

(The Times, March 20, 2004)

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Interview: Gillian de Bono, Financial Times (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

LIFE can be tough for today's hyper-wealthy elite - never quite knowing which executive jet to buy, or where to send the servants to shop for caviar. That's where Gillian de Bono comes in.

For the past decade, her How To Spend It magazine, in the Financial Times, has been discreetly advising bloated plutocrats everywhere ... well, how to spend serious money. Whether it's a £500,000 tiara you're after, or a top-of-the-range Ferrari, de Bono's unashamedly elitist magazine will let you bypass the whole tedious business of choosing. So she was surprised, to say the least, when the journalistic establishment last night celebrated it as newspaper supplement of the year.

"I was truly shocked to win," de Bono admitted after collecting her trophy at the British Press Awards.

"I've always considered How To Spend It a bit of a cult magazine, and was up against colour supplements with a far more universal appeal." Besides, she added, there was generally "a slight feeling that it's not quite right for people to have that much money, and for a magazine to exist to cater for their needs".

In fact, favouring the section over magazines such as Guardian Weekend and Observer Food Monthly, the judges praised How To Spend It for doing "exactly what it says on the tin" with originality and verve.

De Bono's bosses also have good reason to praise her. As the FT's most consistently profitable section, How To Spend It is a goldmine for a paper whose overall losses last year rose from £9 million to £32 million.

Aimed at "active, aff luent men and women of distinguished tastes", the supplement promises to deliver "the best of the world's best" to readers with an average personal income of £116,000. Advertisers of luxury goods certainly seem to think it worth spending up to £25,000 a page to reach them. "That," says de Bono, "is because the FT doesn't have any wannabes who will simply look at an object featured in the pages and think how much they'd like one.

Our readers look at something, love it and buy it." Extreme affluence, she says, is often tempered by a highly pressured lifestyle. "These people have money, but not the time to luxuriate in the process of spending it," she explains. "So we just short-circuit the system and - how can you put this elegantly - help them spend what they've earned." But not in the obvious ways favoured by other consumer magazines, she insists: the very rich do not care what celebrities are buying, they simply want advice they can trust.

"It's the sort of information that discerning friends might give you - a niche optician where you can get wonderful glasses specially imported from Italy, or a jeweller who only sells from her home.

We're not dictating to readers what to buy, but simply sourcing beautiful products for them." De Bono, 52, displays the elegant charm that perfectly matches such an upmarket publication.

Cautiously discreet in avoiding answers that might cause any offence - even refusing general comments about the women's magazine market - she also glides gracefully over the surface of her personal life, saying only that she lives "in London with a partner" and that she has an 18-year-old daughter. She is wearing a black Ben de Lisi dress and vintage jewellery bought not, as one might expect, from Asprey or Tiffany, but from a street market.

Style, she says, is about individuality. Why, then, should the wealthy need to rely on a magazine to dictate what is stylish? "I don't consider it a style magazine," she replies. "Most of our features are trend led, but we're very selective about which trends we write up." How To Spend It does not simply feature items because they are expensive, she insists. "They get in because they're beautiful or unique." And unlike some other glossy magazines, she says, advertisers receive no "tacit understandings" that their products will be mentioned favourably in editorial pages. The readers, it seems, are intensely grateful for de Bono's guidance.

"We know from the shops we feature that a husband will see a beautiful £10,000 dress in our pages and will straight away order one over the phone in his wife's size.

"There aren't many magazines that happens with. I remember we featured a Hermès watch one Saturday, and, much to our shame, two of our readers virtually came to blows over the last one left in the shop." Another shop, selling luxury leather goods, had to close the day it was profiled "because of crowds".

She joined the magazine on its second issue almost 10 years ago, having launched Essentials in 1986 and been a consultant editor on She. Lucia van der Post had launched How To Spend It; de Bono was quickly brought in as " editorial controller of magazines" to work independently alongside her.

It was, she admits, a battle to convince some of the FT's more serious-minded writers that there was a role for such frivolity. "It took some time for the financial journalists to understand the section's relevance to the paper," she says.

"They do now. Profits and pagination have been up every year." There are also those outside the FT uncomfortable with the magazine's ethos - epitomised in the £250,000 necklace which the magazine photographed around a dog's neck, or the £1.4 million diamond and emerald jewellery set featured in its Christmas shopping guide.

"We get maybe two letters a year from people who tend to find the price tags of many items in the magazine obscene," de Bono says.

She points out that she spent eight years at Which?, helping ordinary shoppers find value for money. "Just as the average consumer is entitled to a magazine that champions its needs and concerns, one shouldn't say that the rich are not entitled to their own magazine," she says. "They are." So does de Bono share the lifestyle she celebrates so effectively? "Sadly not," she giggles, champagne glass in hand. "I'm just a working mother." ?

(Evening Standard, March 17 2004)

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Interview: Chris Shaw, Channel Five (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

THERE is only one story this week percolating the corridors of ITN's Gray's Inn Road headquarters: how in hell could Chris Shaw have so let down his old team? "Traitor" is one of the more polite terms being heard; "Murdoch's stooge" is another. For Shaw - a former ITN executive best known until now for making Kirsty Young stand up to read the news - has gained a wholly more controversial claim to fame. By switching Channel Five's news contract from ITN to Sky News, the 46-year-old controller of news has finally given Rupert Murdoch a foothold in British terrestrial television.

The deal, worth almost £8 million to Sky for each of the next five years, is a serious blow to morale at ITN. If Sky can establish itself on Five as a credible non-satellite news service, what is to stop Murdoch taking the ITV contract when it next comes up in 2008? Officially, ITN's chief executive, Mark Wood, is being diplomatic about the loss, insisting only that "we did not believe we could provide the level of quality needed at any price". But behind the scenes, senior staff are furious. "What have we done wrong?" asks one executive, before replying: "Absolutely nothing. Chris says we've done a fantastic job, audiences are up to 900,000 for the flagship 5.30pm bulletin, and the quality has improved.

We'd like to know how Sky can offer the level of service they want at a significantly lower price. Where's that shortfall being met?" In his Covent Garden office, Shaw - a former News at Ten editor - certainly professes "immense pride" for what ITN achieved in its 400 hours a year of programmes for Five. "But I haven't based my decision on the past," he says, a little cautiously after a week of attacks from his former colleagues as well as unions. "This is about the future.

Moving to Sky was the brave decision, because frankly it would have been a hell of a lot easier to stay with the tried and tested provider." Shaw simply decided that Sky News will provide "a better value service for us" over the next few years. "That means not just price, but quality," he explains. "When you're a small player, you try to leverage as much out of your suppliBy David Rowan

ers as possible, and you look at their incentives. And if we're Sky's territorial showcase, I figure they'll have an extra incentive to perform well." He also rejects the current " conspiracy theories" suggesting that Dawn Airey and Nick Milligan, formerly at Five and now at BSkyB, were instrumental in the decision to give Sky News the contract.

But did Sky set its bid so low as to make a loss? The company denies this, but ITN insiders suggest that the Sky bid was "at least a million a year" lower than their own lowest bid, and that BSkyB must be subsidising the cost. Shaw insists that this is not the case. "Sky's deal is a good deal for them. ITN didn't offer us the best price, true, but nor did they offer us a better service. There were things ITN could offer us five years ago that it can't today - access to a rolling news service, for a start," he says.

"Sky, meanwhile, will give us unrestricted access to its 24-hour news operation, access to every frame of its pictures, and access to its journalists too." Kirsty Young will remain the face of Five News, but the jobs of the 60-member team are uncertain. Shaw says that he will honour his "legal and moral" obligations, but will not be drawn further. "There are a lot of talented people who work at ITN, and I'd like some of them to carry on working for Five." He accepts that ITN is "quite an unhappy place" at present, which he says upsets him. "I only ever wanted to work at ITN, and I've spent twothirds of my broadcasting career there," he says. But he does not accept that his decision will imperil the organisation's survival.

LOOK, nothing stays the same," he says. " Commercial priorities change, ownership changes. My personal feeling is that ITN's problems really began seriously when ITV decided that News at Ten was a flexible friend that could be shunted around the schedules. You could say it's a self-inflicted wound." Shaw, who is married to Martha Kearney, the BBC presenter of Woman's Hour and Newsnight, meanwhile has other matters to be concerned with. His brief also covers the channel's documentary output, and he has just signed Alastair Campbell to interview a series of "major figures from the worlds of politics, business and sport".

Campbell will also feature in an " observational documentary" - with no right of editorial veto. "Sure, this is a man used to controlling things, but he's also unbelievably passionate, and there are times he's surprisingly frank and disarmingly candid.

And not always to his advantage." He is also keen to point to the channel's more serious-minded documentaries, which he says belie its reputation for tacky sex shows.

"Factual programmes with sexual subjects are a legitimate area of factual entertainment. It's all about quality and intelligence ..." And, I suggest, ratings. "Yes, ratings help.

But here at Five we've cut out the cynicism and boosted the quality.

We've done some pretty seriousminded social affairs stuff - feral teenage gangs, investigations into care for the elderly. Not exactly riproaring topics. There are not that many executives in British television who can buy G String Divas one minute, and then go out and commission a documentary about care homes." As for news, he believes that Five has become distinctive through "clarity, accessibility and directness, and making sure viewers are not made to feel stupid" - whether ITN or Sky happens to be the vehicle. And what about its newsreaders' habit of perching against their desks? "Yes, I take the rap for perching.

But I would like to be remembered for something rather more solid than that."

(Evening Standard, March 17 2004)

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Interview: Henry Bonsu, BBC London (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

JUST in case any BBC executives were starting to relax, here are a few more bombshells. The corporation is inherently racist, has undermined the needs of black licence-fee payers, and, in dumbing down, has failed in its public-service duty to represent ethnic-minority concerns. And no, this is not the verdict of some partisan think-tank or the latest Mark Byford-inspired apology. It is the considered view of one of BBC radio's most high-profile black presenters.

Henry Bonsu, sacked last week from his BBC London 94.9FM talk show, has decided not to go quietly.

A long-term BBC loyalist, at the station for almost five years, Bonsu was fired from his Sunday-night talk show for apparently being too "intellectual". As David Robey, the station's managing editor, made clear, Bonsu's "intellectual and considered approach ... does not fit in with our agenda".

The award-winning presenter - whose show was billed as offering "intelligent debate" on Afro-Caribbean issues ranging from education to gun crime - has his own view. "I was talking to people who didn't get access to radio," he says. "The management have a view on how black people should be represented, and they decided my approach didn't fit in." When he was called into the boss's office, Bonsu believed it was to discuss his forthcoming interview with Winston Silcott. In fact, he was shocked to hear that his time in radio was up because he was not delivering the ratings.

"You're not going to expect huge audiences at this time of night, as this is niche programming," he says. "The real question is whether there is room for such programmes on a station that boasts it's the most diverse in London. And the response I'm getting from the people who are contacting me now is overwhelmingly yes." BBC London, he says, is avoiding serious programming in its quest for populism. "They clearly want brash, loud, in-your-face programming nowadays," he says. "But the BBC is publicly funded, and London is the most ethnically diverse city in Europe. Yes, weekend programme figures are low. But why can't you have niche programmes at the weekend - not just for the African Caribbean community, but for the Chinese, Asian or Jewish communities?" Bonsu, 36, who lives alone in Brixton, sees his departure as symptomatic of a deeper failing to serve black Londoners. "Listeners are drowning in R 'n' B, hip hop and garage, but a huge number of people also want to talk about issues that affect their community." Now they will be forced to rely, he says, on pirate stations such as Powerjam and Galaxy, which host popular phone-ins.

"Remember who your licence payers are and listen to them," he reminds his old employer.

HIS bosses, for their part, offer a far more pragmatic view of Bonsu's sacking.

"Henry is a talented bloke, but his style didn't really work for us," says Mike MacFarlane, BBC London's executive editor. "His performance has not been particularly good in terms of audience, and the Sunday night show was one last effort, after various moves, to see if it could work." Since Bonsu was replaced by Eddie Nestor on his previous drivetime show, audience figures have shown a "marked improvement" which industry sources put at around 30 per cent.

Nor does the BBC accept that the station has a duty to offer programmes for particular ethnic groups. "We're not simply a black station, or anything else for that matter," MacFarlane says. "This is a general radio station for the whole of London. His criticisms might be valid if we had no other black presenters who were offering intelligent speech-based shows."

Bonsu, whose charm belies an undeniable arrogance, denies that his outburst stems from bitterness. Still, he is clearly angry.

"Of course I am. I was doing everything I was asked to do. I was never going to be a Jon Gaunt or Eddie Nestor - but there should be room for a whole range of programming styles." There is, he says, "a battle" to be fought over media portrayals of young black people. "I go to their schools, their social events.

Their culture is so much richer than what is beamed back to them - images telling them their lives are only about R 'n' B, hip hop and gun crime." The BBC, he says, has failed in this regard. "Why was it," he asks, "that the station trails for the BBC's Asian Network featured aspirational, professional Asians, whereas the trails for 1Xtra featured black ghetto youths running around the streets?" Is he saying that the BBC is racist? "It's been accepted that the BBC, like all big institutions, is racist," he asserts. By whom? "Well, Greg Dyke said it was 'hideously white'," he replies, a little disingenuously.

When pressed, he identifies a tendency among senior managers to pigeonhole black presenters as the voices of "ghettos and estates". "I know a number of broadcasters who have tried to get jobs at the BBC, but they were left with the impression that there was only room for 'edgy', street-smart Dizzee Rascal types," he says. "Executives who would run a mile if approached on the Tube by one of these youths have decided they are the vessels through which the community is represented." BONSU'S departure has certainly provoked concern among black organisations. "People are saying it's totally unacceptable," says Bobby Miles of the 1990 Trust.

"How can the BBC justify sacking an effective, popular and intelligent presenter, when there's been no indication that he's 'failed' in any way? The underlying message from the white middleclass people in authority is: 'We can't have a black man presenting a lively, intelligent debate about real issues.'" Karl Wilson, of the Blacknet UK website network, is equally convinced that Bonsu failed to conform to a BBC stereotype of "the black presenter". "They're looking for a particular type of black person who has a cockney accent and uses street talk," he says, "but nothing that presents black people in a positive light."

The issue, Bonsu suggests, could come to embarrass the corporation as it negotiates the renewal of its charter. "There is a growing coalition of groups and individuals who feel dissatisfied with the access they have to the airways, and who see my removal as a sign of serious problems that they will be highlighting during charter renewal." Corporation executives are likely to be furious at such a veiled threat from a man whose start in broadcasting resulted from a BBC ethnic minority programme (after Bonsu failed to qualify as a news trainee).

Born in Manchester to Ghanaian parents, he read modern languages at Magdalen College, Oxford, and after writing for newspapers became a researcher at Public Eye, Breakfast News and then Today. After moving to BBC London, he also developed a television career, appearing on The Wright Stuff, as a pundit on Littlejohn and as a reporter on RI:SE.

He now hopes to establish a talkradio station aimed at a black audience - although he admits to knowing little about how to go about it. "But if it falls to me to be a rallying cry for this long-term demand, then so be it," he says, with a slight self-deprecating laugh at what he realises sounds like pomposity. "Back in the Sixties, I'd have been up there with Malcolm [X]," he reflects with another laugh.

He's serious, though, isn't he? Isn't it the activism that really drives him? "Sometimes," he replies, "you just have to take a stand and not go gently into that good night."

(Evening Standard, March 10 2004)

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The Times: Love your iPod - but beware the hype (Comment)

By David Rowan

Beautifully designed, easy-to-use technological innovations have a nasty habit of being superseded by inferior competitors - especially when the innovator is Apple. Why else would virus-prone, unintuitive beige Windows PCs account for 95 per cent of the market when you could be using Macs instead?

Apple may tend to get there first, but it rarely takes long for the big guys to catch up. For all the iPod's kudos as a fashion accessory, it faces growing competition from hardware giants such as Dell and Sony that will ratchet down their MP3 players' prices until Apple's pips are squeezed. The iTunes Music Store, too, is up against determined rivals such as Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart and Napster, with Microsoft and Yahoo! not too far behind. With the download services using incompatible music formats - iTunes, for instance, does not support Microsoft's Windows Media Audio - there is bound to be a brutal fight to the death. And how often can you remember Bill Gates conceding defeat to little Apple?

The phone companies, too, are hoping to supplant the iPod's role as the only pocket music library you will need. By Christmas, you will be able to choose from an impressive array of third-generation handsets that double as MP3 players.

Nokia's new 3300 Music Phone, for instance, makes it easy for you to transfer music tracks from your computer (and to record tracks from the built-in FM radio); you can even store a few hours' music on the company's N-Gage game deck. So if your monthly phone contract gets you a handset that stores music, takes high-resolution photos, shows video clips and makes the occasional phone call, would you really want to spend another few hundred pounds on a separate pocket music player?

Besides, iPods still haven't cracked video. RCA's compact new Lyra audio-video jukebox, meanwhile, can hold 600 hours of music as well as around 40 movies. Come on, Apple, why all this dawdling?

This is not to deny Steve Jobs's remarkable achievement in reinventing Apple as a music business. His download service, which analysts suggest is a loss-leader to promote iPod sales, managed to shift 730,000 of them in the three months to Christmas, at the sort of profit mark-up businesses dream of. Apple claims to be selling three-quarters of the three million tunes being legally downloaded each week - educating us, as much as anything else, to see digital music as something to pay for.

He is clearly ruffling feathers: you can sense how much iTunes' success is infuriating Microsoft by a recent comment from the general manager of its Windows digital media division. The music service's emerging dominance, the Microsoft man suggested, would be bad for consumers as it would limit them to the iPod. As opposed, presumably, to limiting them to Microsoft products ...

By all means succumb to the hype and buy an iPod mini. But do not be surprised when, in a few months' time, some rather impressive rivals go on sale at £50-£100 less, the phone companies offer tempting alternatives, and the iTunes Music Store decides to impose new conditions or prices that you can do little about. If Apple really had the British consumer's interests at heart, wouldn't it be pricing its song downloads closer to the 53p (99 cents) demanded from US consumers, instead of what's expected here to be almost double?

(The Times, March 4 2004)

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Interview: Mike Soutar, IPC

By David Rowan

HE is the magazine wunderkind who took FHM's circulation from 50,000 to 500,000 and doubled the US sales of Maxim. And now, just six weeks into the battle of the men's weeklies, Mike Soutar detects early victory signs for IPC's Nuts over its Emap rival, Zoo Weekly.

"We're exceeding our targets and comfortably outselling our competitor," the 37-year-old IPC editorial director says cheerily about his new baby. "So far we believe we'll be able to achieve an audited circulation of 200,000 for our first six months - while Emap says it's not even going to issue its ABC figure. It has to be really worried." It has been a suitably macho fight, with bitter accusations of "spoiler" tactics, condemnation of rivals' content, and the poaching of senior staff before the launch. Yet even as IPC insiders claim that Emap's "downmarket" title is selling little more than 150,000, even at an extended 20p discount (Emap says its sales were closer to 200,000 last week), executives at both publishers are feeling rather upbeat.

"What we're really excited to learn is that there's definitely a market here, which is great for both of us," says Dharmash Mistry, managing director of Emap Consumer Media. Soutar, too, is willing to suspend hostilities for a moment to reflect on the new sector that has been created. "What's remarkable is that people aren't questioning whether men are going to buy weekly magazines or not - they're talking about the fight in the market. Isn't that fantastic?" There are clear similarities between the titles: amid pages of babe-and-sport features, both this week carry the same photographs of a gruesome Nascar crash, as well as equally excitable previews of Channel 4's No Angels. But while Nuts focuses more on gadgets and clever self-mocking presentation (and what it variously calls " gazongas", "baps", "norks" and, with surprising coyness, "t*ts"), Zoo Weekly errs on the side of the unashamedly tasteless and favours gory photographs and puerile jokes ("How do you make a cat go woof ? Cover it in petrol and set fire to it").

"They've had to move away from the really cheap and nasty photography they started with on their cover," Soutar says. "They still use clumsy key lines, cheesy graphics and a far more tabloid colour palette than us. And look at the adverts they carry for porn phone lines, which we refuse - they send out a signal to readers that you're a niche magazine. Nuts, by contrast, is fast and mainstream." This, Soutar explains, is why neither he, nor editor Phil Hilton, has a target reader in mind. "It would be a mistake for us to produce a magazine for one guy. We certainly couldn't be selling 200,000 if it was just adolescent boys buying it." Still, both magazines do tend to portray women in terms of sexual availability, which prompted The Guardian to denounce Nuts for limiting the British male's horizons to "onanism and Footballers' Wives".

Soutar fumes at such "cynicism". "We're a magazine for men who adore women," he says. "Our readers are in turn amazed and baffled by women. The Guardian is put on Earth to dislike anything that looks like men might be kicking back and having fun." Why, women are applying in large numbers to be photographed in the magazine, he points out - not entirely demolishing the lad-mag stereotype. "The pictures are pouring in, and it's really affirming for women spurned by ex-boyfriends, or who had fun poked at them in the playground, to have the opportunity to proclaim to the world that they're in terrific shape." It is a mistake, he says, to assume that any publication is so important that it defines a reader's outlook.

"Here's a magazine that fills in the boring bits in every man's day. It's designed to be quick, satisfying, funny, and ultimately disposable.

What's not to like about it?" Soutar, born in Dundee, has enjoyed a remarkable career, from editing Smash Hits at 23 to being "days away" from editing the Daily Star following an unsuccessful bid led by Matthew Freud and Chris Evans. He became a journalist after failing to get into PE college. He joined DC Thomson, where he wrote horoscopes for the women's magazine Secrets before being promoted to the unlikely role of beauty editor.

NEXT came Jackie magazine, then Just 17, where he met his wife, its editor, Bev Hillier. They have two children, aged 12 and 16.

When editing Maxim, Soutar's mantra was that everything had to be "funny, sexy, useful". Today he says a successful magazine needs to "strike a balance between things you really want and things you really need. If you can use something in a magazine, even if it's just a great fact you can use down the pub, you'll come back again and again," he says.

"That's why reviews of gadgets and cars are so important." Will monthly men's magazines be the losers in the war of the weeklies? It is too early to know, but Emap says that FHM, the market leader, has not lost sales.

"I think there's room for two weeklies," Mistry says. "We suspect that it's people's secondary purchases that will get hit - magazines like Maxim and Loaded." Coincidentally, Maxim's editor resigned yesterday over longer-term circulation falls.

Mike Soutar, meanwhile, is looking forward to new challenges. As the mastermind of all IPC's new launches, he expects "at least one" other title to appear this year. In the meantime, he believes that his team has changed men's reading habits. "I can't help but think," he reflects, "there will always be a place for really well-edited newspapers, monthlies - and now weeklies."


PANEL:
NUTS GOES HEAD-TO-HEAD WITH ZOO WEEKLY

NUTS
Price: £1.20
Aimed at: gadget-obsessed boy racer with breast fetish . . .
Editorial proposition: "The mainstream appeal of a popular daily, combined with the wit and colour of a glossy men's monthly."
Industry sales estimates: 200,000
Breast count: 42 (14 nipples)
Photos of Jordan:

ZOO
Price: £1 ("normal price £1.20")
Aimed at: underage pub drinker who collects gory jpegs . . .
Editorial proposition: "Sex, sport and wheelbarrows full of stupidity … for young blokes who don't take life too seriously"
Industry sales estimates: 150,000+
Breast count: 25 (five nipples)
Photos of Jordan: 4

(Evening Standard, March 3 2004)

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The Times: Tech column - EU Copyright Directive/Ricin

By David Rowan

THERE IS ONLY one way to deal with a teenager who swaps Britney ringtones with her friends: raid her home, freeze her assets, and use anonymous witnesses to denounce her in court. No, this is not some absurd parody of the music industry's ruthless bullying of 12-year-old file-swappers. If a controversial EU directive becomes law next week, such heavy-handedness will become the norm across Europe whenever copyright owners claim to be the victims of "piracy".

After intense lobbying by the music and film industries, the European Union is proposing tough new sanctions against a wide range of copyright infringers. Its Directive on Intellectual Property Enforcement, due to be voted on by MEPs next Tuesday, is perfectly reasonable as far as it affects criminal gangs that sell pirated DVDs or unlicensed software. Where it could prove dangerously repressive is its failure to distinguish clearly between these organised gangs and the unintentional, amateur copyright infringers.

The directive, being pushed through by Janelly Fourtou, MEP (whose husband happens to run the Vivendi media empire), could prove even more draconian than the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), lately being used to sue American schoolchildren. Because the directive does not define the scope of "intellectual property rights", it could theoretically let EU states jail millions of ordinary consumers who swap song files, scan photographs or play copy-protected CDs on their PCs. As critics such as the Electronic Freedom Foundation have calculated, anyone who unwittingly infringes copyright -even if it has no effect on the market -could potentially have their assets seized, bank accounts frozen and home searched.

It is easy to see how the proposed sanctions will be used to strike fear in ordinary consumers and legitimate small businesses. There will be well publicised raids on file-swappers' homes, without any prior court hearing. Academics who question the security of commercial software will find themselves accused of breaching the owners' rights. Free-software groups will face legal challenges from larger firms based on unwarranted intellectual-property claims. And over time competition, and consumer rights, will be further whittled away.

Copyright is never an easy subject to get people excited about. But if you do not welcome the idea of a British DMCA, tell your MEP before the vote next week.

+++

RICIN, AS WE ALL KNOW, is easy to make using a recipe widely available on the internet. Or is it? Having seen this ominous certainty reported everywhere from CNN to The New York Times, George Smith, a national-security specialist with the GlobalSecurity.Org website, decided to investigate. The original "How to Make Ricin" page appears on an anarchic website called The Temple of the Screaming Electron, with the warning: "This stuff is extrodinarily poisonous - arsenic takes 100 granuals to kill someone, ricin takes 1-2 granuals." Those spelling mistakes, by the way, are a hint about the original source, which, Smith points out, started out as a teen hacker bulletin board. He concludes that the "recipe" is nothing but a "crock" by an imaginative teenager - wrongly concluding, for instance, that ricin might be found in castor oil. That has not stopped journalists falling for the myth. Still, at least we don't need to close down the internet quite yet.

(The Times, March 2 2004)

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