The road not taken

So league football is over again and the ups and downs are all decided.

The Premiership has lost WBA, 'Boro and Newcastle. It has gained Wolves, Birmingham & Burnley. That doesn't make it stronger, merely a bit more nostalgic for those who remember Burnley and Wolves battling it out for the League title. While Stoke and Hull (just) survived, they will form, together with the three promoted teams and Sunderland (unless they inject lots of cash and employ a good manager), Portsmouth (please) and Bolton the bottom third of the table. It could be a bumper relegation battle next season!!

The Championship will have the three relegated teams, Sheff Utd, Leicester, QPR (world's richest club???), Reading and Cardiff. When you bear in mind that any team in it could beat any other team, it could be a far closer league than the Premier League.

 

As for League One well that has at least four teams in it who were recently in the Premier league!

 

Roll on August!

Lust for life

Is this the scariest magazine cover ever? If someone on the tube sat opposite you is reading Word magazine, you might just want to move somewhere else.

I think Word magazine is a mighty fine read, but they may well find that this month's circulation numbers are a tad below the norm.

Get with the programme

Listened to an interesting Podcast* this morning on the future of Radio and DAB in particular. It raised some good points about how DAB is fast becoming the bridge between FM and the internet, the latter being the eventual medium through which we will listen to "radio".

This got me thinking and here are some random thoughts.

1. Does DAB exist in America? If it does, what's it like and what does it broadcast that FM radio can't?
   
2. If the answer to 1 above is no, then DAB surely never had a future!
   
3. Once the BBC puts either an App on iTunes or flash on the iPhone then streaming BBC content could become so easy that why would you want a DAB radio?
   
4. The Car. While podcasts, music and silence offer good alternatives, listening to the radio in the car would still be a good percentage of driver's first choice. Listening to DAB radio in a car is, in my experience, at best frustrating, at worst downright dangerous. I have both a portable DAB and one that that attaches to my iPod. That latter is so cumbersome as to be almost impossible to set up. The former just plugs in to my car stereo via the same lead as my iPod. The reception with both is patchy at best, which is mainly down to ariel issues. I haven't ever been in a car with DAB "plumbed in" so that may be a completely different experience, but if DAB radio is to have a future, good in car reception is vital.
   
5. Commercial radio in this country is doomed if it doesn't realise that "personality" is still a big driver in peoples listening habits. Look at the listener figures for Moyles, Wogan, and Ross etc... Commercial radio is mainly made up of pre-recorded segments dropped into playlists. If therefore you work in an office which has one of these stations on all day (which occasionally I do) this means that you will hear more or less the same songs throughout the day. Let's be honest Chris Moyles can go 10/15 minutes without playing any music and we love him for it.
   
6. It is possible to still do the cheaper pre-recorded version with personality. Planet Rock uses Rick Wakeman on Saturday morning to broadcast from 10 until 1pm. It's clearly pre-recorded. Last Friday & Saturday he was at Hampton Court performing "The Six wives of Henry VIII" live, so I guess he was tucked up in bed, while his virtual self was on the radio. Still a good show though with great music and lots of humour. But I tune in to listen to him.
   
7. DAB only really exists for me to listen to Radio 5 live, Radio 5 live sports extra (i.e. Test match cricket commentary) and Planet Rock. Put them on FM I'd be happy to see DAB filed under Betamax & HDD.
   

   
    

   *Guardian Media podcast available via iTunes called "Six weeks to save digital radio"
   

Never Forget

This is Pixie Lott and I predict great things are ahead for her.

She is a singer and has the voice that the 21^st Century demands of a girl singer, I.E. she has that Amy/Adele/Duffy "smoked too many cigarettes" sound.

Her first single comes out in a couple of weeks and the song is well chosen and it's easy after a couple of listens to find you're humming it. One of the producers involved on her album (out in September....yes they have her career planned out in military detail) is Daniel Bedingfield and the single does sound like his sister could be singing it. A video that looks expensive and will find itself being played on all the right channels will only underpin the music.

Today she's featured on the BBC home page (how I found her) and she has recently both appeared on Radio 1 and performed a "Saturday Session" for Dermot O'Leary on Radio 2 where she covered "Never Forget" by Take That. You can find the video here

As you can see by the photo she is very pretty and allied with her voice and music I expect to see her featured heavily in next year's Brit awards!

Down down

I'm off to St Marys this afternoon. It will be a strange afternoon. In reality our last game as a Championship team until who knows when?

I've not really been able say what I think, as to be honest, I don't know!

All I do know is that the worst place to be told you've had 10 points deducted is Portsmouth!

-- Post From my iPod

Easter

The family has been together this week-end at my Sister's house in Somerset.

Highlights included :-

The chocolate fountain being unboxed and broken in. The front lawn now has lots of chocolate in it!!

A trip to Weston to play a round of putting, which got quite tense towards the end. I came third, a 5 on the 13^th ending my hopes of lifting the "Weston Open" title in 2009. Then we sauntered down to the other end of the beach where the "Weston Eye" now dominates the sky-line. I gave Matt my camera to take on board and close to 50 photos returned on the memory stick!

On Monday after a trip to the Clarks Outlet shpping village, we de-camped to Glastonbury, which is weird and a bit scary. At no other point during the weekend did we pass anyone in full frock coat accompanying a lady in full length Edwardian dress!

Talk, talk

Football punditry is not great on the BBC, but it drops a number of levels on ITV.

Tonight we have Andy Townsend (ok ex-Saint, but wouldn't get a job on the BBC), Teddy Sherringham (dull, dull, dull. One for the female viewers is the best I can suggest) and worst of all... Joe Cole.

Now he would be playing tonight (or at least on the bench) if he wasn't injured. So what's he going to say? Hmmm..." the lads done good/tried hard/were unlucky" is the most insight you're going to get from a current member of the squad, whose mates are playing! What we need is a proper impartial pundit, hopefully a journalist to give some balance, but there's little chance of that happening. The main attribute you seem to need is to have played the game, not be able to string together an original or "whisper it" critical opinion.

That's why Baddiel & Skinner or most football podcasts are so good...no ex-players!!!