Starting over again

I've watched the events unfolding at St Marys over the last 97 days with a mixture of dispair, fear, horror, laughter and finally relief!

While the "Pinnicle" groups takeover had, on the face of it, lots of things going for it, in reality it increasingly became "the foolish man built his house upon the sand". When they pulled out, however, it did look pretty bleak until Markus Liebherr re-entered the bidding. It does appear that he was close to securing "exclusivity" before Pinnicle beat him to the punch.

Now Saints have a new German owner (who live in Switzerland). He is worth over a billion and says he is in it for the long term. But who ever says anything else? He's already sacked the manager and the press release is couched in words of quiet Germanic efficiency.

This time last year I was quite taken by JP and is youth policy, look where that ended! Now I'm a bit more circumspect.The choice of manager will be crucial to our progress next season, it may even be the good old director of football/coach scenario, who knows?

I'll watch the next few weeks with interest.

Bring me sunshine

Next Wednesday the Ashes start and for the two months we'll be gripped by what we hope will be a titanic battle, resulting in the victory for the England team (or should that be England & Wales)

Here are some of my thoughts:-

• KP is not scoring runs as flowingly as he should. He will need to change this, but is capable of rising to the occasion
  
• Cardiff as a venue for the first test match is, as "Yes Minister" would put it, a brave decision. It could be even courageous!
  
• Sky Sports have given me the ability to watch the "action" live on my laptop. As I'm a Sky Sports subscriber, for free.
  
• We appear to have better spinners than the Australians; it's a long time since we've been able to say that.
  
• This series will either make or break, Andrew Strauss as England captain.
  
• Ricky Ponting needs to have a great series with the bat for the Aussies to retain the Ashes, if he doesn't the effect on the rest of his team could be terminal.
  

  It's all very exciting and let's hope at the end, like Eric Morecambe, we've got our hands on the little urn.
  

Bargain

Yesterday I bought one of these, a Revo "bLik" radio station, which there's not much it doesn't do, apart maybe from make a cup of tea .

Firstly it's an internet radio. This requires a wifi connection, but is very easy to set up and within seconds you'll be scrolling down the lists of stations available (including BBC radio stations). Given my friends Luann & Steve's connections with Woxy in America I found that first and marvelled at the sound quality. There is also a web site where you can find favourite radio stations on-line and through weird science involving the radio's i/d tag it drops them into your favourites on the radio!

Secondly it's a DAB radio which means you can listen to Radio 5 Live in crystal clear reception, as well as Planet Rock.

Thirdly it's the good old FM radio.

Next, it streams media from your laptop, via the wifi, so you can play music through it. True it only plays Windows Media 11 files, but still...streaming music!

Finally you can plug your iPod into it and it will play that as well!

Oh and it also has an alarm clock in it, can be played through a stereo and brings you wealth and fortune. (Ok maybe not the last one, but enough already)

Normally they cost £177, but yesterday Currys Digital in Portsmouth (yes my job means I have to work in that City, sorry) were selling them "priced to clear"" at £49!!! To say I skipped back to my desk would be an understatement.

The Invisible Man

The Southern Evening Echo is today reporting that there is one wealthy individual behind the bid the buy the Saints to which the administrator has given a period of exclusivity.

In an open letter to fans, Tony Lynam, the public face of the prospective buyer, says that the individual has "SUBSTANTIAL wealth - several hundred million." Now that is exactly what we needed to hear! He also indicates that Matt Le Tissier will be involved in the club in some way as well. More good news.

Suddenly there is hope. Now all we need is to get those 10 points back and hope that the new owner is not a mate of Rupert Lowe!!

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"