TV

For anyone in the UK under the age of 40, TOTP has been a constant in our lives. After the final show due to be screened this evening on BBC Two, TOTP will be no longer.

The Cinema Audio Description listings service from YourLocalCinema.com has been short-listed for a National Lottery Award! Making it to the finals will really help spread awareness of audio described cinema in the UK.

Please vote for Audio Description listings.

Just click the link above, type your name, select your local cinema, and click Vote Now!

The overall winners will be announced during a special BBC National Lottery television show in the autumn. Voting could help the service to secure further funding, which will help to keep it going. (Their funding runs out at Christmas!

Voting tells the Lottery board, and the UK film industry, that audio description and audio description listings really matter and should be continued.

It is a great opportunity to use the exposure to remind the film industry that
this access issue needs to be kept high on the agenda.

Thank you.

I bought a couple of bits from SatCure a few years ago. They were quick and helpful. And even willing to build a couple of cables for me.

For some unknown reason after two years my origenal Sky Plus remote stopped working this evening. I swapped the batteries a couple of times and contemplated calling a 0870 number to contact Sky to find out what may be wrong. Glad I did not.

I had a quick Google for “sky plus remote control hard reset”. A couple of clicks later I was back in business thanks to the good people at SatCure. They had the reset codes and the code for my TV so the Sky Plus remote is back doing everything it should. Yay!

This and the England game made for a beautiful end to an average day.

You better believe it baby! 🙂

As regular readers will know I recently filed two complaints to UK broadcasters on their failing to provide AD after creating expectation amongst users.

While I had known of the outcome of my complaints through other sources, two weeks after my complaint to Channel 4 and a week after my complaint to the BBC, I have finally had direct responses from both broadcasters.

From: Channel 4
Date: 16 May

Dear Mr Williams, as I am sure you are now aware, due to audience demand we are now audio describing LOST. For all details on our audio described programmes, please see the following link.

http://www.channel4.com/about_c4/signed_programmes.html
—
Viewer Enquiries

From: BBC
Date: 15 May

Dear Dave

Thank you for your email.

Our apologies for the failure of audio description on the programme “The Apprentice”. There was no intention to drop the service, and indeed an audio description track was prepared for this programme. Unfortunately although technical problems were noted before the programme was transmitted, and although we believed we had corrected them, a subsequent review of the tape of the transmitted output revealed them not to have been sucessful.

As the programme was due two repeats, one this weekend on BBC3 and the other, on BBC2 at 7pm on Tuesday 16th May further efforts were made to correct the problems and as far as I can tell, these were successful.
While the outcome of this programme is of course now known, you should be able to watch this repeat without the problems that blighted the original transmission.

I trust this is of help.

regards
—
BBC Reception Advice

Credit should go to both broadcasters for doing everything possible to rectify the problem after the fact. The point remains that problems with AD are not unusual, and the industry needs to up it’s game. The old excuses about users not having the technology and there being no demand simply are no longer true.

Asked to watch the Ordinary Boys, Katie Melua and the Beautiful South for nothing? Life at the Beeb can’t be all that bad.

to watch this these days, but as daytime tv goes Today on ITV1 is well loved and a harmless hour of fun. Sad to see it go.