Sky

Thursday

Melissa Kite

118 000 is, I now realise, the number of the beast

‘Orange 1-1-8 thousand how may I help you?’ said the cheerful voice. Carefree as you like, I asked for the number for Sky customer services to report my parents’ broken digibox. This was back on Christmas eve morning. I had been walking the dog around Kenilworth Castle when my dad rang in a panic saying the Sky box had broken, and, well, we had rather hoped to watch some television over Christmas. So I took it upon myself to sit in my car and make a phone call to sort it out. But when I searched Sky’s website on my iPhone I could not find a number for customer services. I found numbers for all sorts of other things including ‘Report a deceased account holder’, but nothing at all for living account holders with deceased Sky boxes.

Thursday

Steerpike

Boulton and Co

Journalists do, occasionally, say something nice about politicians. It does not happen very often; but, when it does, it’s usually heartfelt. Adam Boulton hosted a party at the Savoy last night to celebrate his 25 years at Sky News. Boulton heaped praise on those politicians with whom he has worked while covering the life and times of ‘5 Prime Ministers, 5 US Presidents, 5 Labour leaders, 6 Tory leaders and 4 Lib Dems – and counting’. He said: ‘As journalists, we need people who are prepared to engage our profession with their arguments and accountability. And you do. And often. And properly, which is vital to the democratic process.

Thursday

Melissa Kite

I truly loved you, BT Broadband. I should never have reached for Sky

Don’t do it. Do not, whatever you do, even think about doing it. I was happy not doing it. And then I weakened and did it. And now I am living to bitterly regret it. I speak of switching my broadband provider, of course. Like any ‘switch’, it promised to be many things — cheaper, faster, shinier — and turned out to be a living nightmare. What made it worse was that my BT service was very good. It was expensive, but it worked. I remember the fateful day I decided to ditch it. I knew deep down it was the wrong thing to do. I loved you, BT broadband. You weren’t superfast fibre-optic. But I loved you all the same. Then I had a rush of blood to the head and decided to ring Sky to ask whether I could get a cheaper TV package.

Thursday

Stephen Robinson

Harry Shearer on bringing out Richard Nixon’s feminine side

Hollywood tends to treat Richard Nixon as an oafish B-movie villain, so it is ambitious and original of Harry Shearer to try to convince a British audience of the very feminine side of the 37th American president. As a veteran comedy actor and the ‘voice’ of several of the Simpsons cartoon characters — including Mr Burns, Smithers, and Ned Flanders — Shearer has the vocal range to get almost anyone right if he puts his mind to it. But voice work was not the main challenge in the forthcoming Sky Arts drama. Shearer is more intrigued by the physical aspects of the central role in Nixon’s the One, which he insists is not an impersonation, but a characterisation.

Saturday

Victoria Glendinning

Nature study

On my desk is the vertebra of a narwhal. It was given to me by a man in Canada after a convivial dinner. Narwhals are Arctic whales with long spiky tusks on their noses. This vertebra is about three inches across, embedded in bone expanding into waisted wings, like a propeller. If I were the award-winning Scots poet Kathleen Jamie I would be describing it better. A whale vertebra, for her, felt ‘grainy, not quite cold’, and smelt of wax crayons, which are, or were, made of whale oil. She was in the Whale Hall of the Natural History Museum in Bergen where the dusty skeletons of 24 whales hung by chains from the ceiling. They were being cleaned, before removal to a modern display.

Saturday

Ben Rayner

Right to reply: How we beat the Beeb

A slight change to the normal rules of engagement for this latest post in our 'Right to reply' series. Whereas these posts normally take issue with what your Coffee House baristas have written, this one takes issue with the post by the BBC's Jon Williams that we put up yesterday. It's by Al Jazeera's Ben Rayner: In wars reputations of whole news organizations can be made or broken very quickly. And the spin on the result is almost as important as the reality. Undoubtedly the BBC took a fearful kicking in the press over its coverage of the fall of Tripoli in August. To the British papers, Sky's Alex Crawford had won the day at the expense of slow moving Auntie.

Friday

Mark Littlewood

Plurality or not?

With all the provisos attached to News Corp’s takeover of BSkyB, opposition to the deal has surely now been diluted. But there are, perhaps, two groups who can still legitimately complain about the outcome.   Firstly, those of us who believe that unrestricted freedom of speech is vital in the TV broadcasting arena. The Murdoch empire has had to surrender its news channel in order to, essentially, buy a profitable platform for broadcasting sport and movies. This is seriously disturbing for anyone who feels that the BBC’s output of ‘neutral news’ needs to be challenged. The only major independent broadcaster – ITV – gave up long ago with their own news channel. Only Murdoch ran an alternative news platform, and at a massive loss.

Alex Massie

What’s So Bad About Rupert Murdoch?

My esteemed colleage Nick Cohen dislikes disagreeing with the equally estimable James Forsyth and I dislike disagreeing with Nick in turn. But his comments on the decision not to block Rupert Murdoch's bid to purchase the 61% of BSkyB he did not already own seem unecessarily belligerent and, moreover, hyperbolic. Nick writes: The editors of every newspaper, television channel and radio station, with the exception of editors at News International, will be telling their hacks to go for Hunt. My colleagues will have a solid public interest justification for acting in their employers' interest because we will be punishing corruption so blatant a seven-year-old could see through it.

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

How the televised leaders’ debates will work

The various parties involved in the televised leaders' debate have finally come to an agreement on how they will work.  You can read full details here, courtesy of Sky.  But the main points are: i) Topics and locations. The first debate will be hosted by ITV's Alastair Stewart, in Manchester, and will cover domestic affairs.  The second will be Sky's Adam Boulton, in Bristol, and will cover foreign policy.  And the third will be the Beeb's David Dimbleby, in Birmingham, on the economy. ii) Structure. The rather rigid structure of each programme will be as follows: "Each leader will make an opening statement on the theme of the debate lasting for 1 minute. After the three opening statements the moderator will take the first question on the agreed theme.