Good morning. It’s Monday 16th September.

Conference season. Speeches which (rightly or wrongly) will get coverage this week: Ed Davey – Tuesday, Nigel Farage – Friday. Labour kicks off on Sunday.

Monday: Huw Edwards is sentenced at Westminster Magistrates Court

Manchester City’s FFP hearing expected to get underway

Tuesday: Super eclipse moon

Wednesday: Inflation figures

10 years ago: Scottish independence referendum

Thursday: Bank of England announce their final pre-Budget interest rate decision

Friday: First early in-person voting begins in US election

Saturday: Elections in Sri Lanka 

Sunday: Autumn begins

30 years ago: first episode of Friends aired

Here’s the second of our new set of audio diaries taking you inside radio and TV studios…

Part 4 Episode 2 of Year of The Expert focuses on Presenter Insights.

LISTEN HERE

As we often warn in media training sessions, the lines are so blurred between radio, TV and print now as to be almost non-existent. Here’s Janice Turner in the Times last week:

“I was asked by the Times Radio breakfast show to speak about my recent column on women in Afghanistan. The slot was early, so I requested the Zoom link be audio only. The tricky thing about radio these days is your contribution is generally filmed, so you must be camera-ready whatever the hour which means, if you’re a woman, the faff of applying make-up. Anyway, I blearily tuned in to the call and argued the case for a sporting boycott of this gender apartheid state, assuming only my voice could be heard. How wrong I was. Ten minutes later on X up popped a clip of me in my pyjamas (bright blue ones with cheerful motifs of oranges), my unbrushed hair at mad angles.”

“For all the well-known and well-paid presenters on BBC TV and radio, the heart of the BBC are the legions of lesser-known producers and fixers slogging away on relatively low salaries on stories that they think make a difference. We will miss them when they’ve gone.”

A good column from Jane Martinson on BBC journalist Kate Lamble. Her reporting on Grenfell was public service journalism at its best. 

She has now been made redundant.

READ MORE

For the first time online has overtaken television in an annual survey of the UK’s news habits (Source: Ofcom).

READ MORE

That said, the same Ofcom report found twice as many Brits got their 2024 election news from TV as from social media.

READ MORE

And while we are on the subject, a quiz question. Name the two largest news websites in the world. (Answer in the footnotes)

Footnotes:

On this day: The UK crashed out of the ERM on this day in 1992.

Weather: 20 degrees in Exeter. 15 degrees in Aberdeen. 34 degrees in Bangkok.

Coffee? Inside Edge is in Brighton and London this week.

Quiz: The BBC (1.2 billion visits) and CNN (710 million visits) are the two largest news websites in the world (source UK Press Gazette)

Mutts: Leo gamely manages to open half an eye…

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Have a brilliant week.

All at Inside Edge

We’re back. While we were away…

“A BBC news reporter just stood outside the BBC on BBC Breakfast saying that the BBC had not responded to a request for comment from BBC News about a BBC presenter being axed from a BBC show.“

Scott Bryan

Four new audio diaries take you inside radio and TV studios…

Part 4 of Year of The Expert kicks off with the lessons learnt sitting in on many a Focus Group…

LISTEN HERE

Good morning. It’s Monday 9th September. We hope you’re happy and well.

Monday: Module 3 hearings begin in Covid Inquiry

New Apple iPhone launched

Tuesday: the first public hearings in the inquiry into nurse Lucy Letby

First inmates are freed under the controversial Early Release Scheme

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump meet in Philadelphia for their first and possibly only debate

Wednesday: Monthly GDP figures

Thursday: NHS key services and waiting time data

Harvey Weinstein in court in New York

Friday: Sir Keir Starmer will travel to Washington for a bilateral meeting with President Biden

Funeral for Sven-Goran Eriksson

Saturday: Liberal Democrats Autumn Conference

New Strictly Come Dancing series starts

57 days until the US Elections. Our eyes and ears will be on the media…

From Reuters:

32% of Americans say they trust most news most of the time. (However, 47% say they trust the news they use, a sign of polarisation.)

36% of left-leaning Americans say they find it difficult to identify trustworthy news on X

29% of Americans say they use YouTube for news

68% of our US respondents who watch news videos regularly say they tend to watch them on social and video platforms.

BBC financial woes…

Part 1: The World Service is at stake over the BBC’s funding ‘pinch point’ according to its boss Jonathan Munro, who says the broadcaster is in ‘critical’ negotiations with the Foreign Office to secure more money before the Labour budget in October.

READ MORE (P/W)

Part 2: With 500,000 households a year cancelling their TV licence, the corporation may have to do less with less to survive. Jim Waterson’s piece in the Observer is an interesting read, though the eye-catching headline about a possible merger with Channel 4 is unlikely. 

READ MORE

Footnotes:

On this day: Chairman Mao Zedong died at the age of 82 on this day in 1976.

Weather: 17 degrees in Oxford. 15 degrees in Hexham. 31 degrees in Athens.

Coffee? Inside Edge is in Durham, Exeter and London this week.

Um, is one of them Kevin McCloud?

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Mutts: The obligatory dog photo returns for a new season. (Stan needs his beard combed…)

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Have a brilliant week.

All at Inside Edge

Morning all. It’s Monday 29th July 2024. Welcome to the final Briefing before the summer break.

Monday: The Chancellor sets out her public spending analysis

Nominations close for the Conservative leadership contest 

Tuesday: BP and Microsoft results

Wednesday: UNESCO World Heritage decisions adopted

Meta and Boeing results

Thursday: Interest rate decision

EU Artificial Intelligence Act enters into force

Apple, Amazon and Shell results

Friday: Edinburgh festival begins

Adele begins summer residency in Munich

Saturday: Pro-Palestine national demonstration in London 

I’ve referenced The Rest Is Entertainment podcast a couple of times in recent briefings, because it’s excellent. The latest episode has hosts Marina Hyde and Richard Osman “doing a tight 5 minutes” (as they like to say) on media training.

Their view on the reason for, and impact of media training is the antithesis of what we set out to achieve with our coaching. However it’s still an interesting take. The section on trap words is relevant to everyone, and stories about Sir Andy Murray and cricketer Chris Woakes worth a listen.

One other line Richard Osman says about media training: “Either you make them more charismatic or you make them more boring.

You’ll be pleased to hear we aim for the former every time…

LISTEN HERE (16 minutes in)

Part 3 of Year Of The Expert is complete. Our 7 part audio diary on how to prepare for interviews is now a 20 minute podcast, joining earlier sections (Part 1 – Why Engage? and Part 2 – Where to Appear).

LISTEN HERE

Behind the scenes as a moment of history is recorded…

And while “a moment of history” may be stretching things, Rachel Reeves’ first interview from inside Number 11 required some serious kit…

The new Labour government’s approach to dealing with the media has been fairly well-received so far. One thing the PM does need to do however is widen the very small (and predictable) list of journalists he calls on at press conferences.

As Politico’s Emilio Casalicchio observes: “Mine was the sole hand up at the Starmer press conference in Farnborough this morning. He ignored it & stuck to his list of hacks that aides gave him beforehand. The ‘list regime’ equals less diversity of thought, more press control from No.10 & no hope for smaller media outlets.”

Hard to disagree.

Brilliant to see new models for the provision of quality local journalism thrive…

READ MORE

Footnotes:

The Briefing takes a break for a few weeks but we’ll be back, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the beginning of September.

We’re still around during August and it’s always a pretty quiet month for us, so a good time for an online catch up or a coffee.

I’ll leave you with this…

On this day: The wedding of Charles and Diana, in 1981.

Weather: Highs of 24 degrees in Exeter today and 22 in Durham.

Mutts: The obligatory dog photo. Stan and Leo’s mate Roxie…

Bye for now.

All at Inside Edge

 “I would protect the licence fee and my government would not hold the BBC to ransom over appointments and funding.”

A refreshing tone from new Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy:

To maintain the BBC as an institution, it must be accountable to those who fund it – the British people.”

We’ll watch with interest.

Morning all. It’s Monday 22nd July 2024.

And an extra hello to those journalists hoping for a quiet Sunday shift in the newsroom last night.

All of the below (with perhaps the exception of the Olympics) will be lost in the fallout of President Biden’s historic decision not to seek re-election.

(However as I’d already gone to the trouble to compile the list…)

Monday: Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle appears before the House Homeland Security Committee

Tuesday: The Hundred (cricket) begins

Keanu Reeves novel The Book of Elsewhere released

Wednesday: Role reversal at PMQs

Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to deliver a controversial address to a joint session of Congress

International Olympic Committee announces 2030 and 2034 hosts

Thursday: Met Office releases State of the UK Climate report

Friday: Opening Ceremony, Paris Olympics

Saturday: V&A’s Taylor Swift exhibition opens

Sunday: Presidential Elections, Venezuela

“Talk to yourself. Talk and record into your phone and listen back. You’ll feel like a banana. But trust me, there is a pressure to interviews, and the muscle memory of having heard yourself say key lines, certain specifics, linking phrases is worth its weight in gold. “

As Part 3 of Year Of The Expert draws to a close, here’s the advice we give in media training sessions that I suspect is ignored above anything else…

LISTEN HERE

“I love the absurd. And election campaigns are festivals of absurdity.”

 Chris Mason, BBC Political Editor

A couple of documentaries take us behind the scenes of election night for two of the big beasts – the BBC and Sky.

The BBC’s programme is disappointingly dull, so I’d start with Sky if I were you.

Watch SKY

Watch BBC

Rupert Murdoch predicts printed newspapers likely have 15 years left, “with a lot of luck.”

“You get on a train, public transport? You see anyone with a paper? You see no one. Now they’re reading all the facts, on their phones.”

READ MORE

After 5 minutes on Twitter yesterday evening, I can confirm Tom speaks for us all…

Footnotes:

After last week’s confession about my addiction to microphone-strewn Iranian pressers, I’m grateful to an eagle-eyed reader for emailing this excellent offering…

In election ratings news…

Female audiences are bearing the brunt of the cuts made by the BBC to the World Service, its outgoing director has warned. READ MORE (fw)

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Coffee? Inside Edge is in London and Brighton this week.

On this day: British Prime Minister John Major launched his Citizen’s Charter to improve public services on this day in 1991.

Weather: Highs of 23 degrees in Derby today and 21 in Bangor.

Mutts: The obligatory dog photo. Leo as a pup…

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Have a brilliant week.

All at Inside Edge