As I was about to start watching the second episode of the excellent new tenth series of Red Dwarf on Dave’s On Demand service, I noticed that Jonathan Ross is now advertising Sky TV.
This seems a little odd given that his shows have only previously been made for the terrestrial market such as the BBC and ITV, and that Jane Goldman has written material (an X-Men film) for News Corp’s 20th Century Fox. News Corp. have a rather large stake in BSkyB.
On that note, let’s not forget all the hoo-ha surrounding News Corp’s attempted buyout of BSkyB during the phone hacking investigations last year, and that Jonathan, whilst not pointing the finger at the News of the World, mentioned they may have passed (or at the very least had access to) illegally intercepted personal data. Murdoch himself recently tweeted:
So why you would want to advertise a service associated with the parent company linked to all that mess is a little puzzling.
While Jonathan makes the case that Sky TV carries BBC iPlayer, it should be noted that the BBC has to pay Sky in order for Sky to carry it’s channels and BBC iPlayer. Money taken from BBC license fee and profits from BBC worldwide.
All it all, it’s not a great idea that Jonathan Ross should be advertising the virtues of Sky television. Of course that’s his prerogative, but he’s certainly the person I expected least to be the main salesman for Sky TV.
If he were merely going for the PVR functionality that Sky+ provides, there are plenty of non-Murdoch services (indeed in the cases of YouView, Freesat and Freeview: all co-operatives to an extent) that he could endorse. Not too impressed with that advert to be honest (but then again, Stephen Fry could be said to be in a similar position with his adverts for Virgin Media TV which is now practically owned by Sky anyway.)
Let me put it this way: if Nigella Lawson were to start appearing in Burger King or McDonalds adverts then I wouldn’t be able to take anything that she presents on television seriously any more. It would say to me: why bother cooking all this wonderful stuff I’ve been showing you when you can just go out to these restaurants and fill up on these burgers and fries?
The above fictional example is why I hate the vast majority of TV chefs – especially the one whose name rhymes with Blame Me Knowledger. There’s something somewhere there that just does not add up when it comes to his TV shows, what he’s advertising on TV, and his branded products that are being sold through a supermarket that rhymes with Brains Babies. He’s not the only chef that does that either..
(You can see why I didn’t have a TV for several years during my time at MPC and beyond as it just infuriated me as to what goes on in TV adverts and the programs themselves)
Speaking of Fox, the digital copy code supplied with the Promethesus Blu-Ray doesn’t work, so I’m having to go through their email support service to see if it can be rectified. How much do I love film studios and technology? Not very much.
Back to Red Dwarf. I am amazed that given this show is over 24 years old, the writing and performance has never dwindled or gone into decline. Red Dwarf X has so far managed to make me roar with laughter as well as it did back in 1988. It’s a credit to Doug Naylor for sticking with the show for so long and that Dave was able to pick up the series and make it even better than it was when it was being made by the BBC.
