Whose kind of town?

Joining the list of UK presenters heading for the U.S. is Johnny Vaughan, host of ABC’s new "late summer alternative" hybrid variety-reality show My Kind of Town, which debuted on Sunday night, August 14, at 9 p.m. The show (which apparently isn't based on a UK original) is co-produced by ABC and UK production company Monkey, though Monkey seems to be calling the creative shots. The executive producers are Monkey's Will Macdonald and David Granger, plus Michael Davies, "the UK-born producer who took Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to the US." ABC decribes the show thus:

My Kind of Town is a relentlessly energetic primetime studio show in which real American people, in all of their imperfect and awkward glory, have the chance to become the stars of their own show for one memorable night. Each week a lucky handful of residents selected from among the townspeople in the audience will participate in individualized comedic games and gags for prizes tailored to their own lives, interests and needs. One person from the group is chosen to play the big end game, where they will shoulder the burden of either winning or losing a huge prize for the other audience members - all of whom they will see every day for the rest of their lives. No pressure!

Vaughan, who has a Cockney wide-boy demeanor, has done a bunch of British TV, though I remember him for his stint on C4's The Big Breakfast. The ABC web site describes Vaughan as one of the UK's "favorite comedic forces on TV and radio." As Media Guardian points out, Vaughan follows other UK summer travellers, such as Vernon Kay and Gordon Ramsay, who have been in the U.S. presenting American versions of their British shows this summer - respectively, Hit Me Baby One More Time and Hell's Kitchen.

First ratings results showed that "Town" did alright, though not great. Media Life Magazine thinks that "the show’s lack of focus perhaps led viewers to turn away. It wasn’t among the summer’s worst bombs by any stretch but it also shows little promise for coming weeks." Still, Media Guardian notes that the show's first episode "finished up third in its slot, with 7.1 million viewers, but second among the 18- to 49-year-old viewers who are the holy grail for US advertisers." But the Guardian also quotes the Hollywood Reporter, whose reviewer "was not that impressed with the show or Vaughan, describing him as 'heavily accented (and equally heavily annoying)'" (an assessment I agree with).

Don't be fooled . . .

Doctor Media's been adding some excellent posts over the past few days, while I've been taking a break and communing with nature (that's what I call it whenever I get in a tent). After all, August is here. While there's still lots going on, it seems that following a period over the summer where the stream of British news had been constant in USA media-land, things have died down a tad - at least for the moment, and at least in terms of the big news stories. We've stopped hearing so much about the London terrorist bombings. Gleneagles and Live8 are already distant, all-but-forgotten memories. No-one seems to be talking about Making Poverty History anymore. All is silent on the 2012 London Olympics front. America is consumed by the missing Aruba teenager and (maybe if they're looking for more serious news) Cindy Sheehan's anti-war protest and the Israeli evacuation of Gaza. Maybe this is as good a time as any to take a breather.

But hang on, not so fast! While the U.S. news world takes a break from blighty, the steady drumbeat UK's hidden and not-so-hidden influence on U.S. news and entertainment continues relentlessly, even during the dog days of summer. Just think of all the British institutions and people who are having an impact on the U.S. media landscape right now (many of whom we've aleady commented on in London Calling).

Of course we all know about the BBC, The Independent and The Guardian. But what about Granada International and Celador Productions? What about the WPP advertising agency? Pearson (owner of the FT)? Conde Nast? News International (the UK arm of News Corporation, and home of The Sun and BSkyB)? And don't forget Richard Branson's Virgin.

Then there's Tina Brown and her husband Harold Evans; Christopher Hitchens and Richard Curtis; Martin Walker; the defection of and any number of tabloid journos and serious journalists heading to the US for the big bucks; Ricky Gervais in the world of comedy.

Let's not forget Daniel Battsek (of Miramax) and Howard Stringer (of Sony); then there's dodgy Richard Desmond and OK! (see also here). And now there's James Goldston at ABC's Nightline. In hard news and TV entertainment, in magazine and book publishing, in the big city tabloids, the British influence is palpable and incessant. And yes, the list really does go on. (Btw, a few weeks ago I put up a list of UK media figures - culled from the Guardian's "Top 100 media figures in the UK"; there's a bunch of extra names in there to consider.)

So things aren't as quiet as they seem. All that's happened is that the temporary blip of Big British News Events has settled back down to the constant background noise - a drumbeat, even - of the UK's continuing (and expanding) media presence in the United States. So even if we hear less about London's war on terrorism or Blair's electoral capital or the London Olympics or Britain's EU Presidency or its war of African poverty, don't be fooled.

There's still a lot going on.

Tina Brown's husband the new Alistair Cooke?

British newspaper veteran Sir Harold Evans seems to be easing himself into the shoes left behind by the late Alistair Cooke. Cooke is well known as one of the twentieth century's formost Anglo-Americans. He died in 2004 after having broadcast his famous "Letter from America" for nearly 60 years. (See his Wikipedia entry here). Now Evans is helming his own BBC Radio show that looks at America through British eyes: It's called "A Point of View". (The text of Evans' first piece is here).

A BBC piece on the passing of the baton notes the history and significance of Cooke's series:

Letter from America kicked off in 1946 with a report on Britain's GI brides sailing on the Queen Mary to a new life in the US, and came to a close in February 2004 with a letter about the Democrats' growing belief that they could beat Bush in the Presidential election that year (which, of course, they didn't). A month later, Cooke died at the age of 95.

But Letter from America had become the world's longest-running speech radio programme, listened to by millions of people in more than 50 countries.

In his mellifluous tones (belying his origins as the son of an iron-fitter from Blackpool), Cooke, based in New York, painted a picture of a seemingly strange and vast continent for his British listeners - bridging the gap between two countries that, in the words of George Bernard Shaw, are "divided by a common language."

Harold Evans seems to be a worthy successor. After leaving the editorship of the Times of London in 1981 (he butted heads with its new owner, Rupert Murdoch) Evans "moved to America in 1984 where he and his wife Tina Brown - former editor of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and the short-lived but zeitgeisty Talk magazine - are about as well-connected as you can get." Wikipedia notes that "Evans was appointed president and publisher of Random House trade group from 1990 to 1997 and editorial director and vice chairman of US News and World Report, the New York Daily News, and The Atlantic Monthly from 1997 to January 2000, when he resigned to concentrate on writing."

Evans is as proud of his American side as his British character, and he hates simplistic, knee-jerk "America-bashing." The BBC piece suggests that "perhaps 'A Point of View' will be less 'A Letter from America' and more of a love letter to America - which, indeed, is how one critic described Evans' first book on American history [The American Century, published in 1998]."

It'll be interesting to see if Evans cultivates a global following - including in the United States - as loyal as that once enjoyed by Alistair Cooke.

John Simpson on Peter Jennings

(Copied from mediaville): With the sad death of former ABC anchor Peter Jennings, I've been looking around for good eulogies from the media. One of the best I've found so far comes from the BBC's John Simpson. He has a lot to say about America's best news anchor by far - in fact Simpson describes Jennings as "probably the best in the world at his trade." But crucially, Jennings "always maintained a wry awareness that reporting, and fronting other people's reporting, for television was something pretty slight in the grand scale of things." Simpson says a good deal about Jennings' personal and professional talents, but the most saddening passage is this:

Peter did what he could to halt the downward spiral of television news in America - that terrible turning inward, which means the less you know about the world, the less you want to know about it, and therefore the less a ratings-obsessed industry decides to tell you. He often forced news items onto his programmes because they were important, not because the producers wanted them.

He loathed the arrival of the Fox network, with its open, noisy adherence to a political agenda, and believed it would destroy the old-fashioned notion of honest and unbiased reporting forever.

As for his own political opinions, I could never work them out. He would not tell me what he really thought about Clinton or George W Bush, and I eventually stopped asking him.

I really like that last bit. Poor old Peter Jennings. To this day, if I watch any network news broadcast, it'll be ABC - that is completely because of Jennings. I watched him for hours at the dawn of the new millennium and after 9/11, and many other times, and you could only respect the hell out of the fact that, somehow, he managed to stay above the mundance idiocy that increasingly surrounded him. Maybe his Canadian background helped; he maintained a small yet essential distance from America, even as middle America embraced him. I've said before that the people coming through America's news system are in no way comparable to the anchors of a generation ago. That's never more true when you consider the stature of Jennings against the pygmies and puffed-up, opinionated idiots that dominate news today. I don't care how many times you put Anderson Cooper or Brian Williams in a flak suit or on location overseas - these guys will never match up. Simpson puts it best:

Now, though, he seems to me like the last, best example of a tradition that had already started to vanish long before his death - the tradition of Martha Gellhorn and Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite, people who went and found out what was really happening before they started to talk about it.

Nowadays, most American and British writing and broadcasting about subjects like Iraq is done by people who do not go there. Peter Jennings did go there, and continued to go even when he knew he was dying.

"What brings you here?" I asked him the last time I saw him, standing outside the Convention Centre in the Green Zone in Baghdad last January.

"Oh, the usual. Just trying to find out what's going on."

That was Peter's greatest art - or as he would have said, in his self-deprecating Canadian way, his skill. It is something which is fast disappearing.

Robin Cook, RIP

Less than two weeks ago I posted a blog titled "Where's Robin Cook? (Where's Noam Chomsky?)" (click on it here.) I complained that Cook, the former British foreign secretary and an erudute and level-headed anti-war spokesperson, was missing from any debate in America about the Iraq debacle, and that was a great loss. Well, now he'll be missing from all debate, tragically: Robin Cook collapsed and died earlier this afternoon, while on a hill-walking trip in the North-west of Scotland. As the BBC's obituary notes, "The Labour MP for Livingston was considered one of the Commons' most intelligent MPs and one of its most skilled debaters." Also, "His stance on the Iraq war - and his resignation speech - only enhanced his reputation as a man of principle and a great Parliamentarian."

Brit at the helm of Miramax

British-born Daniel Battsek is to take over at Disney's Miramax division, from October 1. Battsek will lead "the Walt Disney Co.'s specialty films division into a new post-Harvey and Bob Weinstein era." Also according to Hollywood Reporter Battsek "will bring London-based Buena Vista International executive Kristin Jones with him, Disney sources confirmed, though not as head of production."

In the next few weeks, Battsek will move from the U.K. to New York, where the Miramax headquarters will continue to operate autonomously, separate from the parent studio. He has yet to decide where the new offices will be, though they will likely be housed in one of the buildings in Lower Manhattan that Disney leases for Miramax. "We will not be at Disney," he said. "We will have our own address. I was very determined that New York was the right place for an independent label, not a studio lot, given the way in which independent productions are created there."

Battsek has an interesting biography. He "began his industry career at the Hoyts Film Corp. in Sydney, where he rose to general manager in Victoria State overseeing distribution. He then served as managing director of Palace Pictures before joining Disney" in 1992, "after laying out plans for a U.K. distribution arm for the company. Having set up Buena Vista International U.K., he rapidly rose through the ranks, ending up executive vp and managing director of distribution and production for BVI U.K."

In 1999, Battsek helped set up the BVI U.K. Comedy Label, "which has produced three features, 'High Heels and Low Lifes' (2001), 'Hope Springs' and 'Calendar Girls' (both released in 2003). He has forged relationships with such filmmakers as Frears, Minghella, Christopher Nolan and John Madden."

New MD, new role at BBC Worldwide

BBC Worldwide is to get a new managing director: Darren Childs, who moves over from Sony Pictures Television International. Childs' post is brand new, "created as a result of the restructuring of BBC Worldwide into six divisions - TV channels, TV sales, magazines, children's, home entertainment and new media." According to Media Guardian, "BBC Worldwide's channels business comprises 19 wholly-owned and joint venture television channels with current availability in more than 320m homes around the world. In 2004/2005 the business generated sales of £140.6m and a profit of £4m." (is it me or does that profits number seem low compared to the total for annual sales?)

Citizen journalists, citizens' pictures

Citizen journalism and its increasing prominence during breaking news events is something we noted in the days following the 7/7 bombings in London (see e.g., the "Guardian's London bombing media coverage" and "More attack coverage" posts). It is also the subject of a recent piece, "From the editor's desktop", by editor and acting head of BBC News Interactive, Pete Clifton. Clifton notes:

One of the features of the appalling attacks in London this month has been the extraordinary range of material we have received from our readers. Many of the defining images of the bombings on 7 July came originally from users of this site who were caught up in the incidents in some way. . . . In the weeks since then we have received tens of thousands of e-mails, bringing pictures, video, eye-witness accounts and sometimes valuable tip-offs about alerts in various parts of the capital.

The contributions of our readers have not been a sideshow, they have been at the heart of our coverage. It's hardly something to celebrate at a time of such alarm and uncertainty, but there has without question been another step change in the relationship we have with our readers, their comments and pictures.

(Clifton points to some examples of the images received by the BBC here).

Clifton is also quoted by Mark Glaser, writing in Online Journalism Review (published by USC Annenberg). The article generally praises online news sources, which, Glaser says, "were at the top of their game on July 7 and beyond." But the BBC receives a special mention for its coverage. The BBC Web site, according to Clifton "experienced its most trafficked day ever on July 7 and was inundated with eyewitness accounts from readers - 20,000 e-mails, 1,000 photos and 20 videos in 24 hours." Replying via email Clifton told OJR : "It certainly did feel like a step-change [on July 7] . . . We often get pictures from our readers, but never as many as this, and the quality was very high. And because people were on the scenes, they were obviously better than anything news agencies could offer. A picture of the bus, for example, was the main picture on our front page for much of the day."

Glaser also posts as a sidebar the Nielsen/NetRatings figures for the most-visited news websites on July 7, 2005, in thousands of [U.S.] unique visitors, with the percentage change from the day before." Note that the BBC doesn't make it into the Top 10, by this measure - but it does show easily the largest day-on-day increase.

1. Yahoo! News . . . . . . . . .6,888 (+21%)
2. MSNBC . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,437 (+45%)
3. CNN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,162 (+24%)
4. AOL News . . . . . . . . . . . 3,173 (+22%)
5. NYTimes.com . . . . . . . . 1,855 (-1%)
6. Fox News . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,787 (+55%)
7. Internet Broadcasting . . 1,643 (+12%)
8. drudgereport.com . . . . . 1,491 (+11%)
9. Gannett Newspapers . . .1,453 (+26%)
10. washingtonpost.com . . 1,378 (+7%)
11. BBC News . . . . . . . . . . 1,314 (+138%)
12. USATODAY.com . . . . . . 1,289 (+53%)
13. Tribune Newspapers . . . 1,279 (-11%)
15. Google News . . . . . . . . . 1,125 (+13%)
16. Knight Ridder Digital . . 1,026 (+12%)

Glaser's piece also has a mention for the Guardian web site, which didn't make it in the U.S. Top 15. He points out that "the BBC and Guardian both had reporters' blogs that were updated as events unfolded, and group blogs such as BoingBoing and Londonist became instant aggregators of online information." Also of interest, Glaser notes: "both the BBC and MSNBC.com gave particular citizen journalists who survived a bit more room to tell their story on instant diaries set up for the occasion." (However, he also notes that "the diarist on the BBC, a woman who would only identify herself as Rachel (previously just "R"), was not totally thrilled about becoming a media sensation herself.")

Tectonic rifts at NewsCorp

As Doctor Media noted the other day, Rupert Murdoch's eldest son Lachlan quit as NewsCorp's deputy chief operating officer (though he'll retain a seat on the board). Rupert, 74, is said to be "saddened" by his son's decision. Yeah fine, but what's really going on? Now the media (well, those media not controlled by Murdoch at any rate) are buzzing about serious rifts between the leading members of the Murdoch clan; Lachlan is said to have "chafed" under his father's domineering style. And there are apparent rifts over the potential divvying up of family spoils, which would include Rupert's third wife and their two toddler children. Many might think that this leaves the door open for Rupe's second son, James (head of BSkyB), to take over, though the Wall Street Journal notes that, at least for the short term, News Corp. President and Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin might be best placed to take the top spot should the elder Mr. Murdoch step down. And rumors continue that News Corp could become the target of a takeover bid by Liberty Media Corp., controlled by "media titan" John Malone.