Top of the Pods
- 23 Jun 06, 01:43 PM
It's fashionable these days in media columns to lobby for things that would assist your own media organisation and restrain the excesses of others.
The estimable is always at it, complaining recently about the 麻豆社's digital plans and asking "is it really necessary, useful or at all enhancing to have a Newsnight podcast?". The viewers of course have answered resoundingly by propelling our weekly offering to number three in the news podcast chart.
And this is where my own bit of lobbying comes in. We would, pace Emily, love to be number one. But while the current way of classifying news podcasts persists, that would appear to be beyond us. I've no complaints about number two. That's Radio 4's and it is classic stuff - I subscribe myself. But what is number one? , including - and Jeremy would approve of this - pictures? Or one of ? No, it's something called Kitcast.
Kitcast is, according to the blurb, "a ten-minute weekly videoblog covering the world of sex. " Each episode, it goes on, is "hosted by a lingerie clad (non-nude) hostess Ms Kitka" - a little red box warns of explicit content.
Does that matter? Well, consider two developments in the digital revolution this week. First, that traditional showcase of musical popularity Top of the Pops . Then, the 麻豆社's website an ingenious new device which tells you at any moment of the day or night what the most popular and most emailed stories are. With every passing day, what viewers watch is being decided less by editors and more by algorithms which place one thing or another at the top of the pile. And in that world, how content is categorised is everything.
Imagine Jeremy Paxman sitting beside a lingerie clad (non-nude) Ms Kitka at a future TV news awards dinner. If that thought disturbs you, you know what you must do - to download Newsnight, or another reputable news podcast.
A more altruistic lobbyist altogether is our latest recruit on Newsnight, . Eric - who makes an improbable and possibly not pressingly busy living as a translator from Estonian - has been writing to the programme for years, pointing out its inadequacies and praising its strong points, always with wit and sometimes with savagery. Of late, he's been complaining about what he sees as the modernising tendency on Newsnight, so in a stroke of modernism we decided to give him his own column on the website. A little oddly though, since he's gone on public display he's become a whole lot more polite.
Also complaining in print this week was the Telegraph's Arts correspondent Rupert Christiansen. In railing against the 麻豆社's arts coverage, he didn't savage , but he did wonder - rather loftily - "Couldn't Newsnight's Friday arts review be expanded into something more like famous French television programme Apostrophes?"
Sadly, Apostrophes has long since gone the way of Top of the Pops, but I hope Rupert - and you - will appreciate tonight's Review special with Harold Pinter. Part performance, part masterclass, part intellectual discourse. Kitcast it ain't.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
