Virgin Media to back Big Brother

Virgin Media has been confirmed as the sponsor of Big Brother 8 with the company's mobile arm to be the main service promoted.

Virgin Media has signed on for the main summer series - as revealed by MediaGuardian.co.uk - but not next year's Celebrity Big Brother version.

Channel 4 has not yet announced if there will be a Celebrity Big Brother in 2008. However, it is understood that Virgin Media will be given first refusal on extending the sponsorship if the trouble-laden show runs without a hitch this summer.

"Of course we had worries [about this year's Celebrity Big Brother], we would have been foolhardy if we didn't," said James Kydd, the managing director of marketing at Virgin Media.
"We spent a lot of time talking to Channel 4 about how they were sorting out their internal processes to make sure there wouldn't be any sort of escalation again. But Big Brother is always controversial, it is the nature of the beast. We just wanted to be reassured that there wouldn't be a situation that got out of control again."

Carphone Warehouse pulled out of its £2.5m a year sponsorship of Big Brother following the Shilpa Shetty racism row in January.

The Big Brother sponsorship package includes branding and advertising opportunities across TV, video-on-demand, online, radio and mobile.

"The sponsorship will be split between our mobile and media services," added Mr Kydd. "What Big Brother does is give a fantastic opportunity to bring to life quadplay in action and the core 16-34 demographic BB reaches is a bullseye for mobile. Virgin Mobile will be the lead sponsor but we will absolutely push Virgin Media messaging.

if there is going to be a big brtoher 2008 virgin media will sponsor them. it is a very risky idea and could back fire as people think big brother is at fault for racial abuse to shilpa shetty. virgin media are currently trying to take over channel 4 and are becoming a big success. overall it could be very popular and people which watch to see how big brother has changed or imporved.

Blue Peter phone-in received 14,000 calls

John PlunkettWednesday March 14, 2007
MediaGuardian.co.uk

Nearly 14,000 calls were made to the Blue Peter phone-in competition that faked the winner after the phone lines failed, it has been revealed.

A technical error meant that none of the people who phoned the BBC1 children's programme were in with a chance of winning the "guess whose shoes" competition.
Producers asked a girl who was visiting the Blue Peter studio to phone the programme with the correct answer, and she was announced on air as the competition winner.
The girl was a "Blue Peter Team Player" on a visit to the BBC studio after winning a separate, unrelated competition.
In a lengthy statement on the Blue Peter website, the BBC said the girl "really knew the answer" but had an unfair advantage because she was in the studio at the time of the competition.
It said the use of a "stand-in" was a "serious error of judgment made by a junior member of staff", and said it had "absolutely not" fixed any other Blue Peter competitions.
Part of the Blue Peter appeal in aid of Unicef, viewers were shown a mystery celebrity's shoes along with a visual clue and asked to say who they belonged to - Bradley from EastEnders, Boyd from Neighbours, or Sam from Casualty.
With 3.5p of the 10p call going to Unicef, it raised £450.52 for the children's charity. Another £727.75 went to Cable & Wireless for the use of the phone-lines, and £207.93 to Telecom Express, which ran the competition and has donated its share to the appeal.
The "whose shoes" competition was intended to run once a week for six weeks. The winner was offered the choice of the top 10 toys for Christmas.
The BBC said the technical breakdown was due to an "unavoidable technical difficulty. It was created by our need to handle all the calls very quickly to find a winner before the end of the programme.
"All the competition calls did actually get through. The part of the technology that broke was the retrieval system allowing our production team to make a selection from the calls. We just couldn't make a fair draw in time to show the real winner during the programme.
"This competition was a 'phone-in' and the use of a stand-in was due to the wrong decision being [made] after a technical issue during a live transmission. This decision was made under extreme pressure but there was never any intention to run an unfair competition or take money under false pretences.
"As Blue Peter is a live transmission sometimes problems do arise however we have run many competitions over Blue Peter's 49 years and we can assure you that this error has never happened before and will never happen again. Due to the added pressure of a live revealing of the 'Whose Shoes' winner a snap decision was made and Blue Peter is truly sorry that this was unfair to other children who had entered."

Blue Peters phone lines went down and 14000 kids rang in trying to win a competiton 'guess whose shoes'. therefore Blue peter tried to cover it up and got a girl from the studio to ring up and become the competition winner. i think this is wrong and the people should be refunded there money or get a free chance at a next competition. apartently most of the money went to charity so i suppose it was okay. overall they promised this will never happen again.

EsSaY

Using a comparison of ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ and ‘Your Revolution’ as a starting point explore the media issues and debates which they raise.

Both songs are from very different times, ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ is from 1971 when the civil rights act had been passed previously, but obviously Gil Scoot-Heron thought black people were still not being treated as fairly as white people. ‘Your Revolution’ by Sarah Jones in 1998 was centred on a different issue to do with women and their tights. Previously to that feminism has started and women were treated more equally to men in the 1970’s.

Gil Scott-Heron’s piece of music is all about the media and how it changes us and makes us believe what it wants us to believe. It says how everyone is influenced by the mass media and not to believe everything you watch on television. He always refers to the revolution, ‘The revolution will not go better with coke,’ he refers to advertising using coke, which is a major brand and one people always buy putting his point across very strongly about the media’s power. Black people are put across poorly in the media so it’s not something that is trustworthy and fair. It shows hegemony is present in society and ethnic minorities are under represented in the media.

Sarah Jones’s song is about the revolution of females in rap music, both texts are talking about different things but show the same concept as women are represented very poorly in hip-hop videos. She talks about misogyny with reference to sexual connotations about her body and how women are represented. ‘Your revolution will not happen between these thighs,’ is a statement proving that not all women are like those portrayed in rap videos and they are to be treated with respect. Both Gil’s and Sarah’s songs have messages about the media and the messages it influences audiences with.

In both pieces of music they show negative representations of their believes, in Gil’s he shows how black people are represented ‘…slide that colour TV into a stolen ambulance’. This shows that ethnic minorities are represented in such a way that people will be scared or will despise them. Gil is therefore talking about a revolution whereby things will change and their may be a black power of Marxism in the future, as black people are referred to as ‘brothers’ and police as ‘pigs’. The connotations of pigs are dirty and that’s how they describe the police.

In Gil’s the police are described as the bad guys, whereas Sarah’s enemies are rap stars. One which she refers to is LL Cool J and she mocks his song using intertextuality showing her hatred towards him for undermining women in such a way. Nowadays and from the 1970’s women have lots of rights in society but still rap videos at the time were very patriarchal sending out a bad message to the young audiences watching. Sarah’s revolution will be the day that rap videos do not undermine females, both texts talk about the revolution but the revolution is different to everyone.

Sarah shows that blacks in the media are represented as powerful in their rap videos, using their expensive cars and showing off huge homes, whereas Gil’s representation of blacks is completely different. In the same way audiences are led to believe what they see, young teenagers believe they can become like the artists so start disrespecting women and society becomes more patriarchal as a results. In Gil’s however people therefore disrespect black people so as a result they do not get treated fairly among society and are stereotyped as being trouble makers.

In conclusion both texts talk about a revolution where society changes but both about two completely separate issues. They are creating awareness and trying to get a message across but both groups are represented poorly.