• Don’t tell the Daily Mail, but Tony Hall will soon be launching The Blue Room in Birmingham (the BBC’s “first public-facing Blue Room”, even more excitingly), according to the in-house newsletter Ariel. This is ostensibly a showcase for the corporation’s technological goodies, but given the baggage of its name - The Blue Room was famously the title of a sexy play staged by London’s Donmar Warehouse in the late 90s, when Nicole Kidman stripped off and Charles Spencer, the Telegraph’s hyperventilating reviewer, ecstatically compared the experience to taking a cure for impotence - there’s hopefully more to it than that. By choosing that moniker, they’ve ensured that hordes of latterday Charles Spencers will be heading for Brum in search of “pure broadcasting Viagra”, and it won’t be enough to fob them off with mere gizmos and glimpses of the telly future.
• Some intriguing intelligence from Kevin Maguire’s Commons Confidential column in the New Statesman about the Sun, which creepily lionised George Osborne under the paper’s former regime after his budget in March, but of late under Tony Gallagher has been highly critical of his proposed axing of tax credits. Maguire writes that No 10 was crowing about having blunted coverage of Trustafarian George’s humiliating U-turn on the issue by “going over [the editor’s] head … to New York”, but advises it to stop boasting because Gallagher is “not one to forgive and forget”. However, perhaps they should stop boasting as the Sun did run a small story on page 1 the morning after the defeat in the Lords headlined “Borne loser” and referring to a “crushing defeat”. Monkey wonders what a sharper response would have looked like.
• It was described at the time as a collision of old and new media and the moment that showed that John Humphrys “just doesn’t get BuzzFeed”. Two years on, BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti explained at Mindshare’s Huddle event in London that he hadn’t realised what he was letting himself in for when he agreed to be interviewed on the Today show by the veteran presenter in 2013. “Coming from New York they said, ‘you’re going to do a public radio show’ and there’s this like crotchety guy and the minute I sit down he’s like attacking me. I mean NPR in the US they’re like ‘so why are you so wonderful?’, it’s the softest thing.” On the BBC, in contrast, “there’s this intense dude who’s asking me all these tough questions about the media industry”. Peretti now likes to ask Brits “what’s the BBC?”, he said, just to expunge the memory from his mind.
• Priceless self-parody from the Daily Telegraph, which began a story on Tuesday by informing its readers (or not) that: “The word ‘b-------’ can be used before the watershed in some circumstances, the broadcasting regulator said as it rejected complaints about a Strictly Come Dancing judge’s use of the term.” As in a previous Torygraph contender for Most Preposterous Intro Ever (2009’s slightly more helpful “The word b------s is still offensive, the High Court ruled yesterday”), no further enlightenment on Bruno Tonioli’s eight-letter lapse was provided, leaving the ultra-prim paper’s readers to weigh up what such possible prompts for outrage could be. Oddly enough, one possible contender was used without Victorian-style dashes in a report a week earlier quoting a “jailed extremist” as calling Britons “binge-drinking bastards”; so it may be that rude words are seen as only to be expected and so reproducible in the case of low-life figures, whereas the Telegraph has to reach for the smelling salts and the dashes when ladies, gentlemen and others who should know better turn potty-mouthed.
• Friday saw James Harding, the head of BBC News, “doing an Alan Yentob” by providing his services as presenter of a programme within his own empire - On Background, a new cerebral chat show looking in depth at “the big stories of the week” on the World Service, which the former Times editor co-hosts with Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of the Economist. When news of the show first emerged, an anonymous “BBC insider” wondered in the Mail if it was appropriate for a top executive to “put himself in the limelight”, given “the number of BBC journalists who are qualified and trained to do it”. Let’s hope, then, it wasn’t another anti-Harding subversive who was responsible for On Background’s peculiar timing. It’s all too easy, after all, to imagine a secret mutineer slyly telling the unwary virgin anchorman: “we think Friday the 13th would be the ideal day for your on-air debut, boss”.
• Justin-on-Justin two-ways may not occur again on the Today programme, following a comically disastrous interview with BBC South Asia correspondent Justin Rowlatt (formerly Newsnight’s “Ethical Man”) by Today presenter Justin Webb on Friday that resembled an Autumnwatch clash of rutting stags. The struggle for supremacy as the BBC’s alpha Justin began as early as the first question about Indian premier Modi’s visit to the UK, with Rowlatt making it clear that in his view Webb had clumsily mixed up two issues in a single poser; and then continued even more awkwardly, as Webb tried to ask another, with Rowlatt raising his voice to ensure he wasn’t interrupted, sounding more like a beleaguered and blustering political interviewee than a foreign correspondent. Christmas cards are unlikely to be exchanged.
• How long can the Times’s hot streak continue? By Monkey’s reckoning, John Witherow’s paper had managed to run photos of ballerinas (or occasionally sportswomen) on 14 consecutive days by the end of last week: an achievement that sometimes seemed in peril but at each point of danger was ultimately rescued, whether by an image of female swimmers that only appeared on page 80 in Sport, or a photo of dancers so small it could easily go unnoticed. Even more concentration will be required if pulling off a perfect month of leggy pix is now the target.
• You heard it here first, so you may be wondering how big a ratings hit Only Connect suffered as a result of being moved to 7.30pm on BBC2 to make way for Nigella: 600,000 viewers in week one, says Broadcast, so far from insignificant. Presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell has nevertheless remained so far only mildly and stoically grumpy on Twitter, telling “PUZZLE FANS!” that if they “can work out what time Only Connect is on tonight, that’s half the battle”.
•This article was amended on 16 November 2015 to correct a claim by the New Statesman that the Sun had not highlighted George Osborne’s defeat on its front page
