UK media roundup

I've been looking though Media Guardian's roundup of British media news for some interesting tidbits, and boy did I find some. Just a typical weekend in UK media-land: The English Premier League has launched an inquiry "into the declining popularity of the Premiership," looking at issues such as "falling crowds, high ticket prices, saturation television coverage and the dominance of a few rich clubs" - and the increasing tendency for SkyTV to alter kick-off times to suit its schedules. ... The BBC, worried about its charter renewal, is going back to the well - the Shakespeare/Dickens well, to be exact, so it can produce a new generation of classics to show how well it's spending the licensepayers' money. Top of the list is a soap-style adaptation of Dickens' Bleak House. ... Roy Greenslade takes a historical perspective on why nobody likes the media - it has been ever thus, he argues. ... The country is still in a tizzy over the broadcast of "Jerry Springer: The Opera" - with many arguing that the show is blasphemous; the show "featured much swearing and a number of controversial scenes including one where Jesus, wearing a nappy [diaper], declares that he is a 'bit gay.'" ... ITV's "Vote For Me" show has descended into controversy; the "attempt to revitalise the public's interest in politics, by subjecting would-be MPs to a Pop Idol-style reality TV show," has gotten ugly "after the winner was accused of holding views to the right of the [racist] British National Party."

I could go on ...

But finally, and back with the whole WW2 thing, the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) has banned a Harry Enfield-as-Churchill ad because it might cause offence to the great British public. The ad

features Enfield as one of his TV characters, the vociferous Frank Doberman, who tells the "porky prime minister" he should sign up to the company's broadband. He says: "Oi, Churchill. Well done for winning world war II. Nice One. But if you was downloading saucy pics of Monty up at El Alamein using a dial-up connection, I should say, Oi, Churchill, no!"

What could possibly be offensive about that? I could go on ...