Simon Bucks

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“Starring Great Britain” and the big business of screen tourism

Nov 11, 2024 | rts.org.uk | Simon Bucks

You’ve seen the show, now book the trip. Coming soon to screens worldwide is an advertising campaign for UK tourism, featuring some of the best-known TV and film locations on our sceptred isles. “Starring GREAT Britain” will be launched in January by VisitBritain, whose job is to attract international visitors. It is spending several million pounds to cash in on a boom in “set-jetting” – marketing-speak for location tourism.
VisitBritain: Transforming filming locations into tourist destinations

Nov 11, 2024 | rts.org.uk | Simon Bucks

“Starring GREAT Britain” will be launched in January by VisitBritain, whose job is to attract international visitors. It is spending several million pounds to cash in on a boom in “set-jetting” – marketing-speak for location tourism. It will focus on TV shows sold globally, featuring places recognised by international audiences. “The challenge is that Britain can be seen as quite a traditional destination. So we are using film and TV as our hook to tell a broader story.
A feast for our ears: On the boom of media podcasts

Jun 6, 2024 | rts.org.uk | Simon Bucks

You are hereHome » Television Magazine » June 2024 The Rest Is Entertainment: Richard Osman and Marina Hyde (Credit: Goalhanger) From Off the Telly to The Rest Is Entertainment, media podcasts are booming. Simon Bucks can’t stop listeningWhich are your go-to podcasts? The chances are that at least one is on media and entertainment. According to Ofcom’s latest survey, it is the number-one genre, at least for the under-50s, and the choice is ever widening.
A dive into the misinformation cesspool: Marianna Spring's debut book

Apr 3, 2024 | rts.org.uk | Simon Bucks |Atlantic Books

“Disinformation Correspondent” is surely a top contender in the Orwellian job title stakes. The BBC’s Marianna Spring has “and Social Media” tagged on, but that’s not her focus. Social media, as she explains in this disturbing book, is just the vehicle for spreading unfounded scare stories, half-baked pseudoscience, racist bigotry and unadulterated hate.
How TV chipped away at Post Office lies

Mar 4, 2024 | rts.org.uk | Simon Bucks

Did Mr Bates vs the Post Office have you glued to your TV screen?” asked ITV on social media. The question – presumably rhetorical given the New Year drama’s colossal ratings – was plugging an archive clip of what seems to be the first TV news coverage, in English, of the UK’s biggest miscarriage of justice. “In English” is important. Tom Savvides was not, until now, a name you will have heard in connection with the Post Office Horizon scandal.
TV jobs crisis: from feast to famine

Feb 6, 2024 | rts.org.uk | Simon Bucks

Good riddance 2023, you were a lousy year for television freelancers. Will 2024 be better? The optimists are pinning their hopes on an upturn now that the Hollywood strikes have been settled. The realists are not so sure. “The UK creative economy and the freelancers who work in it will continue to be impacted by a double whammy,” says Mark Endemaño, Co-Head of Media and Entertainment EMEA at the consultancy Alix Partners.
Can Mark Thompson work his magic at CNN?

Dec 15, 2023 | rts.org.uk | Simon Bucks

Chicken Noodle Network, they mocked, when CNN launched on a wing and a prayer almost 44 years ago. It was a revolutionary and, many thought, crazy idea: TV news, 24/7. The all-powerful US networks were confident that this upstart rival, thinly resourced and prone to on-air gaffes, wouldn’t last six months. Instead, of course, it grew into an important and influential global news machine generating huge profits for its founder, Ted Turner, and a $7.3bn shares payday when he sold to Time Warner.
How the Ukraine war has changed the face of TV war reporting

Aug 29, 2023 | rts.org.uk | Simon Bucks

If we ever needed reminding that truth is the first casualty of war the conflict in Ukraine has supplied an abundance of misinformation and propaganda. War has also, wrote the historian AJP Taylor, just as reliably been the mother of invention for everything from battlefield hardware to advances in conflict journalism.
The case for and against AI in TV

Jun 12, 2023 | rts.org.uk | Simon Bucks

Should the television industry be worried about artificial intelligence (AI) or excited? Or both? Each day seems to bring fresh warnings that AI will wreck businesses, cast thousands out of work and even destroy the human race. So, is TV safe? Judge for yourself from this little experiment. “Can you suggest a format for a new television gameshow?” I asked the AI chatbot ChatGPT. “Here’s an idea. Title: Brain Busters,” it offered, instantly.
Does TV news exploit TikTok?

Apr 5, 2023 | rts.org.uk | Simon Bucks

TikTok is the new social media kid on the block, but it’s also stirring things up among broadcasters – and not simply because of its controversial Chinese ownership. Fears that TikTok is mining our data and sending it to Beijing has created a tricky dilemma for media companies. The app has been banned from work devices by a number of governments, international bodies and companies and is under fire from the US Congress.