Thanks for mentioning Will Hayward’s substack newsletter. I subscribed and after reading for about five minutes was considerably better informed about Welsh politics and how devolution actually works (I’m English and have lived in Wales since 2020). And I didn’t have to scroll past a single “One weird trick” or “You won’t believe what they look like now” advert. Incidentally my favourite ever Wales Online story was about a very gruesome murder…committed in England…in the Victorian era.
Those Reach pages are so full of spammy adverts they become unreadable. I click out of the page as soon as i realise what it is. No point in even trying to read the article.
You can almost guarantee that you'll find such pages if you click on News on an Android device - nearly all the links from Google News lead to a Reach "story".
My favourite local "news" item, was when I searched for info on an attack at outside my local McDonalds, and found the main story was that a Big Mac might cost £50 by 2050.
Actively block Reach websites because of their cookies, clickbait, poor quality and advertising. Also can't quite square the circle of Mirror and Express being under the same owner, and god help all of those local titles and their stories of what chocolates are being cancelled or brought back from the dead. I've got more respect for Murdoch titles, and I'm a Guardian reader. You're so right about the importance of local news though
Every time Marina introduces herself it's like she is concentrating very hard to avoid messing up her intro, then with a satisfied grin towards Richard at the end when she gets it right 😅.
27:24 - I imagine another reason why they elongate article lengths down a page is because as you're scrolling through the article, on the sidebar on the right hand side, they have all other stories "which may interest you". The longer an article is, the more of those possible interest stories you pass on the way.
I fully concur with the Reach comments. The Liverpool Echo website is absolutely pointless. Completely unusable and I never risk clicking on any Liverpool Echo news anymore as it is beyond infuriating.
The deriliction of duty of Local news papers in the hands of Reach PLC has had material impact on those communities. The benefit is the wonderful reporters who have taken the risk of going alone to start thier own local, a substack or similar doing great work. Reach will eat its self with AI, hopefully.
The best thing about the horror streamers is the amount of incredibly good foreign horror movies you can find. Horror is a universal genre than transcends language.
Let's not forget that Arsenal got there first with the 1939 film The Arsenal Stadium Mystery featuring several Arsenal players and members of staff such as Cliff Bastin and Eddie Hapgood.
"You don't need to pay this person this much..." If only the BBC realised this! I'm firmly of the opinion that the BBC could limit all salaries at £100k with very little loss in quality. Go on, why not try it!!
I agree, there are so many talented people out there and thanks to you tube so many have already polished their presenting skills. The old argument used to be that the BBC needed to pay these salaries because of competition from the commercial sector, but I now feel the BBC sets the salary benchmark.
Of course, the reason why the remaining big studios don't want to commit to horror is that there is a limited number of weekends in the year and you need to make money in absolute terms to their financial goals, so they will try to spend money on those few "tentpole" releases and get the four quadrants. Sure, horror makes a lot of money, but it doesn't appeal to everyone, so if you need to make two billion a year in theatrical revenue, you can't really do that with just horror.
A word on horror and why it's so successful: good horror relies on a good script with relevence to the day - for me it's the best way to poke ireverent fun at the politics or style of the day. The execution does not need huge production costs or stars - so the result is both interesting and inexpensive. As an example of when it can go very well and very badly - Blaire Witch and its far more expensive and far inferior sequal.
The dedicated horror subscription services also happen because the distribution rights on horror movies tend to be in fewer hands. Comparatively, studio movies are completely tied up.
My Adblockers handle all of Reach’s guff and deliver me the actual content and some extra whitespace which is tolerable. The big downside is that their headlines are often as closely related to the actual content as Boris Johnson is to the truth!
I have a question... Their are charity muggers who populate the repeat channels such as ITV3 and Dave for example who plead for our £3.00 a month donations to help save cruelly abused animals, sick children, cancer sufferers, Alzheimer's patients and others. All are worthy causes but it does get a little overwhelming seeing the fairly distressing ads every fifteen minutes, So I wonder how much they pay for the advertising and how many £3.00 a month people need to sign up each month just to pay for the advertising.
This is a problem with a lot of charities. Their cost of advertising is two thirds of their budget. When I donate £3, I want you to spend £3 on charitable work. I don't want you to spend £1 on charitable work and the other £2 on getting someone else to donate £3.
The water ones bother me. All I think is “whilst the crew is there why don’t they give the poor kids a rest and drive to the well and bring a load of water back for the village?”
"Charity muggers" refers to street fundraisers, because like muggers, it is a real, in person interaction between the fundraiser and the member of the public centred around one party extracting money from the other. Television, online or print advertising is not "charity mugging"
@thomasdalton1508 charities wouldn't be able to do the good work that they do if they did not invest a good portion of donations towards further fundraising. If 100% of donations went directly to funding the projects a charity runs, there'd soon be no more projects due to a lack of funding.
The template story has become a boom in the online news industry. "Savvy mum saves hundreds..." "Mrs Hinch fans..." "80's pop start looks unrecognizable..." And, of course, the vinegar story.
Today's episode hosted by Richard Osman and Merino Hide. Wooliest outfit ever! p.s. Samara Weaving is my favourite Final Girl (Aussie bias declared). Best Christmas movie ever is Daddy's Home 2 followed closely by Missile Tow.
I adore Hallmark Christmas movies (& ones made by Non Hallmark, that are the same kinda thing). I've already watched 8 Christmas movies this year *LOL* - I have to say that I'm not keen on the schmultzy sappy ones so much. I love looking out for the same actors being re-used!!
Terrifier is not horror, it's just gore porn for the TikTok generation. Bursts of ultra violence like extended Mortal Kombat fatalities but nothing else of interest. Actually, modern day Mortal Kombat has far more compelling characters and a more interesting story. Still, gets bums on seats I guess.
Richard, My birthday is 1st December, so I'm the same. CHRISTMAS doesn't start until after! I real pain, because if you want to go out for dinner on the night, then it's Christmas meal. At least you don't have that problem
Horror is bigger than it’s ever been, add in the commercial aspect of horror film festivals, word of mouth streaming numbers and also a huge expansion of conventions has really made horror “cool” again. Sadly this also means we get some absolute dross as studios just see it as a “cash cow”. Horror is also a great tool for reflecting societal worries, fears or concerns, so when we are having turbulent times, you see horror becoming much more popular.
The Liverpool Echo is awful. It used to be a great local paper. Far too many of their stories are based on random opinions of people on Twitter. eg There might be a story headline 'Ken Barlow to be murdered by Corrie neighbour!' with a photo showing Martin Platt and the first thing you think is " I didn't know Ken Barlow was leaving Corrie" so you click on it only to find the journalist has trawled twitter to find a random comment saying "I think Ken Barlow will leave soon" and someone will reply "yes, David Platt will probably kill him". That will then become a full page story, not even based on any sort of fact or rumour. Just complete made up bullshit.
I recently bit the bullet, and watched the first Terrifier on Amazon, expecting cheap nasty trash. And yes, it was nasty and vicious, but was surprisingly good quality. It looked far more expensive, than it actually was. I can see why it was so successful.
Horror works particularly well for cinemas, because of the age groups that are predominantly attracted to watching horror, Is the exact same age group which goes to the cinema the most
I do like the way Marina 'physically' talks ie body movement , mouth, voice etc and it's clear she knows and loves her subject and gets very excited about it, but she tends to 'assume knowledge' from the lay people audience and not fully explain certain industry terms or concepts Richard, thankfully, interrupted and explained Reach, I think realising the lay audience may not fully understand.
+61 points (there are points now.) Moving on… I have two things to say: 1) they have done it again. “Sex Ghost” is just the latest in a long line of premises that they have so generously shared with the world. Each and every one has the potential to make Citizen Kane look like The Room if it were remade by the tanner who is in charge of the leatherwork on Trump’s face skin (hide?). How is it that each and every idea they bring into the world reaches us as a luscious mix of drama, eroticism and, at its core, the tattered and weary remains of once unfettered optimism -the human condition. 2) It’s wild that even though they aren’t from the US, they take time out of their day to give eagles the courage to soar.
Having seen some of Hallmark "dramas", I don't why any self respecting adult, would watch them, they are for the naive or senile, it's like a vacant lot for movies.
Could some of the unexpected F1 popularity be due to the enormous fanfic community? There's 40,000 fics and counting on AO3, with over fifty one-shot stories or chapter updates a day. It's not really far from there to a Hallmark movie.
In a newspaper, you see a little nub of news in brief among other nubs of news in brief. On the Internet, news stories are competing with Wikipedia and Instagram's infinite scroll. Placement error begets churn.
Maybe the problem is the cost of movies needs to come down? Seems like the cheap ones do better than the ridiculously overpriced/overhyped expensive ones. 😆
It can work both ways but the cost of the big budget blockbusters certainly needs to come down a lot. The execs can't get their heads around the idea that more money spent, doesn't translate into more money made. All they want is the next billion dollar movie, nothing else interests them any more. They don't see that making multiple smaller budget movies might get them more in the end. That's why horror can be far more successful financially.
It's the cost of advertising that really pushes film costs out of profitability. A huge benefit of horror is that you want to keep it a surprise, so you do less expensive advertising.
22:40 probably sits with a real time display of ad clicks on a wallboard in his office.. as long as the numbers are going up he's happy. That's the end of his interest in reporting the news.
Any genre could have the success of Horror but hollywood doesnt want to onvest and build the audience. Theye also keep throwing large budgets thinking thatll do it, instead of setting a budget and writing for that budget and working on the script until its right.
f1 has always had a strong female fan base in the uk, drive to survive has clearly helped with younger people but its wrong to say women havent had a strong presence in f1
I'm watching the horror description. I don't think the opinions about A-listers are particularly well thought out. I agree that horrors don't need big stars, but other genres do
An episode about clickbait which is clickbait for a Sky shill. 32:57 - 34:12 is "officially" the commercial, but I'm sure they're sincere about it in any case.
I’m all for fun sappy Christmas movies, and nothing, and I mean nothing, has to be Citizen Cane. But Hallmark movies are so dull and badly made, even without getting into the regressive attitudes to women and families and the not so subtle hatred of diverse modern cities.
She also says that whiny gatekeepers can go f themselves. If you don't like the movies, don't watch them. There's a large underserved market of women who likes sport, men who likes hallmark movies, and people in general who likes more diversity with the leading actors in big action movies.
Hollywood should still make movies for those review-bombing incels, but what they don’t understand is that not all movies are made for them. If there’s a movie they don’t like they can always skip it, rather than trying to sabotage it for everyone else.
"...the tragedy of Liam Payne..." this is a very subject viewpoint. As far as I am concerned it is one more talentless, fame-chaser out of the public ear.
Well you're an Edgelord aren't you. Not my type of music at all but how about some emparhy. I feel amazed I've got to 62, he was half my age. Whatever he was like as a person 31 is no age. There's such a dark underbelly to the Karaoke Sauron's sausage factory.
