You've all seen it but have you ever read it? Almost every TV commercial these days comes with its small print, often just a line of text saying "conditions apply", but sometimes paragraphs of obscure regulations and caveats. What follows are a few of the bits of small print found on the weekend of the 11th-13th November 2011 on British TV. Some of it gives health warnings or usage instructions; some reveals the less-than-impressive details of the money-off offers (the high original price may have only been in place a week or two); other texts explain the methodology behind grandiose claims; or reveal the extra cash you'll have to spend to get something useful.
Screens simulated. Sequence shortened. High speed internet, webcams, mobile plan, additional programs and fees required for some features. (Microsoft OS and web services)
7% fibre. Enjoy as part of a healthy balanced diet & active lifestyle. 30g serving = 9% of sugar GDA. (Coco Pops breakfast cereal)
Scale speed 770 kmh. (GX Buggy toy)
Sold separately. Battle fortress around £40. (Zibits toy)
Batteries not included. Adult assembly required. (Elefun game)
Subject to availability. Selected UK Stores. (Clarkson Powered Up DVD)
Not game footage. Game sold separately. (Elder Scrolls V game/X-Box console)
Annual global sales 7/09 - 6/10. Ends 22/11. See in store for details. Selected stores. (Olay beauty product/Superdrug store)
£50 with any Estee Lauder fragrance purchase. While stocks last. (Estee Lauder Beautiful fragrance)
A few rules apply. Ofcom Market Report. (3 mobile phone plan)
At participating restaurants only. Drinks may vary. Oreo is a registered trademark of Kraft foods used under licence. (KFC meal options)
For the facts: drinkaware.co.uk (Press 81 liquor)
Antibacterial handwash. Use biocides safely. Always read the label and product information before use. (Dettol handwash)
12 place setting tested. uSwitch.com prices used. On selected Bosch dishwashers at participating retailers. Ends 20th January. Terms & Conditions apply. (Bosch dishwashers)
16+. Prices include VAT & P&P. Cost of bid varies. Cost of bids included. Savings against RRP. Pay to bid auction site. (Madbid.com auction website)
Active City Stop is active at speeds up to 19mph. Optional features available at extra costs on selected models, see your Ford Dealer for details. (Ford Focus)
Excludes Trax bikes. Selected bikes only. (Halfords stores bicycle department)
18+ (Daily Mail newspaper reader offer)
£349. (struckout) £649. Higher price 1st - 10th Nov. Ends 16th Nov. £269. (struckout) £449. Higher price 3rd - 9th Nov. Ends 17th Nov. (Comet stores)
UK residents and 16+ only. Competition closes: 13/11/11. Full terms at tvterms.co.uk. (Gillette razors)
Associated with dandruff. (Head & Shoulders shampoo for itchy scalps)
Based on December 2010 survey. Funds sent within one hour, if approved between midnight and 10 pm. Maximum of £1,000 for first time customers. 25% off finance charge from which APR is calculated. Approval subject to status. Approvals take less than 30 minutes in most cases. Representative 1734% APR. Online discount. Cannot be combined with other offers. Terms and conditions apply. (QuickQuid money lending service)
While stocks last. Mystery product also available at larger Boots stores. (Boots beauty product promotion)
Selected products and stores. Subject to availability. Enjoy wine responsibly. Offer runs Thursday to Tuesday. (M&S meal offer)
18+. No deposit necessary. Non-withdrawable £10 free bet. Standard network charges and terms apply www.gambleaware.co.uk (Sky Bet gambling)
Fairy, Flash & Febreze will donate £150,000 to Make-A-Wish foundation this Christmas. Charity registration numbers (England & Wales) 296572 (Scotland) SCO37479 (Ireland) CHY15267. (Fairy/Flash/Febreze cleaning products charity appeal)
With dry food always give your cat plenty of water. (IAMS dry cat food)
Toys shown £4.24 to £77.24. Selected lines. Ends Tuesday. Some batteries excluded. Ends Tuesday. NPD Customer Survey, 200 transactions, 2010-11. (Argos stores toy offer)
(C) 2011 Kodak. Based on lowest total ink replacement costs, inkjet printers. Q3 2011 pricing. See printkodak.co.uk. RRP August 2011. (Kodak printers)
Keeps on working for up to 12 hours. Research results - 80% of 130 women. (Simple beauty product)
£659 total separate selling price from 5/8 - 10/9/11. £649 from 17/9 - 12/10/11 AMD Dual Core E2 3000M Accelerated Processor with AMD Radeon HD6380G Discrete-Class Graphics. Currys only. £199 from 20/10 - 9/11/11. (Currys/PC World electronics stores)
Selected UK stores. Subject to availability. Delivery charges may apply online. Toy prices from £34.16-£90. tesco.com/direct. (Tesco stores games offer)
Youth Code day + serum tested on 194 women. (L'Oreal beauty product)
18+ only. Terms and conditions apply. (uniformdating.com dating website)
In taste tests 181 like Lindt. 86% of them also liked Aldi. (Aldi supermarket own-brand chocolate animals)
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Friday, November 18, 2011
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Who's up in Lady Gaga's crotch?
Popjustice have got hold of the seating plans for this year's Brit Awards, the UK record industry jolly held on February 16 this year. There were platinum tables rated A to E and mere gold tables from F to J. As PopJustice points out, the seating assignments say a lot about the state of the British music and media industries.
There were many top-class A tables for Sony (18, plus 2 Sony/ATV publishers and 2 Sony Ericsson) and Universal/UMTV (17) and fewer for Polydor (6), with 6 Warner Bros/Music/Chapell tables scattered around from A to C, and 7 EMI tables in B. Mastercard/Barclays (chief sponsors) and BPI/Brits (organisers) filled out much of B and C. ITV who broadcast the ceremony had 12 good tables (A and B) - 5 for Brand and Commercial, 2 for ITV Entertainment, and the rest spread across Commissioning, Corporate Comms, Productions, Public Affairs, and ITV2; the BBC had just 2 (one for Radio 1 and the other for Talents and Rights Negotiation) and Sky and Channel 4 one each.
Here are some of the other attendees, divided by class of table (A is right up in front of the stage, B behind, C and D in a semicircle behind that, right up to J and K at the very back):
A: 3 tables for Island; 2 for Atlantic; 2 for Mercury music group, 1 each for CAA (talent agency), Classic FM, Def Jam, iTunes, Live Nation (promoters), Music Week (magazine), Ticketmaster (promoters), XL Recordings (record label), All Around The World (record label), All The Worlds (events company)
B: 3 for AEG (concert promoters)
C: 2 for Myspace; 1 each for HMV, LTB TV, MTV, Pet Shop Boys partnership, Primary Talent International, The Sun, Virgin Media, William Morris, Official Chart Company
D: 2 for ASDA stores, 2 Fremantle (producers of X Factor, X's Got Talent, X Idol, etc); 1 each for BSkyB (Sky television), Freud communications, Guardian Media Group radio
E: Orion Security Print, BMI (music licensing agency), Black and Blonde (music management behind The Soldiers and various pop acts)
F: Heart (radio)
G: Bauer media (Heat, Kerrang, FHM, Kiss radio, and many more)
H: Dragonstorm Records, Olswang (media lawyers), ITV2 press, Just 4 Linen (linen hire service)
J: 2 for Comet Group (electrical retailer)
Many of the lesser tables were also set aside for Brits staff, Mastercard, and miscellaneous suppliers.
There were many top-class A tables for Sony (18, plus 2 Sony/ATV publishers and 2 Sony Ericsson) and Universal/UMTV (17) and fewer for Polydor (6), with 6 Warner Bros/Music/Chapell tables scattered around from A to C, and 7 EMI tables in B. Mastercard/Barclays (chief sponsors) and BPI/Brits (organisers) filled out much of B and C. ITV who broadcast the ceremony had 12 good tables (A and B) - 5 for Brand and Commercial, 2 for ITV Entertainment, and the rest spread across Commissioning, Corporate Comms, Productions, Public Affairs, and ITV2; the BBC had just 2 (one for Radio 1 and the other for Talents and Rights Negotiation) and Sky and Channel 4 one each.
Here are some of the other attendees, divided by class of table (A is right up in front of the stage, B behind, C and D in a semicircle behind that, right up to J and K at the very back):
A: 3 tables for Island; 2 for Atlantic; 2 for Mercury music group, 1 each for CAA (talent agency), Classic FM, Def Jam, iTunes, Live Nation (promoters), Music Week (magazine), Ticketmaster (promoters), XL Recordings (record label), All Around The World (record label), All The Worlds (events company)
B: 3 for AEG (concert promoters)
C: 2 for Myspace; 1 each for HMV, LTB TV, MTV, Pet Shop Boys partnership, Primary Talent International, The Sun, Virgin Media, William Morris, Official Chart Company
D: 2 for ASDA stores, 2 Fremantle (producers of X Factor, X's Got Talent, X Idol, etc); 1 each for BSkyB (Sky television), Freud communications, Guardian Media Group radio
E: Orion Security Print, BMI (music licensing agency), Black and Blonde (music management behind The Soldiers and various pop acts)
F: Heart (radio)
G: Bauer media (Heat, Kerrang, FHM, Kiss radio, and many more)
H: Dragonstorm Records, Olswang (media lawyers), ITV2 press, Just 4 Linen (linen hire service)
J: 2 for Comet Group (electrical retailer)
Many of the lesser tables were also set aside for Brits staff, Mastercard, and miscellaneous suppliers.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Lost and Found
Some examples of lost, mislaid, stolen, or destroyed, music, books, and films, plus some subsequently recovered.
Keith Waterhouse left the first 10000 words of his novel Billy Liar in a taxi and had to start it again.
John Stuart Mill accidentally destroyed the only manuscript of Thomas Carlyle's French Revolution, mistaking it for scrap paper and setting fire to it, but Carlyle rewrote it and it became a classic.
Andre Malraux's manuscript novel The Struggle against the Angel was destroyed by the Germans in World War Two; Malraux, who fought in the French Resistance, was also captured but survived. Only a fragment of the book escaped destruction, and was later published as The Walnut Trees of Altenburg. Malraux did not write any more novels, but served in de Gaulle's governments and became an important art historian.
John Wilmot, 2nd earl of Rochester burned many of his more immoral poems when he decided to reform.
Ralph Ellison lived 40 years after the publication of his masterpiece Invisible Man without ever producing a followup, but with many excuses for not writing it - he claimed to have lost 365 pages of it in a house fire, but the truth of this excuse is disputed. His work in progress was published posthumously as Juneteenth.
Fantasy writer David Eddings accidentally burnt down his office when he attempted to test whether a liquid leaking from his car was water or gasoline by setting fire to it. However, it was not reported that he lost any work.
William Faulkner died in 1962; The Dreadful Hollow, a vampire screenplay set in Victorian England and possibly written as a joke, was found among his papers in 2007. Faulkner was a successful screenwriter, working on The Big Sleep, Mildred Pierce, and To Have and Have Not among other films, and there were rumours when it was discovered that The Dreadful Hollow would be filmed with a $60m budget, but this doesn't seem to have happened.
Graham Greene's detective novel The Empty Chair written in the mid 1920s was unearthed in his archives in 2008. Unfortunately he never finished it, so nobody knew whodunnit.
Many works narrowly escaped destruction on the author's death when friends and relatives disobeyed the author's will. Nabokov left instructions for his unfinished manuscript The Original of Laura to be burnt after his death in 1977. His wife saved it and it sat in a Swiss bank vault for 30 years. Despite being little more than notes on index cards, it was published in 2009; reviewers were embarrassed or critical (Washington Post, Guardian, Telegraph). Virgil did not finish writing the Aeneid before his death, and legend says he ordered its destruction. Max Brod failed to carry out Franz Kafka's wish that he destroy unfinished manuscripts. In contrast, Ted Hughes destroyed some of Sylvia Plath's diaries upon her death, apparently without her authorisation.
Gerard Manley Hopkins spent his lifetime agonising over whether he should write poetry and released only a few mild verses that did not show his true genius; he died in 1889 but it wasn't till 1918 that his friend Robert Bridges published his poems. Emily Dickinson was another poet almost unpublished during her life; she died in 1886 and her sister Lavinia discovered her poems shortly after; they were published by friends in 1890. However, this collection was heavily edited and it was not until 1955 that a scholarly edition was produced that made no attempt to correct her strange rhythms and half-rhymes.
The history of popular music is full of legendary missing recordings. The mastertapes of Green Day's Cigarettes and Valentines album were stolen and they recorded something else instead - the American Idiot album. The tapes of an album by Peter "Where do you go to my lovely?" Sarstedt recorded in 1970 were lost for 30 years; it was released as the Lost Album in 2008. There is a missing album by Johnny Marr and Ian McCulloch (Echo and the Bunnymen), recorded in 1993, stolen from a courier van on their way to fellow Bunnyman Will Sergeant.
The BBC followed a deliberate policy of deleting old programs on videotape so that the tapes could be reused. This means there are no recordings of episodes of classic shows from Doctor Who to Dad's Army, as well as classics like Hancock's Half Hour, live broadcasts from Top of the Pops to the BBC's coverage of the first moon landing, adaptations of Madame Bovary and For Whom the Bell Tolls, and many televised plays including The Madhouse on Castle Street (1963) which featured Bob Dylan's first acting performance. Sometimes an old telecine recording turns up, or a tape leant to an African broadcaster returns home, but the supply is surely drying up.
Keith Waterhouse left the first 10000 words of his novel Billy Liar in a taxi and had to start it again.
John Stuart Mill accidentally destroyed the only manuscript of Thomas Carlyle's French Revolution, mistaking it for scrap paper and setting fire to it, but Carlyle rewrote it and it became a classic.
Andre Malraux's manuscript novel The Struggle against the Angel was destroyed by the Germans in World War Two; Malraux, who fought in the French Resistance, was also captured but survived. Only a fragment of the book escaped destruction, and was later published as The Walnut Trees of Altenburg. Malraux did not write any more novels, but served in de Gaulle's governments and became an important art historian.
John Wilmot, 2nd earl of Rochester burned many of his more immoral poems when he decided to reform.
Ralph Ellison lived 40 years after the publication of his masterpiece Invisible Man without ever producing a followup, but with many excuses for not writing it - he claimed to have lost 365 pages of it in a house fire, but the truth of this excuse is disputed. His work in progress was published posthumously as Juneteenth.
Fantasy writer David Eddings accidentally burnt down his office when he attempted to test whether a liquid leaking from his car was water or gasoline by setting fire to it. However, it was not reported that he lost any work.
William Faulkner died in 1962; The Dreadful Hollow, a vampire screenplay set in Victorian England and possibly written as a joke, was found among his papers in 2007. Faulkner was a successful screenwriter, working on The Big Sleep, Mildred Pierce, and To Have and Have Not among other films, and there were rumours when it was discovered that The Dreadful Hollow would be filmed with a $60m budget, but this doesn't seem to have happened.
Graham Greene's detective novel The Empty Chair written in the mid 1920s was unearthed in his archives in 2008. Unfortunately he never finished it, so nobody knew whodunnit.
Many works narrowly escaped destruction on the author's death when friends and relatives disobeyed the author's will. Nabokov left instructions for his unfinished manuscript The Original of Laura to be burnt after his death in 1977. His wife saved it and it sat in a Swiss bank vault for 30 years. Despite being little more than notes on index cards, it was published in 2009; reviewers were embarrassed or critical (Washington Post, Guardian, Telegraph). Virgil did not finish writing the Aeneid before his death, and legend says he ordered its destruction. Max Brod failed to carry out Franz Kafka's wish that he destroy unfinished manuscripts. In contrast, Ted Hughes destroyed some of Sylvia Plath's diaries upon her death, apparently without her authorisation.
Gerard Manley Hopkins spent his lifetime agonising over whether he should write poetry and released only a few mild verses that did not show his true genius; he died in 1889 but it wasn't till 1918 that his friend Robert Bridges published his poems. Emily Dickinson was another poet almost unpublished during her life; she died in 1886 and her sister Lavinia discovered her poems shortly after; they were published by friends in 1890. However, this collection was heavily edited and it was not until 1955 that a scholarly edition was produced that made no attempt to correct her strange rhythms and half-rhymes.
The history of popular music is full of legendary missing recordings. The mastertapes of Green Day's Cigarettes and Valentines album were stolen and they recorded something else instead - the American Idiot album. The tapes of an album by Peter "Where do you go to my lovely?" Sarstedt recorded in 1970 were lost for 30 years; it was released as the Lost Album in 2008. There is a missing album by Johnny Marr and Ian McCulloch (Echo and the Bunnymen), recorded in 1993, stolen from a courier van on their way to fellow Bunnyman Will Sergeant.
The BBC followed a deliberate policy of deleting old programs on videotape so that the tapes could be reused. This means there are no recordings of episodes of classic shows from Doctor Who to Dad's Army, as well as classics like Hancock's Half Hour, live broadcasts from Top of the Pops to the BBC's coverage of the first moon landing, adaptations of Madame Bovary and For Whom the Bell Tolls, and many televised plays including The Madhouse on Castle Street (1963) which featured Bob Dylan's first acting performance. Sometimes an old telecine recording turns up, or a tape leant to an African broadcaster returns home, but the supply is surely drying up.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Thin line
The British government spending nearly half a million pounds on xenophobic propaganda? UK Border Force on Sky One is the latest of many fly-on-the-wall documentaries for the channel that reduce issues like immigration policy to a black-and-white conflict between heroic know-it-all officers and devious foreigners. An endless stream of dark-skinned people arrive from the middle East, Africa, and Asia, wanting for some reason to get into the country, but instead are mocked, ridiculed, and condescended to, by people who Sky trailers call partisanly and presumptuously "our own".
UK Border Force is part of a lineup of cheap Sky shows that in some ways recall 1990s docu-soaps, but unlike Airport which mixed lighthearted stories about rodent infestations with more serious immigration issues and made a star of jolly rotund Aeroflot worker Jeremy Spake, the new shows are one-sided in who you sympathise with and laugh at. People in authority make sarcastic comments as they track down petty criminals and confused or drunken members of the public in shows like Road Wars (traffic cops) and Night Cops (cops on night shift), both on Sky more than once this week. These show replicate boring days at work for a cynical, uneducated, occasionally vindictive workforce, who assuage their boredom by playing for the camera roles like the tough cop, the street philosopher, or the joker; some have a degree of humour or social comment, others are entirely mindless.
Like many of these series on various channels, UK Border Force was funded by the Home Office, which gave 400,000 GBP for eight one-hour-long shows (the Daily Mail hates it too). Promoting the immigration officers as "human lie detectors" offers a nice tie-in to Tim Roth drama Lie To Me, which Sky is also screening. When you're running a channel with a budget a quarter of Channel Four's (source: Guardian) you need all the help you can get.
EDIT December 2009: The show has started referring to illegal immigrants as "clandestines", making them sound like aliens from a science fiction series.
UK Border Force is part of a lineup of cheap Sky shows that in some ways recall 1990s docu-soaps, but unlike Airport which mixed lighthearted stories about rodent infestations with more serious immigration issues and made a star of jolly rotund Aeroflot worker Jeremy Spake, the new shows are one-sided in who you sympathise with and laugh at. People in authority make sarcastic comments as they track down petty criminals and confused or drunken members of the public in shows like Road Wars (traffic cops) and Night Cops (cops on night shift), both on Sky more than once this week. These show replicate boring days at work for a cynical, uneducated, occasionally vindictive workforce, who assuage their boredom by playing for the camera roles like the tough cop, the street philosopher, or the joker; some have a degree of humour or social comment, others are entirely mindless.
Like many of these series on various channels, UK Border Force was funded by the Home Office, which gave 400,000 GBP for eight one-hour-long shows (the Daily Mail hates it too). Promoting the immigration officers as "human lie detectors" offers a nice tie-in to Tim Roth drama Lie To Me, which Sky is also screening. When you're running a channel with a budget a quarter of Channel Four's (source: Guardian) you need all the help you can get.
EDIT December 2009: The show has started referring to illegal immigrants as "clandestines", making them sound like aliens from a science fiction series.
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