Have Endemol gone too far…again?

This week the news has been covering Endemol’s latest production (no, I don’t mean Big Brother which, sadly, is due to start again this evening), in which donors compete to win a kidney. The show, being broadcast in the Netherlands, will give people, desperate for a kidney transplant, the chance to win one from a terminally ill donor.

Endemol, claim that the show will highlight the severe lack of donors available but instead it is likely to make them come across as a media organisation looking to profit from suffering. References to the botched handling of the race-row at the last Big Brother show have already been made and you can’t help but wonder if the organisation behind are just stirring up more anger and resentment.

So have the media gone too far this time? Personally I think they have. We can’t have a situation where ratings are obtained at any cost but when media organisations are trampling all over ethics to get to the top surely things have gone too far. Endemol’s spokespeople have been keeping their heads down during this and don’t seem to be offering comment – maybe they are too busy looking for some training on how to handle the media in a crisis!

Read the BBC’s view here…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6699847.stm

Pushing our luck? We certainly amused the Daily Telegraph...

Love or loathe him (and i'm sure it's the latter) you have to admit that Tony Blair has his media 'handling' down to a fine art. Ok, so with the ever-present cup of tea for that 'common touch' he's probably gone into overkill to be fair (but more on that in a separate blog...), but with expert techniques like that how could we resist offering him a job as a Bluewood Trainer?!

And so, standing by our 'Our delegates want to become experts so we use experts' belief, we thought we'd let a few people know that we're hoping there'll be another expert trainer on the Bluewood block come the end of June.

The result? Well it seems we managed to amuse the Telegraph's Simon Goodley enough to get a piece in his City Diary; Hate the spin but love the spinner? I'm glad to see our efforts haven't gone to waste, even if we still haven't heard anything back from Tonio...


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/05/24/ccdiary24.xml

A cry of pain for the Cutty Sark.

It is tragic that the Cutty Sark has been so badly damaged by fire and it will be all the more sad if it turns out (as suspected) to be arson.

Living and working quite near Greenwich means that the Cutty Sark has been one of those characteristics of London that you get used to seeing over the years and perhaps even take for granted - I had often meant to go onboard, do the tour and see what she was like but I always put it off till the next time. Sadly there may never be a chance to see her in her glory again as the damages may now cost too much (£25m was the pre-fire restoration figure).

I hope that she can be saved but it will only happen if the public show their support - donations can be made at www.cuttysark.org.uk.

And if it does turn out to be arson perhaps, in honour of the Lady's 19th Century heritage we should bring back hanging.

Do the scientologists need some communication skills training or just the BBC?

The scientologists seem to get quite a lot of flak for their ‘religion’. And they’re are about to get some more as Panorama documents them tonight on BBC 1.

In response, however, they have released a rather embarrassing video on you tube of a BBC journalist losing his rag in a big way with some scientologists (who seem to keep fairly calm). The guys he is interviewing do seem quite sinister in a sort of Men in Black kind of way so perhaps he was justified in blowing his top – of course we don’t get to see the first bit on their video.
But a broadcast journalist from the beeb really ought to have known better than to start hurling abuse at someone when there are cameras about – one top tip in media training is ‘always assume the cameras are on’ and I suppose he forgot about that one. Not sure the beeb would be all that keen on Bluewood providing their journalists with media training…maybe I should give them a call…

New blog...

Hi,

This is our new blog. I have set this one up before I actually showed it to Gemma so it is entirely likly she won't like it, will complain about the colour scheme and won't like the font but what can I say? I'm impatient.
The aim of this blog will be to talk about everything and nothing and kings and fools but hopefully we will give it a bit of an amusing slant or two as well!
More coming soon...