The Buffalo Blog

Bungling BBC

Who knows what has been going on with BBC Breakfast over the last month – it appears they just can’t master their technical equipment. I speak of the almost daily microphone failures currently plaguing the programme.

Try as they might, on an all-to-frequent basis, guests on the show are left chatting away when it’s almost impossible to hear them. It almost sounds like they’re broadcasting from a toilet.

It may be the BBC simply can’t get to grips with the technological maelstrom currently sweeping television news programmes. However, Auntie really should have mastered the microphone by now. Perhaps the presenters just like the sound of their voices a little too much to fix the error.

Either way, this egregious failure on the producer’s part reflects badly on one of the most respected broadcasting companies in the world. Once is bad enough, any more is just plain incompetence.

The leak that drained the sea

Even with the preparation, the rules and regulations, the waiting and avoidance of red tape that investor relations people have to do, it is somewhat soul destroying that all this can be turned to dust with a simple leak to the press.

This is what happened to Northern Rock in the hours before everything hit the fan. The crisis was, it seems, made ten times worse because the news came in a leak to the BBC, starting rumours even before the Bank of England announcement.

Shares fell exponentially and savers promptly left their houses to take out as much money as they possibly could. During these developments Northern Rock was left playing catch-up scrambling to explain to investors, to savers and to the wider public that they were, in fact, solvent.

It just goes to show that with all the preparations in the world you can’t beat getting the word out yourself. A company proactively informing both the market, customers and other stakeholders is infinitely better than it coming from an undisclosed leak. A leak, even semantically, gives the impression of something being uncovered, something people weren’t being told. As such Northern Rock waved goodbye to investment, capital and a massive dose of goodwill – I bet they’d love to find the guy that did it!

The virtual world of reading

Amazon's announcement that it plans to launch the ‘Kindle’ (an electronic book reader) into the UK marketplace should come as no surprise to futurologists or techheads either. This announcement comes somewhat belatedly after Sony’s less than successful foray in to the digital book market (see ‘Sony Portable Reader’).

However the terrible reception experienced by Sony’s attempt should by no means discourage Amazon. Sony failed due to its unfortunate lack of content support and a misguided attempt at using a completely new file format. Its lack of internet access was also laughable as it closed off the main avenue for obtaining digital books.

However, the fact remains that there has to be a market for such a product. Amazon only has to develop the right support network and the most logical interface possible if it is to succeed.

The support challenge isn’t too big a hurdle for Amazon due to its already astounding array of titles. And developing a new file format would also be ludicrous when the wondrous PDF already holds a monopoly over electronic documents.

However, if Amazon really wants to capture the market, they should set their horizons much higher than the simple book market. While online news is good if you have internet access and a laptop, the electronic book reader provides an excellent prospect for reading news and magazines on the move. This ‘Newspaper 2.0’ could also be the future revenue source for the already dwindling returns in the modern news world. Indeed, future commuters could either download digital newspaper and magazine documents at home or at a retailer or even automatically via ‘Wi-max’ or SMS.

It is clear that many people will continue to enjoy the ownership and intellectual kudos of a good library. Indeed even the solid feel of a book will be too much for some to give up. By all means though, many are likely to convert, but not for books alone. Books could become the secondary market for these readers, with the archaic newspaper finally finding its new place. So, far from being the end of books, it could be the newspaper that is first to go as we enter a whole universe of reading.

It’s the American way…

I rarely blog about politics. It’s not what I know or what I do. But sometimes a story of such magnitude emerges that it requires a blog. The American government should have the most oiled PR machine in the history of the world. So two questions:

·  Why on earth did it take 10 minutes for David Petraeus’ microphone to work yesterday? If I was hosting a client event and the microphone took 10 minutes to work, I would expect short shrift from a client. It is something that should not ever happen at that level.

·  Secondly, why did he spout such a load of rubbish (when he was able to speak)? A top American official is clearly not reading this blog (believe it or not), but I keep trying to drum home a simple message. Lying is a bad communications tool. Or even presenting a truth to a population who will clearly see through it. Same difference. Is the surge working? I’d beg to differ, as would the Independent (surprise, surprise…) - http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2950322.ece

Tottenham need to look at their PR manual

I’ve always pitied Tottenham, more for their on-field antics than anything else. Years of ‘next season’ have left supporters disappointed and frustrated. But it is now their communications issues that have been under the spotlight, subject of a scathing letter to The Media Guardian.

For those that don’t know, Tottenham have committed that unforgivable PR sin of banning the Evening Standard from home matches. Clearly not the wisest of moves when attempting to court positive publicity, but paling into insignificance when compared to other very recent PR disasters at Tottenham. Tottenham officials were spotted meeting Juande Ramos, coach of Seville, who later admitted that they had made him a huge financial offer.

The Ramos incident, far worse in my book, was from the ultimate ‘how not to…’ PR manual: getting spotted whilst meeting a high-profile target employee, issuing a statement that said that they had met about ‘something else entirely’ (a blatant lie) and finally, humiliatingly, having to hear Ramos describe the offer to the press and therefore completely undermining the current (successful) manager, Martin Jol. It seems that Spurs will never learn.. on and off the pitch…