Why I have a good face for radio

I was asked to contribute to a current website project at Feba that is called PASS THE STORY ON. So I tipped at hat to the wonderful Larry Norman, pioneer of contemporary Christian music and a big influence in my early Christian life.

Sheila Hancock - great lady

We watched the Piers Morgan interview with the actress Sheila Hancock. Married for many years to John Thaw (Inspector Morse, The Sweeny). What a tremendous, refreshing, courageous and lovely person. She would be a lovely person to meet.

Watch this ad

Here's the 60 second version of our new Feba ad. The 30 second version will get some TV airings in February and March. There is much more about broadcasting hope on the Feba Radio website.

CSI begins to unimpress

The current (presume latest) series of CSI:Original is showing up Tuesdays on Channel 5 here in merry England. Not sure what season this is, it has been a while, and the CSI franchise has been a juggernaught, but last night's episode made me wonder for how much longer.

Billed as a halloween show, and modelled after those riduculously gratuitous slasher movies, it just seems to me that the writers are trying so hard to come up with new stories, new levels of genuine authentic science fiction they can pass off as real forensic work. Before long even their adoring audience, I predict, will have a group light-bulb moment and realise that the world of CSI is far removed from real crime scene investigation. Even in America. Even in Las Vegas. Sorry Gus.

Meerkat Manor Tightens Its Grip

Photo: BBC, from the television series Meerkat Manor

Whilst I am away on trips, Rose manages to get herself quite hooked on the fascinating antics of a few families of meerkats, who hang out somewhere in the Kalahari. It's the sort of reality television that we like - honest - real - ... right! Thoroughly entertaining, reading up on how the series is made has many interesting bits about the camera work but it does seem that the meerkats get pretty used to humans researching them and that not everything you see in the TV series is exactly how it really happened. Wikipedia has some good info. As an aside, in the UK and Canada version of the series, the narrator is actor Bill Nighy, whose roles amongst many has included that of Slartibartfast in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean.

What's up Doc?

Gregory House MD is Rose's favourite TV Doctor at the moment, and she has discovered that the Hallmark Channel here in England currently shows 4 episodes a week - so guess what we watch! For me, it was cool in the beginning, and Hugh Laurie's acting is superb. But that many times a week, and the plots which are always solving an extreme medical case are getting a bit of the same old same old. And House's antics are annoying me. I think we are watching Series 3, and FOX begins airing a fourth series in the USA from next month.

BBC iPlayer

I am looking forward to the launch of the BBC iPlayer at the end of this month.

Although I have already played with Joost and 4oD, the internet TV services from the Skype people and Channel 4, I am hopeful that the BBC offering will win on content. And content is king as they say. Convergence of media is the buzz-phrase, and there is a helpful article on the future of TV on the BBC site.

"Mr Wizard" Dies at 89, RIP

Rest in Peace - Don Herbert, "Mr Wizard"

In the 1960's, on a tiny black and white television whilst growing up in Rhodesia, the weekly Watch Mr Wizard show ( I think it was aired on Saturday evenings - when TV started at 5PM and was off again by 11PM, and just a single channel) was something I remember really enjoying. Mr Wizard, the back page ads in Superman comics, and Silly Putty always made me dream of one day going to the USA - and now years later, having been to the states 6 or 7 times now, it would be nice to have those halycon days of the 60's back again. I am sure for those who were adults in the 60's, the perspective was quite different!

Anyway, Don Herbert was the first real TV science teacher, and hugely impacted the baby-boomer generation's interest in scientific pursuits. He ended up with his own website, and there you can find a timeline of his life. The LA Times obituary said:

Don Herbert, who explained the wonderful world of science to millions of young
baby boomers on television in the 1950s and '60s as "Mr. Wizard" and did the
same for another generation of youngsters on the Nickelodeon cable TV channel in
the 1980s, died Tuesday. He was 89.

A Mr Wizard TV show from the 1960's

I salute Don Herbert, and thank him for some wonderful educational television in yesteryear.