The BRIT Awards 2014 - The Best of British sparkle again

By Simon Wright – Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

The finest talent in British and international music gathered at the 02 Arena in London on Wednesday night (19 February) for the biggest night in the music industry. The 2014 BRIT Awards provided some great live performances and memorable collaborations in a show that revived the sparkle that had evidently been missing 12 months earlier.

Rudimental and Bastille came together with one of the finest BRIT partnerships live on stage, whilst there were also live gigs from Ellie Goulding, Bruno Mars, the Arctic Monkeys and Pharrell Williams.

It was a brilliant night for the Arctic Monkeys who scooped two awards

On the awards front, it was Arctic Monkeys (pictured above) who were the big winners. Not only did they open the show in grand fashion, they walked off with two awards including the prestigious MasterCard British Album of the Year. To no-one’s surprise, One Direction also won two more BRITS to their collection but despite earning four nominations, Disclosure walked away with nothing. There were acts as young as 17 and as old as 67 also collecting these prestigious gongs.

Corden’s final farewell

This was the final year that the BRITS were to be hosted by James Corden. Having hosted the show for four years on the bounce, he decided to step aside back in November from 2015 onwards. Corden arrived on stage to introduce the evening’s entertainment with his sleeve on fire (pictured below) in a stunt which was clearly part of the opening act by Arctic Monkeys. He did try to blame their pyrotechnics but no-one was falling for that.

James Corden's final ceremony as host began with his sleeve on fire!

The actor and presenter who is best known for his roles in Gavin & Stacey and A League of Their Own kept everything together, although his mucking around with Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw was unnecessary. Nevertheless while he is replaceable, there will be something odd about Corden not hosting the BRITS anymore.

First award of the night went to the sensational Ellie Goulding. She deservedly picked up Best British Female Solo Artist and later went on to put in a fiery rendition of her two most familiar songs in the last 12 months; ‘Burn’ and ‘I Need Your Love.’ Fellow beaut Katy Perry produced the most colourful performance of the night. She gave an electrifying performance of new single ‘Dark Horse’ in an electrifying outfit. However she was beaten to the International Female Solo Artist by New Zealander Lorde, who is one of the BRITS youngest winners at just 17.

50 years her senior and David Bowie won Best British Male Solo Artist. The 67-year-old was not in attendance to collect the accolade and it was left to model Kate Moss to provide an acceptance speech on his behalf. The speech included references to Scotland going to the polls later this year in a bid for independence. It had no relevance to the night’s performances and his view could have been saved for another day and another time.

The loo is important!

Now when a male normally needs to go to the toilet, he must go! However, the timing of this can sometimes be a bit off and the ladies’ favourite Harry Styles certainly got his timings totally out of joint.

Whether he was in a long queue, having a private moment or tying John Terry up to stop him stealing another award is irrelevant, he had to dash back onto stage when he found out that One Direction had won the Global Success award for a second successive year. With 11.5m in global sales and a box office movie in the last year, this award was extremely predictable. The boyband were back later in the night to collect the inaugural award for Best British Video, which was voted by users of the social media giant Twitter. The video was for ‘Best Song Ever’ and this time; Harry actually made it onto stage without needing to visit the cubicles!

Bruno Mars regained the International Male Solo Artist award he last won two years ago, before putting in an uneventful live performance. Flying in especially for the event was another popular American in Beyoncé, who did put in a classy performance.

Listeners of BBC Radio 1 supported and voted for the highly acclaimed British Breakthrough award. There were a series of live lounges the week before from the five contenders and eventually, the fiercely competitive award saw Bastille coming out on top. Their album ‘Bad Blood’ was the most downloaded album of the last 12 months.

Clever collaborations

The first collaboration of the night was from Lorde and Disclosure who put in a unique performance together for the first time. It was a clever routine, even if it lacked the fireworks of other live acts on the night.

An even better collaboration and far more catchy was the one from Rudimental and Bastille. It is so popular; it is currently in the top 10 of the iTunes music chart this week. It was a good evening for Rudimental. They won Best British Single for ‘Waiting All Night’ which is their first BRIT award and if the evidence of the last calendar year is anything to go by, the first of many.

Arctic Monkeys won Best British Group for a third time which was a great award for them to win, considering those popular lads from One Direction were nominated. The biggest award though was the last, as the Arctic’s album ‘AM’ held off stiff competition from Bastille, Rudimental, Disclosure and David Bowie to win the MasterCard Album of the Year. The other award winner was Sam Smith, who had been confirmed last month as winner of the Critics’ Choice for 2014. It will be interesting to see if he can follow in the footsteps of previous winners ADELE, Florence & the Machine and Emeli Sande. The show was closed by Pharrell Williams and music icon Nile Rodgers.

Despite huge social media following with over four million messages on Twitter, TV viewing figures were disastrous, both for the organisers and for ITV. A measly 4.6m tuned in to watch – the lowest ratings since the show went live back in 2007.

While the evening might have lacked controversy, it was a strong show with some superb live music mixed in with the usual awards ceremony. The BRITS will continue to get people talking for many years to come.

Categories: Arctic Monkeys, Bastille, BRIT Awards, Ellie Goulding, James Corden, Katy Perry, London, Music, One Direction, Rudimental

Facebook - Can it survive another 10 years?

By Simon Wright – Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

A decade ago, the word social media was almost non-existent. It certainly wasn’t a very common word. If you wanted to interact with friends online, it used to be through sites like Friends Reunited or through internet forums/chatrooms.

Nowadays, without social media – the majority of us would struggle to live without it in some form of capacity. There are so many things we can do with this power. We can upload videos in seconds and hope they become the next worldwide sensation. We can express our feelings in 140 characters and use the popular hashtag to see if it trends. We can keep in touch with friends and family, play addicting games and still have the ability to poke one another #notcoolanymore.

Facebook has reached 10 - but is under pressure to keep its audience

The facts are that without this communication, you would be lost in today’s technological planet. Recently, Facebook celebrated its 10^th anniversary. The question is, can it survive another decade?

Facebook’s early power

When Marc Zuckerberg launched Facebook in February 2004, it happened fairly quietly. In fact I don't even remember it. The background to it was documented in the lengthy and slightly tedious movie The Social Network.

It came at a time when Facebook could take supreme control of the social media audience. Its main rival at the time was MySpace and they simply couldn’t compete on the same level as what Zuckerberg could produce with his network. MySpace has since faded into complete obscurity and similar sites like Friends Reunited and Bebo have gone the same way.

I was invited and joined Facebook in July 2007, so that was three years after it was launched. The only use for it in its early days was to organise events and post the occasional status update. In fact when I went to Milton Keynes College after sixth form for two years, I was one of only three students on my media production course to have Facebook. Everyone before that connected and communicated on MySpace. I did have a MySpace profile shortly afterwards but it was so limited. While it wasn’t my ultimate mission to convert everyone, I knew Facebook was the social media channel to have and by the time I left in 2009 for University, all but two had switched platforms.

You could see Facebook’s persuasive power. Certain games have got people occasionally hooked. Others would rather just poke people. Seriously, one of the most annoying e-mail messages you can receive is ‘You have been poked’ on Facebook. I find that really irritating!

Facebook does have its downsides and I expressed some of my own personal problems with the site in a piece I did on social media in general last year.

However it did create a lot of early power and could get really addictive to use at the same time.

New threats

Zuckerberg might have made his money and has continued to evolve Facebook over the years. The simple early days of a News Feed and your Homepage have been replaced with expansive graphics. That sometimes hasn’t always worked and I know the current ‘Timeline’ concept wasn’t greeted with that much enthusiasm to begin with.

As it went through its own trough, the new threats began to arrive. Video calling technology from Skype started to develop. Facebook’s power though was soon about to be targeted by its biggest threat to date. The introduction of Twitter into our world in 2006 was again met with little in terms of immediate impact.

Slowly but surely, Twitter started to take on a vast audience as celebrities/famous people started to use it and get followed by fans or slightly obsessive normal members of the general public. If a famous face doesn’t have Twitter, it is quite surprising. I know the current motorsport king Sebastian Vettel doesn’t have Twitter, nor does the UK’s former PM Tony Blair but you would be hard pressed to find people who don’t have official feeds now.

Popstars, sports professionals, the leading journalists, club associations, actors and actresses; the list goes on. Twitter’s audience continues to grow and that has caused a serious threat and dent to Facebook’s popularity.

The days where Zuckerberg could control the social media audience reach are gone and he has had to adapt to the competition.

Personally, I prefer Twitter and made it into a professional account, moving Facebook into the personal spectrum. I joined Twitter in my first year at University in October 2009 – initially only as it was required for a journalism assignment. Over 3,300 tweets later and I use it now as a source to find out links to news stories as well as to comment on some of the main worldwide topics, especially in sport, television and occasionally political issues – despite not showing huge interest in this field.

Facebook’s power has been hurt also by the rise in private and free messaging tools on smartphones. Whilst the UK riots in the summer of 2011 brought BlackBerry virtually to its knees, the BBM service became a free and useful way to have a private conversation. It was just a shame that it soon became a tool to organise violence and hooliganism. Since then, other services such as WhatsApp Messenger and SnapChat (I only have the former) have taken over from BBM to provide stiff competition in the Instant Messaging market. Not forgetting Instagram, another application that has done very well in recent years to attract a global following.

With all that in mind, Facebook has done well to continue appealing to its market. It has had to adapt because if it hadn’t, it would have gone the way MySpace did - into oblivion.

The future

While Facebook has to be congratulated on reaching the 10^th anniversary of its launch, does it need to do more to keep its audience?

In my view, it does. New emotions and buttons for status updates can be added; security certainly could do with tightened reviews. The ‘Poke’ button needs to be removed and the News Feed could do with another revamp, perhaps in splitting it between your friends and family communication and the likes you have of hobbies/people/interests. For example if I want to see how my friends are doing, I don’t want my newsfeed clustered with updates from Walkers Crisps, The Chemical Brothers and UEFA.com.

While it is important to come up with radical and new ideas to keep the network afresh, Zuckerberg might need to incorporate some of Twitter’s successes to keep him active in a sector that continues to evolve.

I think Facebook will be around for another decade and probably longer than that. However it will need to continue to embrace change to stay fresh and different from its competition. A lack of change in this environment will see it start to struggle to stay near the forefront of social media interaction. 

Categories: BBM, Facebook, February, Internet, Marc Zuckerberg, MySpace, Skype, Social Media, Technology, Twitter

24 hour news channels - Celebrating 25 years of Sky News

By Simon Wright – Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

The start of February saw 25 years since this was launched:

Sky News has come so far in the quarter of a century it has been on our TV screens. Not always easily accessible in its early inception, Sky News is now widely available on a number of different devices, from freeview platforms and computer-generated apps to the stunning iPad app which is among one of the best in the business.

Sky has always been the first place for breaking news with its dedicated team of journalists and reporters ready to bring the story to you first, the viewer. I know that it is the channel I watch if I’m after a big story. Sky News were the first to cover the stories that mattered. From the celebration of Tony Blair’s landslide election victory in 1997 and the birth of the Royal Baby last year to the horrifying scenes of international terrorism in New York, Bali, Madrid and London over the past 13 years – as well as groundbreaking coverage of the UK riots in August 2011.

However, Sky and its main competitors are now facing new competition in the evolving world of digital journalism. So, can it be successful and still remain at the forefront of our news for the next quarter of a century.

Slow start

The first bulletin was broadcast at 6pm on Sunday, 5 February 1989. Today, three senior figures in presenter Kay Burley, controversial political editor Adam Boulton and crime correspondent Martin Brunt are still with Sky, just like they were on launch night.

It was a slow start at a time where news was still not hugely accessible. Sky was launched at a time where only CNN was a 24-hour news network in America. The traditional ‘Newsflash’ from terrestrial platforms was the way we got the main news coverage in the late 1980s and early 1990s. There was no internet, social media was a dream away and tablets were just know as a cleaning aid and nothing more.

Rupert Murdoch, for whatever criticism he might deserve in regards to the News International phone hacking scandal two years ago does have to take the credit for keeping Sky News on the air in its early days. Operating on a £40m budget and with a lack of subscribers, Sam Chisholm proposed to Murdoch that Britain’s first 24 hour news channel was to be closed down to save money. The tycoon stuck to his guns though and gradually, Sky started to make its impact further for it. It was quickly respected in the House of Commons and throughout the political circle and started winning awards for its coverage – starting with the Bishopgate IRA bombing in 1993.

Its wall-to-wall coverage of the OJ Simpson trial throughout the pursuit of Simpson through America to the trial in 1995 was groundbreaking. It won Sky a lot of praise and I personally saw it as their big breakthrough onto the news spectrum in this country.

Breaking news

All of this came as BSkyB went under numerous launches on a yearly basis. Sky News underwent new looks (images below) in 1993, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 2000. With flashy graphics, colourful ways to promote the news through rapid technological advances and the development of Sky News Active in the year 2000, they continued to evolve and respond to changes in the way we consumed news.

  

Various Sky News idents from 1993, 1995, 1997 and 1998

The Simpson trial of the mid-90s was big for Sky News but they had shown what they were capable of before that. They covered the late Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 with great authority and the same occured with a tearful Margaret Thatcher’s departure from Downing Street after resigning as Prime Minister in the same year. They had provided in-depth coverage of the tight 1992 General Election and have made their election coverage even better through a variety of new aspects such as interactive voting and 3D visuals – not just for the UK but also for election night in the United States.

In 1997, it was Martin Stanford who had the difficulty of breaking the news to the nation of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a car crash in Paris. While the BBC won plenty of acclaim for the way they handled such a sad and emotional story, Sky weren’t far behind. Their finest moment came four years later when the world was experiencing a horrifying day.

It was approaching 1.50pm on a normal day. The date was Tuesday, 11 September 2001 and nothing remarkable was happening, both in our normal lives and at Sky studios. That was about to change though as Kay Burley was given the news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York. What followed was some of the most horrific and vivid moments of the 21^st century. That day, our lives changes forever. In a book, ’20 Years of Breaking News’ Burley revealed: “Not long afterwards the South Tower collapsed. It took less than fifteen seconds to implode. Neither Jeremy (Thompson), nor I said anything. Nothing needed to be said. More than a hundred storeys and thousands of lives lost in as long as it took you to read this paragraph.”

Sky won a BAFTA award for their coverage of 9/11, a feat repeated with the Soham murders in 2003. Many other awards have followed since alongside widespread praise and of course, some criticism along the way.

However, our news would be in a poorer place without Sky News.

It doesn’t always work and the future

24 hour news channels haven’t always had success. ITN tried it with the disastrous ITV News Channel at the start of the millennium. With ratings more accustomed to an episode of Eldorado, the plug was pulled on ITN’s 24 hour failure in December 2005. It hadn’t been helped by the collapse of the ITV Digital platform three years earlier.

The BBC entered the market eight years after Sky and BBC News 24 has been a stable challenger to Sky News since launching on Sunday, 9 November 1997. Despite the occasional blunder, such as Simon McCoy (a former Sky anchor) holding a pad of paper rather than a tablet last year, they have managed to survive in such stiff competition.

However, the way we get news continues to change. The advancement in social media means Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have become very popular tools for a journalist or even for an amateur filmmaker. Sky used some of this during the UK riots in 2011 – journalist Mark Stone filming on his mobile phone some of the unbelievable scenes in his hometown of Clapham. Stone would later be interviewed for our radio programme ‘The Current Affairs Show’ in 2012 about that night. In an interview for our journalism show with one of my fellow University of Northampton colleagues, he said: “Some of them were almost feral; the image that strikes me is the kids pulling the TV’s off the wall at Ladbrokes. It was the most extraordinary image.”

Rather than compete against them at their own game, 24 hour news channels such as Sky News and BBC News 24 have decided to integrate them rather than beat them. It is a clever strategy and I think it means their future is guaranteed, even if they might not quite have the impact they have had over the past decade or two.

I believe 24 hour news channels have a bright future. They have and continue to adapt well to changes, both in technological advancements and the way news can be broadcasted. I congratulate Sky News and Sky Television as a whole on reaching 25 years and I’m confident that with the tremendous team of reporters, presenters, journalists and people who work behind the scenes at Sky studios, they will achieve another 25 years continuing to break the news first.

Categories: 1989, 9/11, London, New York, Royal Family, Sky News, Tony Blair, TV, UK

Sexism in Football - Should Andy Gray make a permanent return?

By Simon Wright – Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

There was a familiar voice back on UK football commentary a fortnight ago but a dark past still remains. With a new video recently published of more sexist behaviour, should BT Sport make the bold move in signing up the ex-Wolves, Aston Villa and Everton striker Andy Gray?

The channel has made a strong start to its broadcasting life. It has already snared some top Premier League matches from rivals BSkyB and secured the coveted rights to live and exclusive UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League football from the start of the 2015-16 campaign. To get an experienced voice into the team alongside Darren Fletcher and Ian Darke would seem like a logical move.

Andy Gray made a strong return two weeks ago but should he be forgiven?

In that way, Gray (pictured above) fits the bill. Should he be forgiven for the viral videos three years ago that destroyed his reputation as the leading sports commentator in this country?

Three years on

It has now been three years since the sexism in football scandal that left Sky Sports with bad publicity. Long-time presenter Richard Keys and commentator Andy Gray were caught making insulting comments about females in football in an off-air conversation that was taped on a mobile phone.

The comments were made about female line assistant Sian Massey, who was about to take the line for a Barclays Premier League match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Liverpool, indicating that women know nothing about the offside rule. The West Ham United chief executive Karen Brady was also criticised by the pair for her comments to a newspaper about females in the game.

It was Massey who would have the last laugh and made Keys & Gray look like idiots. She got a potential game-changing decision spot on by judging Raul Meireles to be in an onside position when he squared the ball for Fernando Torres to score the first of his two goals in a 3-0 Liverpool win; Torres’ last two as a Reds player before his £50m move to Chelsea nine days later.

It is fair to say that the reaction to the comments made by the Sky duo was a real talking point. This writer on his previous site did several pieces on the scandal at the time and it was difficult to find any defence for them.

As more videos leaked onto YouTube in the days afterwards, Sky sacked Gray and Keys ultimately resigned, feeling he couldn’t go on without his long-term colleague.

As for Sian Massey, she has not let the incident deter her at all. This afternoon, she was one of the line officials at the Premier League game between Chelsea and Newcastle United and has since become one of the best at her job. Being a line official is not easy and they get criticised quite often by fans – sometimes it is deserved if an offside call is blatantly wrong but no-one deserves the abuse or derogatory comments that Massey got from two supposedly knowledgeable and respectable broadcasters in football.

Redemption and remorse

Within three weeks of their acrimonious departures from Sky, Keys & Gray turned up on talkSPORT, presenting a regular morning sports show for the next two years. In the summer, the pair moved to Doha to present live Premier League matches again for the Al-Jazeera network in the Middle East.

It has given them the chance to redeem themselves. Two weeks ago, commitments abroad meant Michael Owen missed BT’s coverage of FA Cup fourth round weekend. Andy Gray was called in to co-commentate on Everton’s impressive 4-0 away win at League One side Stevenage.

Watching the highlights that night, I’ll admit it was nice to hear such a familiar voice back. Gray put his usual thoughtful and precise analysis into his job and it seemed like the general public were impressed too. There has been talk that his role could become a more frequent position in the future.

Keys has also appeared on the station as a guest on Des Kelly’s show Life’s A Pitch and went into slightly further detail about what happened. As the video below shows, he talks about dark forces which suggest there was more towards the pair’s departures from a channel that they had represented so well since the birth of the Premier League.

However a week ago, another video emerged which might have finished them for good on UK screens. The video involves the pair making inappropriate comments to Claire Tomlinson – a female Sky reporter before a match at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium.

This latest video must have taken place at least seven years ago, so you wonder why this came out. Was it a tactic by Sky to hurt the competition? Was it worth revisiting such an old issue?

Unprofessional

I would say that even though the video looks quite old and slightly unnecessary to make public given the timing, there was always going to be a reaction once the new content was leaked to the media.

No-one and I mean no-one should have to put up with that. In a job, if you’ve done something wrong in your profession, then you should be criticised constructively. This has happened to me both in my current full-time position and when I was on my University degree from 2009 to 2012. If you can’t take criticism, it doesn’t make you a strong enough person to succeed, especially in the profession I’m in (media and publishing).

However, anyone who suggests you can’t do their job with derogatory comments that are racist, homophobic or sexist is just not on – no matter how old it might be. You would be hurt if that was the case and feel like you’d want to speak out against such gross behaviour.

For me, if I was BT or any other employer, I would therefore be thinking twice before you employ Andy Gray. Make this judgement on this old Sky video from 1998;

He is still one of the best at football analysis but with a history of videos that show an opinion of preferring the game to be totally male dominated, I think it puts Andy Gray in an uncomfortable and untenable position when it comes to being employed by a UK sports broadcaster.

Categories: Andy Gray, BT Sport, Commentary, Football, Offside, Richard Keys, Sexism, Sian Massey, Sky Sports, UK

Will The Jump be back next year?

By Simon Wright – Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

When Channel 4 decided to proceed with The Jump, they were planning a nice warm-up in this miserable weather climate of celebrities learning how to compete at winter sports in the build-up to the Winter Olympics in Sochi. What they got ultimately was a programme that turned into one of the most dangerous in reality television history.

The celebrities who took part ranged from Olympic medallists and pop singers to glamour models and reality show regulars but it was the general hospital in Innsbruck, Austria that seemed more accustomed to seeing them rather than the competition the general public witnessed, both in Austria and on television.

The series was eventually won by former X-Factor winner Joe McElderry, who beat Donal MacIntyre in the final. To top it off, both were replacements which defeated the object of the entire series. So did Channel 4 get it wrong? Was it good television or too dangerous and more importantly, will it get another series next year?

The concept of the programme

Initially planned to be The Alpine Games two years ago, the programme producers offered the plan to ITV first but they turned it down as they deemed it to be too dangerous. It seems like their caution was the right move.

Needing a boost in ratings to compete with programmes on at this time of year such as Splash, Dancing on Ice and Celebrity Big Brother, Channel 4 put a lot of time and effort into the programme. Nine winter sports would be tested out, such as the giant slalom, speed skating and the terrifying skeleton. Experts including skeleton gold medallist Amy Williams and UK Sport performance director Graham Bell were brought in to help the rookies tame their fears and bring out their competitive streak.

They would compete in these events on a day-by-day basis and the bottom two on each evening would have to do a live ski jump, with the individual recording the lowest distance being eliminated from the competition. The idea was there, the concept sounded good but the execution of The Jump probably backfired.

12 celebrities started but none of these competitors would win The Jump

What The Jump did manage was to get a solid crop of celebrities. Taking part were British Olympic legend Sir Steve Redgrave, former cricketer Darren Gough, 80s pop singer Sinitta, TV presenter Anthea Turner, ex-Five member Ritchie Neville, model Melinda Messenger, Pussycat Doll Kimberly Wyatt, comedian Marcus Brigstocke, hairdresser Nicky Clarke, presenter Laura Hamilton, TOWIE favourite Amy Childs and socialite Henry Conway.

Little did they know the injuries they would collect and that none of them would be crowned winner of The Jump.

Injuries galore

Gough was the first to go down with injury with various accidents in training and two awkward crashes on the ski slopes in rehearsals before the main show. When he exited on day three of the competition, the relief was clear to see. His body had taken a battering and it was pretty silly that medical advice didn’t intervene to pull him out before serious damage was done.

Henry Conway was next on the casualty list. An injury picked up during training for the skeleton event left him with a broken hand and devastated to be leaving the competition. It opened the door for McElderry to come in as a replacement, defeating MacIntyre in a live ski jump.

One injury is unfortunate and it can happen on any show, while another taking a pasting can be seen as careless but once Melinda Messenger was forced to withdraw after suffering concussion in bobsleigh training, The Jump was quickly turning into a medical drama rather than a winter sports competition.

The final was farcical itself. After a nasty accident on the slopes that had worrying echoes of the crash off-piste that has left racing superstar Michael Schumacher fighting for his life in hospital, Sir Steve Redgrave was in grave trouble. A fractured rib left him in deep pain. He battled on in his true Olympic competitive spirit but he had to call it quits on the morning of the final event, realising it was a risk too far, even for an Olympian who has achieved it all in his superb career. 

Then, comedian Marcus Brigstocke – a popular member of the celebrities had a monumental shunt off the final jump of the risky ski cross event. Screeching in pain from the moment he landed, it looked distressing to watch. An ankle injury meant he became the fourth contender eliminated through injury. 

The other two finalists also weren’t unscathed. McElderry lost control in the final event and took a nasty bang to the head but made it to the final jump-off. MacIntyre, who was growing in confidence with every event, had a big crash in rehearsals for the jump-off to be crowned champion, cutting his lip and leaving him with a black eye. McElderry won almost by default – he was last man standing and it destroyed what promised to be a competitive final night of action.

Presenting problems

Davina McCall and Alex Brooker were the co-hosts of The Jump. I’m not Davina’s biggest fan considering my pure hatred of Big Brother but she has done a superb job hosting the tense quiz The Million Pound Drop in recent years. Having started her TV career presenting Don’t Try This At Home for ITV back in 1998, she is no stranger to shows that ramp up the risk element. On the final night, Davina proved her daredevil ability by jumping off the K-40 – the biggest jump in the competition and landed it successfully and with style. Sadly her presenting control on the programme wasn’t quite up to the same standard. She hasn’t lost a huge amount by hosting The Jump but it did lack the command that sometimes a show that struggles needs from its anchor.

Brooker is most familiar appearing regularly on the panel show The Last Leg. However his presenting ability for this show was disappointing and pretty lame. There was no chemistry between him and McCall and therefore without any leadership from the front, The Jump began to fall down from the word go.

Reception and plus points

Despite the injuries galore, there were some pluses with The Jump. With it on a nightly basis, it was easy to follow or simply drop out of. I decided to watch it as it was something different and it is so much better than Splash. If I wanted to see diving on TV, I’d just watch a game from the Barclays Premier League on Sky Sports rather than Tom Daley’s pitiful programme.

The Jump held no fears for some, but left many needing medical attention

Some of the celebrities showed no fear. Kimberley Wyatt stepped out of the background and into the limelight. Often overshadowed by former Pussycat Dolls in recent years, Nicole Scherzinger and Ashley Roberts, Wyatt won many fans with her attitude to both competition and the way she never gave up. Her dramatic exit in the quarter-final was a real shame, as she had the potential out of all the celebrities who started to win it. Anthea Turner was another who should be praised for taking on anything thrown at her without any fear – something you couldn’t say about Amy Childs who was a nightmare and eventually wimped out like a baby on the second evening of competition.

Barry Davies reminded us all of his golden age in the commentary box. His humour and wit in guiding the viewer through the events was class. Of course, this is the man who famously said in the 1988 Seoul Olympics; ‘Where were the German defence, but frankly, who cares!’

The reception from TV critics it got though was largely negative. Digital Spy’s Alex Fletcher wrote: “It was more painful than a snowball in the mouth” whilst The Independent’s Sally Newall commented: “A bonkers, scary mash-up of Big Brother and Ski Sunday.”  

The ratings also agreed with the experts. Starting at 2.6m viewers on opening night, fans of The Jump melted away in the days that followed. By the end, a million viewers had been lost – with a measly 1.7m tuning in for the final. Even Australian daytime soaps, Neighbours and Home & Away attracted better rating figures despite their scheduling last week.

So how would I sum up The Jump? It was something different and clever that turned into a television danger zone. While I watched it all the way through for the interest of something new, I don’t think I’d tune in if it returned in 2015. In fact, I don’t think many will be shedding tears when this winter sports laughing stock is put to sleep and into the television graves of reality show failures. 

Categories: Austria, Channel 4, Donal MacIntyre, Injury, Joe McElderry, Sir Steve Redgrave, Skating, Ski Jump, Sochi, Winter Olympics