Articles by Rob Buckley

About Rob Buckley
I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.
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Futurama may get a reprieve

4 January 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Futurama

We’ve talked before about Fox’s nasty habit of cancelling quality shows and how it seems finally to have developed a quality filter. Now, there’s nothing harder for a TV executive to do than to say they were wrong. But it seems Fox has learnt its lesson over Futurama and is contemplating bringing the show back after it scored success on DVD.

I’m not a big fan of Futurama but it was still a good show, killed before its prime. Off the top of my head, I can name quite a few shows that also bit the dust in the US before they should have as I’m sure you can. But the interesting aspect of this is that DVDs are now enabling networks to spot recent shows that were good but low-rated because of poor advertising or scheduling. Anyone want to run a sweepstake on what the next show they’ll bring back from the dead will be?

EMAP planning an FHM radio station

4 January 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

While I can see vaguely where Dee Ford, head of EMAP’s radio business, is coming from, the idea of an FHM radio station seems, erm, odd. How many people does she think buy FHM for the articles? And what’s the content going to be like?

FHM DJ: Hi Sarah Dunn from Hollyoaks! Sit down. Love the bikini, by the way. Let me describe it to the listeners at home…

I imagine that Dee Ford is thinking of something only loosely associated with ‘Junior Playboy’ – probably something along the lines of a radio station that plays the kind of music 17-year-old boys without girlfriends like. (You may think I’m stereotyping, but back in the 90s, the ad team at FHM used to pitch the mag to advertisers as “being read by teenage males without much experience of women”. I have no idea if they still do…).

And isn’t there a risk that a mediocre FHM radio station would risk tarnishing the print brand’s great image? Oh, what am I thinking…?

Disclaimer: I do some work for EMAP from time to time. Only for Broadcast though, not for FHM