Factsmackdown: Is Radio 3 more expensive than BBC Three?

With BBC Three the latest service from the corporation to be led to the knackers' yard, there's a little campaign growing to close Radio 3 instead, on the basis that it has a smaller audience and is pretty expensive, too.

Is that fair?

Well, BBC Three costs £121.7million a year; BBC Radio 3, £54.3million. So if you're looking for a cost-saving measure, the TV station potentially saves more.

And if you take into account that Radio 3 has to support orchestras and the Proms out of its budget, while BBC Three is spending a chunk buying not-as-good-as-King-Of-The-Hill American cartoons, you might start to look at the value for money proposition here slightly differently. (I know, it's unfair to put the Late Junction sessions up against Seth MacFarlane and ask 'where would YOU spend the money', but that's pretty much what the 'close Radio 3 instead' campaign is doing already.)

Ah, but Radio 3 is enjoyed by far fewer people than BBC Three. (Judging by letters to Feedback and the Radio Times, Radio 3 might not actually be enjoyed by anyone.)

So, who is more expensively serviced?

Radio 3's annual £54.3m is spent pleasing an audience 2.2 million. That's £24.60 a person.

BBC Three's annual £121.7m brings delight to 13.2million. That's £9.21 a person.

On this measure, BBC Three is much, much cheaper.

Okay, classical music heads, I can hear you murmuring that a large chunk of that BBC Three audience is just tuning in for the EastEnders repeat.

And that 13.2million suggests that a portion of the audience tuning in are from outside the slice of 'young people who otherwise would be having sex or doing computer games or doing computer games in which they pretend to be having sex' that the channle is supposedly targeting.

But, on the broad measure of happy person per pound, BBC Three is much better value than Radio 3.

Game over?

Not quite. Because a Radio 3 listener listens for six hours and 25 minutes a week; a BBC Three viewer only watches for one hour 47 minutes every week.

Multiply this up over the course of a year, and you get BBC Three costing 0.17p per minute of audience engagement.

BBC Radio 3 costs 0.12p per minute of audience engagement.

In other words, the two channels, arguably at different ends of the BBC waterfront cost roughly the same, and it's peanuts, but depending on when you want to stop doing division you could argue that either is more expensive.

[Sources: About the BBC audience information, January-March 2013; BBC Annual Report expenditure 2013]

Radio One will be saved by, er, rebranding 60 Seconds on BBC Three

Radio One is suffering something of a decline in listening - in part because Chris Moyles' departure took a chunk of audience who weren't core, but still counted; in part because young people have their phones and Twitter Music and cassette tapes and have no need to listen to radio at all.

Time for a fightback. MediaGuardian's got the plans:

The BBC's director general, Tony Hall, has also indicated he wants to see more collaboration between the station and its similarly youth-oriented TV sibling, BBC3, including the rebranding of BBC3's news as a TV extension of Newsbeat.

"Hey, kids, put down your Spotify playlists, because this radio station has a news bulletin the same as the one that interrupts American Dad marathons."

Here's what Hall said when in front of the Commons media select committee:

"One of the areas I want to develop is how BBC3 and Radio 1 can work much more together, with Radio 1 concentrating much more on music and BBC3 on other genres," Hall said. "We have a news service on BBC3. We don't call it anything, yet we have Newsbeat on Radio 1. Why not take Newsbeat and run that across the two? The controllers of BBC3 [Zai Bennett] and Radio 1 have more work to do to see how together these two channels, stations, can [find] a younger audience."

Pssst, Tony... your news service on BBC Three is called "Sixty Seconds". It's been called that since before there was a BBC Three. Still, twelve years isn't much time for that name to stick, is it?

The other big plan is for a Radio One channel on iPlayer. This idea - that digitally, a Radio One TV service would be possible - is even older than Sixty Seconds; it was part of the original proposals for BBC Digital services back in the early 1980s. Still, baby steps, eh?

Lily Allen: Enjoy it while you can

On the 19th September, 2008, someone updated the website for Lily Allen and Friends - the BBC Three series - with this upbeat message:

Thanks for watching - we hope you enjoyed Lily's show. And the great news is, she'll be back soon with a brand new series - keep checking here for more details about when it will hit your screens and how you can get involved.

I'm sure we've all been checking back daily, or twice daily, as our schedules have allowed. But despite the optimistic heading "Guests: Series One" on a side bar, nothing.

Not a word.

But we won't have many more days to check. Yes, amongst the sites being closed as part of the latest rounds of Coalition-inspired cuts at the BBC, Lily Allen And Friends is being taken off the internet. Whatever shall we do?

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet - George Lamb

Swineshead at Watch With Mothers observes as George Lamb attempts to make the leap from radio to making TV documentaries. Lamb stood between the cameras and the horizon for the clumsily titled Can I Get High Legally?:

He meets a 19 year old clubber called Tom and buys some ‘legals’ from a handful of shops in Camden. He then, sitting in a trendy Camden bar with Tom, expresses amazement that they were so easy to purchase. ‘It’s as simple as buying a bag of sweets’ he gasps, despite the fact that they’re called ‘legal highs’.

The clue, Mr Lamb, is in the fucking title.

But nobody in the shops wants to talk to the camera. Possibly because they hadn’t been asked in advance. Undeterred and hell-bent on fulfilling his contract lest he doesn’t get paid, Lamb logs on and checks a number of websites that sell the Legals. Quelle surprise! They’re proper websites! Lamb seems amazed that there are functioning areas of the internet selling this stuff - despite the fact that they’re FUCKING LEGAL!

Glastonbury 2009: View from the sofa - The last night

I know it's churlish to complain about the BBC's coverage, when it offers up so many riches, but... lets complain anyway.

Every year, I'm left scratching my head wondering why the press red service on the last night is busily churning out Saturday and Friday sets when there's plenty happening on site; I could understand if there was one screen of all-weekend highlights, but at some points yesterday it was a choice of old, or older: Quo today, or Springsteen or Florence or Little Boots from before?

And why can't you bloody stick with a set? If you're going to put on the record label's knuckledusters and issue take-down notices to YouTube, can't you at least push back and not wait until Blur are really getting going before cutting back to Whiley and Lowe, sat around, enthusing over how this is the greatest thing that has ever happened on the pyramid stage since stages began - only to go off and show The Black Eyed Peas instead, while BBC Three - scheduled to show The Black Eyed Peas - slaps on Blur. But the bits that BBC Two had already shown.

The Sunday night coverage is always hyperbolic - it's always the biggest crowd ever seen in front of the stage, always the most extraordinary end to the most extraordinary Glastonbury, but this year it actually felt like it might be true. Apart from the most extraordinary Glastonbury bit - from the sofa it had all the thrill of a well-oiled machine.

But Blur were magnificent. Whoever thought that a bunch of aging indie-kids would outrun Bruce?

What was the name of that group from the North who was meant to be their competition?

Glastonbury 2009: View from the sofa - Ting Tings & Friendly Fires

Edith has now put on a jacket, with a yachting feel to it. It's like she's lost her bags and has had to rely on borrowing stuff from a bunch of Eton schoolboys.

Shouldn't there have been two people presenting this package of programmes? Isn't that an immutable law of Glastonbury coverage? Was Zane Lowe supposed to turn up but was too wrecked by the thought of Michael Jackson's death to go on? Or is this the new, frugal BBC in action - now 50% fewer presenters?

The Ting Tings come on BBC Three, wearing the sort of sunglasses that the makers of Skins give to their cast thinking it makes them look edgy. It seems to be pretty much the same set we were watching last year, so it's off to the red button extra stuff.

Friendly Fires are there, doing a set whose quality cannot quite disguise that Ed is wearing the sort of shirt that Stuart Adamson gave a bad name to.

Lily Allen: Are we still near enough new year for this to be 'dropped quietly in the festive period'?

There is, naturally, less surprise at the confirmation that BBC three isn't bothering with a second series of Lily Allen and Friends than there was at their pretence that they were recommissioning. Danny Cohen is now looking for something to fill the gap in the schedule. As if there was a hole left by not having awkward chat with uncomfortable looking minor celebrities linked together with film of donkeys having sex culled from YouTube.

Lily Allen is warming up her album

Having heard the lead single from the new Lily Allen record, you have to applaud her for taking the exciting step of releasing the weakest track from the album to lead off with. I mean, that has got to be the weakest track, right?

Lily has an album to promote, and so she's doing it the only way she knows how - with a lot of press comments that sound at first like they're charming and self-deprecatory, but actually turn out to be self-aggrandising. Take, for example, her verdict on Lily Allen and Friends, the TV show that divided a nation - into those who'd never seen it, and those who would never watch it again:

When asked how she'd rate it, she said: "Probably five out of 10.

"It was a period when I decided not to be a singer or go on tour."

Fair enough, she's given herself probably about five more out of ten than she'd deserve, but is this an admission that it was wrong to do? No, because you know what? She got LOADSAMONEY:

"I made a lot of money out of it. Thank you, licence-payers - that was very nice of you. You think Russell Brand is your problem. Actually it's me."

No, actually, nobody thinks Russell Brand is their problem - whatever else, at least he was usually entertaining for the money. "It was rubbish, but hey I got paid" isn't quite as winning as Allen seems to think.
?
And what of her isn't-that-somewhat-like-what-Travis-would-do cover of Womanizer? Ooh, she's in twubble:

"Now, some of you may be wondering why I covered 'Womanizer' - simple really, I love Britney and I love the song."

... and, people might think there was something unusual about a pop singer doing a pop song and find it edgy.

Seriously, who would have been wondering why someone would do a cover of a great pop song? It's like Huw Edwards blogging his reasons for wearing a tie during the Ten O'Clock News.

But it turns out we should never have heard the song:

"It wasn't my intention for it to have whizzed round the world like it has," added Allen. "Mark Ronson asked me for something no one had heard to play on his radio show, and 'Womanizer' was the only song I had as an attachment on my Blackberry, and I couldn't get home to send him anything else in time."

"I had asked him to talk all over it so it wouldn't get ripped, but he didn't," explained the singer. "Thanks Mark - for getting me in serious trouble with my record company."

Oooh, everyone copied the song because it was so GRATE and UNEXPECTED and they put it on the torrents and I haz a Blackberry and know Mark Ronson and he begged me for a tune but it was almost TOO POWERFUL and I bet EMI put me in detention now for sure. And it was all just a fabulous coincidence.

Glastobox: Watching from a safe distance

Were The Feeling doing I Thought It Was Over live? Really live? It didn't sound like it was coming from a stage in a unseasonally autumnal field.

BBC Three is currently being anchored by Edith Bowman and Zane Lowe - Lowe, surely, must be wondering if he's ever going to get any work from the BBC besides festivals and the Evening Session slot by now. Clearly, the City Of Domes that is modern Radio One means he can't do that forever, and it looks like he's attempting to slightly reposition himself enough to open some other lines of employment. Calmer, controlled, almost suave. But he's never going to get a National Lottery themed gameshow, is he?

Bowman is laughing like a tractor sinking into a slurry tank; Rufus Hound is filling up acres of air time with those pointless roving reports that they seem to think are integral to the programme - Hound does 'em well, but it doesn't alter the fact the reason why most of us are watching on TV is we don't want to spend time with the sort of eccentrically-behatted types who clutter up the campsites like a wacky invading army, so we really don't want to hear what they have to say. Especially when, as the woman who was just on, it's "I have a different outfit each day, pink yesterday, multi-colour today... these are my friends from London, but I see them most weekends despite coming from..." Where? Wales? Scotland? Spain? Nope... "... Kent." Not all the way from Kent to London, a distance of less than no miles.

Lupe Fiasco has, somewhat optimistically, encouraged people to sing along "if you know the words." The audience tried, but thought the words were "polite cheer".

Edith and Zane are trying to talk up the Jay-Z set - "word has definitely got to him about the reaction to his set" suggests Zane, letting us into the secret we wouldn't have heard unless we had ears or eyes of some sort.

Editors were pretty good - you can see why people peg them as a bit like Coldplay - they even have the same wet beards, but it's like comparing a microwave curry with the proper deal in a restuarant. Yes, there's a sense of the flavours being similar, but only one offers a real experience of textures, and surprises, and satisfaction.

This year's entertainment value has been increased greatly by adding the Guardian's Great Lyrics booklets, allowing countless rounds of 'One song to the tune of another'.

[Part of Glastonbury 2008]

Allen's alright, says bloke who gave her a job

Despite the poor viewing figures and lukewarm critical reception, Danny Cohen is sure that giving Lily Allen a job presenting TV was a good choice:

"Sometimes I think, well what do you want, critics? We try to nurture new talent and then people lay into them. I think people have been tough on Lily.

"She is incredibly talented and charismatic, and I tend to agree with one or two critics who have suggested that she might not have had the same level of criticism if it had been a man presenting."

Well, yes, it might be a bit hard on you to complain had you done something more inspired in the search for new talent than gone "oh, let's get someone who's already famous for doing something else and get them to present a show..." - it's not like you spent weeks auditioning newcomers and watching showreels before discovering a fresh face, is it?

And, perhaps, she'd have got an easier ride if she'd been a bloke. Just maybe. (Although being a man didn't help Eagle Eye Cherry much, did it?) But certainly, if she'd been any good doing a show that was half watchable, she'd have been given an even easier one.

Gordon in the morning: Madonna gets all sweary

Bizarre this morning is leading with Madonna's One Big Weekend performance. You might think Gordon is in charge when you read the opening paragraph:

BUSTY MADONNA causes a sensation as she almost pops out of her top

but, no: this excitement at almost seeing a nipple is the work of Sara Nathan, the paper's TV editor. But here main order of business is Madonna swearing. Twice:

The singer used the f-word twice during the Radio 1 Big Weekend gig live on BBC3, BBC HD and Radio 1.

On BBC 3 and BBC HD and Radio 1. As if it was being simulcast?

Holding an S&M-style cane, she introduced her song Hung Up to fans at the concert in Maidstone, Kent, saying: “You guys are going to have to start fucking it up out there ’cos I need to feel some love. I’m going to do an old song. But not too old. Fuck the present. Let’s live in the past.”

Now, most people would think the confused 'not too old - let's live in the past' time paradox was the closest thing to something interesting here, but for the Bizarre column, it's outrage at the f-word:

The BBC was rapped when Madonna, 49, swore at the Live Earth gig last year.

Now, if you or I were the "TV editor" of a national newspaper, we might - at the very least - have added the words "and many others" to that sentence, what with how it was the repeated swearing which earned the BBC censure, not because of Madonna alone. And you might feel obliged to point out the difference between a high-profile, teatime appearance by Chris Rock throwing round "motherfuckers" on BBC One, and a post-watershed, properly-warned appearance on BBC Three. But maybe not.

It's hard to take seriously a column on a "family newspaper's" website which now regularly runs photos of women with their tits out masquerading as entertainment journalism being a crusader for a less crude nation. Especially in an article also rubbing itself because Madonna had bouncy breasts.

Gordon, while this is going on, continues to develop his stalkery obsession with Jennifer Aniston. We don't know if he runs every single snap of Aniston that comes across his desk:

ASK any bloke to say which bikini-clad bird he’d most like to join him for a swim and the odds are JENNIFER ANISTON’s name is going to crop up in the top three.

... but it's starting to look like it. Wonder why Gordon is so enamored of a woman whose main success was playing a character who had an unlikely relationship with a slightly awkward, odd-looking bloke who had a teenager's dream job.

Oh, and, yes: He really does run a little cropped-out photo of just Aniston's breasts. So you can see the shape of her nipples. Is it just me, or does anyone else feel their skin crawl?

Elsewhere, Gordon straight-facedly (very, very straight-faced) uses the word "lez":

Hayden 'lez lust' for Angelina

It turns out that Smart thinks this is an acceptable word to describe lesbianism. But does Hayden Panettiere really have lesbian passion for Angelina Jolie, Gordon?

TELLY Heroes beauty HAYDEN PANETTIERE has claimed she would happily bed Angelina Jolie.

Has she really said that, Gordon?

The 18-year-old — who plays indestructible Claire Bennet in the BBC2 sci-fi hit — has been dogged by rumours she is a lesbian.

She said: “That’s fine with me. If I’m going to be linked with someone, I could do an affair with ANGELINA JOLIE, JESSICA ALBA or CHARLIZE THERON.

“And KATE BECKINSALE is gorgeous. There are so many beautiful girls.”

We've given up on expecting Smart to be able to write properly, but surely a basic grasp of English comprehension should still be required before being put in charge of a newspaper column? Clearly, Hayden is saying that if there are going to be lesbian rumours, at least make them with someone top-drawer, not that she has "lez lust" for anyone. Since Smart would never deliberately mislead his readers, we have to assume he's just unable to understand a joke, don't we?

Lily Allen: Stay-at-home Friends

Lily Allen has been thinking, and come up with a "plausible" reason for Lily Allen and Friends being so dreadful: the, erm, studios.

Apparently, then, it was the studios which made the programme an ill-conceived rag-bag of bits of stuff downloaded off YouTube strung together by awkward interviewees and embarrassed silences. Somehow.

Lily explains:

"The type of audience that loves me will travel to a club in London but won't travel all that way outside of London to a studio."

Pinewood. It's hardly Taunton, is it?

Besides, an audience who loves you, but not enough to take a thirty minute train ride isn't exactly showing the deepest love, is it? "I would do anything for love... but I won't do Denham station."

It's also not clear why the programme being filmed in Pinewood meant the "type of audience that loves" Lily somehow couldn't be persuaded to make the journey to the BBC Three button to watch the programme at home. Perhaps the viewers were all stuck on Chiltern Railways?

Friends reunited: Allen gets second series

So, it turns out that Knowing Me, Knowing You wasn't all that realistic: if Lily Allen and Friends can get a second series, then surely Alan Partridge would have?

Lily Allen and Friends... well, friend, perhaps

We actually feel a little bad now. We really meant to mention that last week's Lily Allen and Friends got its largest audience of the run - a record busting third of a million - but didn't get round to it; now, we're mentioning last night's ratings and it'll look like we're only counting the flatline figures and ignoring the ones that are slightly less bad.

But we're not. It just happens that last night's audience averaged 173,000 - although by the end, the figures had dipped to 148,000. The good news for Lily, though, is that this figure is so small, it can't really be counted accurately by the ratings systems.

The BBC has been suggesting that the series was doing well on the iPlayer - perhaps that's where all the viewers are.

Lily Allen makes new friends

Good news for Lily Allen: her 'look at what we've found on YouTube' programme might not have been very popular in its launch week, but the audience has rallied for the second week. Yes, 7,000 extra viewers plonked themselves down to watch Lily Allen And Friend this week. Might not sound much, but when you're scraping quarter of a million, every few helps. It's actually a lower audience rating than that programme about the girl with four legs was getting on Channel 4's hour-later catch-up service.

Lily Allen's friends unsubscribe

So, after all the hoopla, how did Lily Allen and Friends programme do for BBC Three?

255,000 viewers.

That's not bad for BBC Three, is it?

Well... actually, yes it is. It's down on what you'd normally expect in that slot - about half of the average on BBC Three for the time. And that's despite the heavy trailing across the main channels for about three weeks, a lot of pre-publicity and the supposed draw of Ms Allen.

Of course, to be fair, Lenny Henry was presenting pretty much an identical programme on BBC One at the same time.

Showbiz Zoe still believes television

After a year or so of television turning out to have LIED and LIED and LIED again, it's nice to know that someone still believes everything she sees on television.

Zoe. Out of Showbiz with Zoe in the Sunday Mirror. She saw Lily Allen interview Cuba Gooding Jr and reports:

Looks as if Lily Allen is pulling out all the stops to get over her recent heartbreak. The singer, who split from boyfriend Ed Simons of the Chemical Brothers last week, flirted outrageously with Jerry Maguire star Cuba Gooding Jr when she interviewed him for her new TV show.

If no one's told you already, Lily, it's down to me to break the bad news - he's a married man.

Or... you know, maybe it's just that Lily was using a giggly, flirty style of interviewing that she's doing because she's making a television programme.

After all, it's not like Parkinson is a cantankerous old git in real life, is it? Okay, that's a bad example. But you know what I mean.

Lily Allen and Friends and voters

Whoever would have imagined, back in the 1980s, that one day you'd be able to vote for which band you'd like to see playing on the television? (Besides everyone who watched Whistle Test and its 'videovote' feature, and anyone who saw the similar thing The Tube did.)

But now that crazy dream has come true. Um, again. In a bid to give Lily Allen's curious show something to do that isn't reliant on showing old bits of video off the internet - thus prompting comparisons with Graham Norton's show from about a decade ago - BBC Three are allowing you to vote to choose a band you'd like to see. Yes, like The Box does.

What's amusing, though, is the page of terms and conditions that are covering, remember, a face-off between Blood Red Shoes and Metro, not the choice of the next leader of her majesty's opposition:

Band vote - rules

# Voting is available online only between 11pm after the first transmission of the show, and 10am the following Thursday. Votes received outside the specified times will not be counted. Voting times may change.

# Only one vote is permitted per person. If you do vote multiple times, only your first vote each week will count.

# The BBC reserves the right to cancel or suspend voting at any time.

# The BBC reserves the right to disqualify votes if it has reasonable grounds to suspect that fraudulent voting has occurred or if it considers there has been any attempt to rig the voting.

# The BBC, its sub-contractors, subsidiaries and/or agencies cannot accept any responsibility whatsoever for any technical failure or malfunction or any other problem with any system, server, provider or otherwise which may result in any vote being lost or not properly registered or recorded.

# In case of the vote being compromised or in case of a technical failure, the BBC will defer to a panel of judges to choose the outcome. The panel will include executives from the BBC and Princess Productions.

Failing all that, the winner will be picked in the style of Pets Win Prizes, using an elderly cat encouraged by Danny Baker.

To be honest, why would you need a public vote to decide between Blood Red Shoes and Metro? It's like inviting consultation on if you should have velvet bed sheets or sleep in a breaker's yard.



Blood Red Shoes, obviously.

Birthday special

The Liverpool Nativity, then: the greatest story ever mistold?

BBC Three's retelling of the birth of Jesus last night (and for the next seven days on iPlayer) was a bit of a botch. Of course, there's a built-in problem with a nativity story, in that you know how its going to end, but you'd have thought the intertwining of Great Scouse Pop moments would have at least offered something fresh for the tale.

Trouble was - like the host city - the Liverpool Nativity got too fixated on the Beatles. The idea was to set the scene for the Capital of Culture year, and on this evidence, Merseysiders can expect twelve months of not thinking much further than 'what would John Lennon do now'? So the hackneyed end is a singalong to All You Need Is Love, rather than the slightly more fitting Power Of Love, for example, although it was interesting to see Get Back given to the racists, what with the unfortunate alternative version of the song.

There were some non-Beatles track allowed in, some working (Wah Heat's Seven Minutes To Midnight and the Bunnymen's Breaking The Back of Love), most feeling just badly wedged in. There She Goes doesn't have to be a song about heroin, but I'm not convinced it can be a song about how it feels when your virgin girlfriend tells you she's been knocked up by God. And Bouncing Babies and You Spin Me Right Round Like A Record for the slaughter of the innocents felt ill-judged.

The plot - or at least the updating of it - didn't make any sense. The drama was set in a 'fictional state', which was fair enough, but then how could it be that Joseph was coming to register as an asylum seeker in Liverpool? And why did Cathy Tyson - the "minister of the interior" of the fictional state - tell the Magi she was "in town for Capital of Culture year"? You don't get the culture secretary of the actual nation turning up to live in Liverpool for twelve months, much less the minister of the interior of a different state.

Even more confusingly, despite having been told that Mary was a "Liverpool girl", she and Joseph were wandering the streets of the city because they couldn't afford a hotel room. Why not go to your house, then?

And how come Cathy Tyson's Herodia was slaughtering innocents before Mary's waters had broken? (Presumably because the three wise men - or rather, Mick from Brookside, Michael from Brookside, and the bloke who was Jaah-whey in Bread when Peter Howitt had quit - turned up too early.)

Tyson, surprisingly, was terrible - playing her part like a stage performance, and a Saturday Pantomime Matinee at that. To pull off the idea of a psychopath at the Home Office - sorry, Ministry of the Interior - called for understatement rather than gurning and spinning eyes.

Equally surprising was Jennifer Ellison wasn't all that bad - perhaps because her role as Guiding Star angel was somewhat brief.

It wasn't a bad try, all told, but the ending - the crowd parting to allow Mary and Joseph to hide - fell a little short of triumphant; Hughes' "I don't have to ask in this town" a little too self-congratulatory for an ending about a character who was meant to live humbly.

[Similar, but different: The Manchester Passion]

Presumably Peaches Geldof was busy?

Times are tough at the BBC, but not - apparently - so tough there's not money for Lily Allen to make a programme about social networking:

The audience will be made up entirely of Allen's online friends, while viewers will present parts of the show and put questions to celebrity guests.

Guests will include chart-topping bands and unsigned acts.

An entire audience of people who are Lily Allens "friends", eh?

I suppose the desperate bid to turn a TV programme out of new technology makes this the 21st Century's Buzzfax, although that Teletext-based entertprise had a slightly more charismatic presenter.

BBC Three controller Danny Cohen said: "I'm delighted... she's one of the hottest acts around and an important voice of her generation."

An 'important voice of her generation'? Really, Danny? Obviously, everyone is valuable in their own way, and everyone's voice is important, but is Cohen really suggesting that Allen is, in some way, a Che Guevara for the Heat Kid Generation they might want to ask the Secret Diary Controller to come back and suggest to Danny that it's time to step down.