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Articles by Dick Hobbs.

Keeping up standards

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by Dick Hobbs Issue 95 - November 2014 A couple of days ago, both the esteemed editor of this magazine and I were guests at an awards ceremony, in the romantic environs of the Wembley Hilton. The evening was a tribute to the democratising effect of the dinner suit. Receiving a lifetime achievement award richly deserved was Dr David Wood, who has de...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 December 2014

Exposed to ideas

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by Dick Hobbs Issue 94 - October 2014 I did not get the chance to attend much of the IBC conference this year. But I did make sure I was there for the interview with Professor Brian Cox, which was excellent. He is witty, charismatic and exceptionally clever. Once a keyboard player in a rock band, Cox is now a particle physicist and one of the leade...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 November 2014

Swiss Role

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by Dick Hobbs Issue 93 - September 2014 Like many in the industry - and everyone concerned with marketing and the press - I am thinking a lot about IBC at the moment. All right, strictly speaking I am thinking about getting a plane to Greece tomorrow, but I know I should be thinking about IBC. But rather than write about the exciting new technologi...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 October 2014

Is bingeing the new black?

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by Dick Hobbs Issue 92 - August 2014 Recently BBC4 has been showing the classic 1985 television drama Edge of Darkness. Troy Kennedy Martin masterfully captured the nuclear paranoia of the era, at a time when the Thatcher government was making a virtue out of secrecy. The idea that global forces were casually trading in weapons-grade material and w...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 September 2014

Is the future virtual

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by Dick Hobbs Issue 91 - July 2014 Just a couple of days ago, I went to a memorial service for a very nice man called John Wilson. If you have heard of John, it was probably for his work as the chairman of IBC in the 1990s, leading the move from Brighton to Amsterdam, then to an annual event, then to its management by an independent and professiona...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 August 2014

Changing expectations

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by Dick Hobbs Issue 90 - June 2014 I can remember when Ericsson made mobile phones. Now they are a major player in television playout or, as we now have to call it, delivering content. Interestingly, they also carry out extensive research, and have their own forecasting group which is looking at the way the business is changing. They have published...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 July 2014

Head in the cloud

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by Dick Hobbs Issue 89 - May 2014 Ive just had a look back through the archives, and I am pretty certain that this was my 25th NAB: a couple in the eighties and every year since 1992. In many peoples eyes this makes me just a beginner, I know. In the past I have spent the week on a stand, trying to sell something. My first ever NAB in Dallas, Texas...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 June 2014

Whats in a name

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by Dick Hobbs Issue 88 - April 2014 That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. Juliet, being a bit too passionate for her tender years, thinks that Romeo would, if he were not Romeo calld, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title. When I was Juliets age, and had done something which deserved a treat, I wo...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 May 2014

Be bold be brave but get the basics right

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by Peter Savage Issue 88 - April 2014 The world, and especially George Osborne, is telling us that we have never had it so good. GDP has finally climbed past the 2008 mark, and we are now set for many years of rose-tinted growth from our strong economy. Well George may have a point, and it may be worth considering some of the aspects of business ma...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 May 2014

Dick Hobbs reaches for the remote

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by Dick Hobbs Issue 87 - March 2014 I spent two weeks of February working in South Africa. I tell you this not to make you jealous although temperatures were around the 30 degree mark in glorious sunshine while those I left behind in England were forming local action committees to watch puddles. Neither am I trying to suggest some sort of superiori...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 April 2014

Dick Hobbs is Counting Pixels

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by Dick Hobbs Issue 86 - February 2014 At the start of each year you hear the sound and fury as the technology correspondents of broadcasters and the popular press head off to Las Vegas for CES, the annual exhibition of the Consumer Electronics Association. I have never been: I feel that two trips to Las Vegas a year would count as cruel and unusua...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 March 2014

Disaster Recovery with Peter Savage

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by Peter Savage Issue 86 - February 2014 Disaster recovery planning was, on the morning of Sunday 9th February, as far from my mind as was winning the figure-skating gold medal at Sochi. I recall my Rothschild days when we employed one guy whose job was almost totally devoted to what if strategic thinking and preparation. However, Azule is a small...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 March 2014

Training the next generation

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by Dick Hobbs Issue 86 - February 2014 At the end of January a new body the Institute for Training in Television Production (ITTP) held its first conference, organised by the publishers of TV-Bay magazine and chaired by former broadcaster Roz Morris, MD of TV News London Ltd. A packed room debated sometimes hotly the issues. Chair of ITTP is freela...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 March 2014

Dick Hobbs questions how it got to be 2014 so soon?

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by Dick Hobbs Issue 85 - January 2014 As we get ourselves ready to launch in to the new year, I have a few thoughts to share with you. The first is prompted by a press release which landed in my inbox back in December. IBM to acquire Aspera was the headline. Aspera is a business started by a fearsomely clever mathematician, Michelle Munson. She cam...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 February 2014

The circle of life with Dick Hobbs

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by Dick HobbsIssue 84 - December 2013 Being a simple soul, I am endlessly fascinated by ideas which are the great new thing one day, rubbished the next, and resurface the day after as the next great thing. In the 1960s, the BBC decided that it was wrong to concentrate all its radio and television production in London, and established national and r...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 January 2014