Live 8 2005

I missed this bit. What happened there? It wouldn't be the first time Ricky Gervais has done something which doesn't quite fit in with the charitable intentions of the event. His Comic Relief film this year was unfunny and pointless.

For the most part, the video clips were played between sets in Hyde Park, to give the audience something to watch between performances. They were not designed to be shown to the TV audience - and the BBC had made it clear from the beginning that they were not there to promote the specific political messages of Live8, but to cover the concerT as an event. The BBC used the gaps between sets to interview performers, but also to interview people like Andrew Marr and George Alagiah, to help give the event some background context.

There are many who would argue that the BBC was not critical enough in their coverage. This isn't meant as a criticism by me of the event - or the BBC coverage of the Event - just pointing out that the BBC couldn't just slavishly broadcast whatever the event organisers provided them with... They had to retain a degree of editorial independence...

(Though we should apparently be happy we weren't watching in the US - where MTV seldom showed full-sets, and often hacked out mid song to an interview or an ad break apparently)

Ricky Gervais ran on to the stage and said someone along the lines of: "I'm just off the phone to Tony Blair, and he and George Bush have decided to quadruple aid and cancel all the debt. Isn't that good news? Right, that means we don't need to do the gig, so you can all go home now. Go on, leave. I'm only kidding, he hasn't cancelled the debt at all (grins) so we can keep going."

Quite funny as far as I was concerned, although it flew right over the crowd's head. Why the organisers thought Ricky Gervais would ever be the sort of person to play it straight, boring and uncontroversial I'll never know. We've got Lenny Henry for that.

It was a tricky event to call for comedy - a lot of stuff Jonathan Ross was saying at times also felt really out of place, but thank God the BBC did that rather than trying to play it straight all afternoon.

As for Richard Curtis, this is the man who hijacked a Christmas edition of a comedy programme to force-feed his views on everyone watching, so he's one to talk about it 'not being the time' to do anything.

There are clever ways of making a political point through your art while still providing entertainment, or staying true to what you're performing. You just need to look at Green Day musically, or M*A*S*H on TV. His Vicar of Dibley special, on the other hand, was a party political broadcast.

Yes, I don't understand why the put out the Greenwich Time Signal after the hour either.

Yet another of the great technical problems - as I remember Jonathan Ross tried to do the 2pm link a few minutes earlier, and was told they had to show something first. I think if he'd done it then he would have been bang on time. However they were on a hiding to nothing trying to get a complicated event like that running exactly on time.

There seems to be a fair bit of critiscism of the BBC right now for excessive coverage of Africa generally (the Africa Lives season is huge), at a time when it could be seen to be beneficial to the labour government - e.g. Gordon Brown's promotion of the aid & trade agreements that have/are being made by developed nations as opposed to some of the 'more controversial' domestic policy areas like crime and identity cards..

I don't know if anyone else managed to see the coverage of the select committee session on BBC Parliament (was earlier tonight, may have been a repeat) about the BBC Charter renewal. They had Kevin Marsh (editor, Today Programme), John Humphreys, Nick Robinson (ITN soon to be BBC) and Adam Boulton. Very interesting.

Do we have any idea of how many people tuned in on BBC1?

The Canadian coverage wasn't too bad.

CTV mostly covered the Barrie concert with taped footage from Hyde Park or Philly between gaps. They also had a best-of special later in the night.

My only peeve was that they left the Pink Floyd performance after Money for a commercial and then went back to Barrie for a performance there.

Who was providing the 'continuity announcements' to the Hyde Park crowd over the PA system on Saturday ? I noticed Ross' voice was used for the intro at 14:02, but someone else (obviously) was used after that.

Sounded like Mitch Johnson to me

Does anyone know why the ratings for live8 haven't been announced yet? When Dr Who came back on, there were early indications the afternoon after AND that was a bank holiday weekend...

From Media Guardian:
BBC1's Live 8 coverage attracted a peak audience of 9.6 million viewers on Saturday for Robbie Williams, between 10.15pm and 10.30pm.