Radio Times new look

I can't see it being a major issue to add an extra page or two for Christmas Day. They'll probably want more space for Choices as well.

The bizarre thing about the CBBC listings is that virtually no other channel gets afforded that treatment, even if it is all cramped together with no description. So ITV2 between 0600 and 1200 on a Saturday mornings gets more detail than BBC2, which can't be right.

Also the daytime listings in a box is a compromise that doesn't really work, it doesn't scan at all and is hard to follow, and it seems to be just to carry on without any change to the evening listings. If they're not going to budge on this they may as well follow the lead of virtually every other listings mag and have everything in the one column, removing the pics at the top. The channels could also be a lot wider without that daytime column at the side.

I can entirely see the thinking behind the move - more previews help readers sift through the hundreds of channels etc. But it's backfired in two senses for me - much of the double-page preview section is taken up by massive pictures, and the expanded daytime listings (as much for weekend and holiday periods as the weekdays) being the one big advantage RT had over other listings mags.

I do wonder whether the complete radio silence on the matter in the magazine itself means they may be considering reversing it due to how unpopular it is (as with the radio reorganisation 20 years ago) - or if the current editor is so stubborn we're stuck with it while he's around!

She probably did, actually, in the old monopoly days the billings used to be very idiosyncratic, the likes of Not The Nine O'Clock News ("Maen Nawr O'Gloch!"), Carrott's Lib and There's A Lot Of It About ("This week, Spike Milligan will be discussing 'does size matter?' with four beautiful naked women and definitely not watching this programme which isn't half as interesting") clearly used to put their own billings together themselves. Even Grandstand used to get some quirky billings ("Bob Wilson has a bigger postbag than Madonna"). Clearly when the other magazines started up they couldn't do it anymore.

The problem with the daytime listings is that it's simply illogical to have the daytime listings from top to bottom and the evening listings from left to right. And while having the choices on a double page makes some sort of sense, it's impractical having to flip backward and forwards from the listings, especially as the design of the choices spread - they're not in any kind of time or channel order - makes it hard to find them anyway.

Russell T Davies tells a story of when he wrote the Children's BBC Saturday morning series "Breakfast Serials", he would have to write the billing for Radio Times, and would write a description that bore no resemblance to the programme at all - and all of them got in! Weirdly even though I was about 6 at the time I remember those billings (and the programme itself) and wondering if there was some joke I wasn't getting...

Apparently, Victoria Wood wrote her own Radio Times progamme synopses for 'As Seen On TV', including gems such as...



More here...

I think it's pretty obvious their "solution" sooner or later will in fact to be just to move the daytime listings into the main listings columns and hence they'll be laid out exactly the same as every other magazine - and of course they'll find some way to pass that off as an improvement.