HEADLINES

Friday, September 22, 2006

18 Doughty Street Talk TV - Press release and comment


'10th October will see the launch of Britain’s first political Internet TV Channel.
18DoughtyStreet Talk TV will broadcast for four hours a night, Mondays to Thursdays, from studios in London’s Bloomsbury with a mix of live and pre-recorded programmes. It aims to break the mould of current affairs television with a mix of opinionated and controversial programming.


The channel’s founders (Stephan Shakespeare, Joint Chief Executive of YouGov, and Tim Montgomerie, editor of conservativehome.com) believe that conventional political TV has let down its audience by dumbing down political debate to the lowest common denominator. It believes that no political party truly understands the electorate’s disappointment with the current state of politics. It aims to be an anti-establishment channel – championing rebel opinions in all of the mainstream parties and constantly questioning authority.'


We at The New Culture Forum believe that 18 Doughty Street Talk TV is a very welcome and perfectly timed initiative. We are convinced that it will encourage the expression of dissenting views and challenge the political correctness which for too long has deadened real debate.


Although it's not yet on air, 18 Doughty Street has already been fuelling controversies. After watching Tim's interview by Channel 4 News at noon today, it seems that the channel's very first contribution could be to provoke a much-needed debate on biased news coverage, on ITC regulations, and ultimately on what 'impartiality' means.

We were very please to have Tim and his team along to our September 11th meeting, when they filmed Peter's interview with Robin Aitken and the subsequent Q&A session. It will be broadcast soon after October 10th as part of a discussion on 'Bias and the BBC'.
A tout seigneur, tout honneur!
Franck Guillory
For everything on 18 Doughty, http://18doughtystreet.typepad.com




1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I found your website via Ian Dale's. Thank God someone is even talking about culture in this way. Keep going the public is sick of PC ART. There is a massive potential market for a good alternative. For what its worth you have my full support. I know so many people who think about culture seriously in the way that you do. I never send comments to Blogs but yours had none and I felt sorry for you. You are on to something here.