The Media Show

Steve Hewlett speaks to Bal Samra, BBC Commercial Director about putting TV shows out to competitive tender - and how the BBC works with independent producers after losing Bake Off. From the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader to Brexit and beyond to the rise of 'anti-politics' - the political landscape has been all change. So, how can the media better engage with and explain what's going on? Adam Boulton, presenter of Sky's new All Out Politics programme and Helen Lewis, Deputy Editor of The New Statesman discuss. And, media analyst Tim Suter helps us to navigate beyond the headlines about top talent pay to look at some of the detail in the BBC Draft Charter.Producer: Ruth Watts.

Andrea Catherwood talks to former Culture Secretary John Whittingdale about the hunt for a new Chair of the BBC Board following Rona Fairhead's decision to step down.We get reaction to the latest report on phone hacking. The Commons Privileges Committee has looked at evidence given in 2012 on phone hacking. We hear from Les Hinton, the former News International Chairman, the Labour MP Chris Bryant and Steven Barnett, professor of communications and the university of Westminster and a board member of pressure group Hacked Off.And Turkish journalist Can Dündar has just published an account of his arrest, imprisonment and exile. He talks about the challenges facing journalists in Turkey since this summer's failed coup.'We Are Arrested' by Can Dündar is out nowProducer: Ruth Watts.

Steve Hewlett talks to ITN's CEO John Hardie about his strategy to boost ITN productions and the future of ITN News. Was the Sunday Mirror's story making allegations about Keith Vaz in the public interest? We hear from Joan Smith, journalist and human rights campaigner and Evan Harris of Hacked Off about what they make of the editorial judgements behind the decision to publish. The Daily Telegraph's radio critic, Gillian Reynolds is a loyal listener to The Archers. She's gripped by the Helen Titchener storyline, but has some issues with the media frenzy and marketing of trial week. She explains why. And, Taylor Swift: what can we learn from the coverage of the latest break-up? Dan Wootton of The Sun gives us the inside story.Producer: Ruth Watts.

Steve Hewlett talks to Mark Thompson, President and CEO of the New York Times and former Director General of the BBC, about his new book 'Enough Said'. Mark Thompson argues that something has gone wrong with political language and it's making it harder to have serious public debates about important issues. As the man who has run three major media organisations what does he think needs to change? Autumn is nearly upon us and as the seasons change, so do TV programmes we'll be watching. From the X Factor to Strictly and Poldark to Victoria, we look at what the schedules might tell us with Vanessa Thorpe, arts and media correspondent at the Observer.And Shane Smith, Chief Executive and Co-Founder of online news producer VICE told the Edinburgh International Television Festival in this year's McTaggart Lecture that mainstream media was failing younger audiences. So is TV failing Generation Y? We look at numbers with Tess Alps Chair of Thinkbox. 'Enough Said: What's Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics' by Mark Thompson is published on 1st September 2016Producer: Ruth Watts.

The start of this summer witnessed some of the most significant political events in recent history, with media headlines about Brexit dominating every news bulletin. However, the news agenda quickly switched to the Olympics and the dominance of the British team. So was this switch justified, or does it highlight an imbalance in news coverage? Joining Paddy O'Connell to discuss is Rod Liddle, Associate Editor of the Spectator and Peter Hitchens columnist for the Mail on Sunday.The issue of diversity in broadcasting has received much focus this year. Today finally sees the launch of 'Diamond'; an industry wide monitoring project backed by the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Sky, and Channel 5. Amanda Ariss, Executive Director of Creative Diversity Network which has set it up explains how this new system will work and what they hope it will achieve.Gawker.com, the flagship site for Gawker Media, closed on Monday after 14 years. Gawker Media was pushed into bankruptcy after losing a lawsuit filed by wrestler Hulk Hogan. Max Read former editor of Gawker, and now senior editor at New York magazine, shares his concern about how the case threatens press freedom.A new Channel 5 two part series claims to offer 'unprecedented access to London's street gang culture'. In 'Gangland', subjects are free to tell stories of drug dealing and violence, unchallenged, in their own words. But the method used to achieve this - namely, "camera dropping", where subjects pick up equipment and film their own material - raises questions about the credibility of sources. Steve Hewlett talks to producer Paul Blake about the ethical questions he asked when making this filmProducer: Katy Takatsuki.

New York Times media columnist, Jim Rutenberg, has described how journalists who disagree with Donald Trump now face a dilemma in terms of their impartiality. "The American press has all but abandoned impartiality when it comes to the Republican's wildest claims", he writes. It's a similar problem to the one that faced broadcasters in the UK, especially the BBC, who were accused of 'false balance' during coverage of the EU referendum. Steve Hewlett speaks to Jim Rutenberg, and Emily Bell from Columbia Journalism school, about the challenge of covering Trump's campaign.The media company, Vice, famed for its youth-oriented outlook, is launching a new TV channel in the UK. It will be available on Sky and Now TV, and - it says - will feature all new and original content. The company launched the US version in February this year. But how successful a venture will a linear TV channel be for a young audience? Steve Hewlett speaks to Tom Harrington, analyst at Enders Analysis. BBC Comedy is reviving some much-loved sitcoms including Goodnight Sweetheart and Are You Being Served?. It's part of a season to mark 60 years since Hancock's Half Hour - considered to be the start of British situation comedy as we know it - started on BBC Television. But can this genre, which relies on innuendo, smut and difficult themes like race and sexism, exist in a modern world? Steve Hewlett speaks to Shane Allen, Controller, BBC Comedy Commissioning; writer Derren Litten who has written a new version of 'Are You Being Served', and legendary writers Lawrence Marks and Maurice Gran, famous for 'Goodnight Sweetheart' and 'Birds of a Feather'. Producer: Katy Takatsuki.

The BBC Trust has published an independent impartiality review looking at the BBC's reporting of statistics in its news and current affairs. It's found that the BBC needs to do more to challenge conventional wisdom and misleading claims, help audiences understand the weight of evidence, and be braver in interpreting and explaining rival statistics. We speak to independent author of the report and former UK National Statistician Dame Jil Matheson. Plus, FT columnist Tim Harford and investigative journalist Heather Brooke discuss the rise of data journalism and the skills journalists now need to make sense of stats. The New European, a pop up 'Remain' newspaper, has extended its publication run. Initially published for four weeks following the Brexit decision, the £2 weekly will continue for at least another 4 weeks. Distributed in London, the south of England, Manchester and Liverpool, it's seeing a circulation around the 30,000s, and will be published in Northern Ireland from Friday. Steve Hewlett speaks to Matt Kelly, Chief content officer for Archant and launch editor of the paper about how and why it's selling, when some other papers are failing after a matter of weeks.As of September 1st, the BBC will require those viewers watching BBC iPlayer programmes on catch-up to have a TV licence. Newspaper reports this week suggested the BBC could deploy a new generation of Wi-Fi detection vans to identify people illicitly watching its programmes online. Steve Hewlett speaks to former Editor in Chief of MacUser Magazine Adam Banks about whether technology exists to actually do this, and whether privacy laws would ever allow such detection. Producer: Katy Takatsuki.

Following the recent spate of terrorist attacks in France and Germany, and widespread reporting on these atrocities, some media outlets, including the French daily newspaper Le Monde, have decided to not publish the names or pictures of perpetrators. One of the organisations choosing to not publish details is French networked Europe1 Radio. Andrea Catherwood speaks to managing editor Nicolas Escoulan to hear why they've made that decision. Plus Jo Groebel, an academic and media consultant in Germany, who has been advising media there on this issue, explains why he thinks self-censorship is ineffective. Channel 4's new 'dating' show 'Naked Attraction' has certainly sparked controversy, with around 123 complaints already to regulator Ofcom. The programme sees a single man and woman choose a date from a selection of six people standing naked before them. Some viewers have been left shocked by close ups of genitalia and full frontals, but ratings suggest it's pulling in a big audience - particularly the young. Andrea Catherwood is joined by presenter Anna Richardson, plus critics Kevin O'Sullivan and Rachel Cooke.Latest results from Facebook show the company now has 1.71 billion monthly users, a surge from 1.65 billion in the previous quarter. Strikingly, the results also showed that revenue from advertising has grown 63 per cent in a year, to over $6.2 billion, with mobile ad revenue accounting for 84 per cent of this. Andrea Catherwood talks to ad expert Martin Bowley about the significance of these figures; what this tells us about ad spend, the impact on traditional media, and whether Facebook profits still have space to grow. Producer: Katy Takatsuki.

Liberty Global is the world's largest international TV and broadband company, with over 27 million customers worldwide. It's also the owner of Virgin Media, the largest cable company in the UK and Ireland, with 5.6 million customers. On a recent visit to London, its CEO Mike Fries spoke to Steve Hewlett about the strength of the business in the UK market, the impact of Brexit and whether they'd ever consider buying ITV.Guardian Media Group (GMG), the owner of The Guardian and Observer newspapers, has reported a greater-than-expected full-year operating loss of £69 million. GMG has put the losses in part down to restructuring charges and a fall in print advertising revenues, with some reports saying that disagreements over who should take the blame led to the Guardian's Editor in Chief Alan Rusbridger resigning in May. Steve Hewlett talks to media analyst from Enders Douglas McCabe about the scale of the problem and what, if anything, can be done about it.Roger Ailes who co-founded Fox News with Rupert Murdoch in 1996, is to depart the news channel. Over two decades, Ailes has led Fox News to becoming one of America's most watched news channels with profits dwarfing its cable news rival's. Ailes has been the driving force behind forming the unique Fox brand with his attention-grabbing style. Its blend of modern production values and partisan news commentary aimed at the moderate and conservative right counterbalanced what Ailes saw as the liberal bias of competitor news channels. We hear from author Kerwin Swint, and NPR's David Folkenflik about the rise and fall of this huge figure in US media.Prod: Katy Takatsuki.

Yavuz Baydar, writer for the Arab Weekly, discusses the media crackdown in Turkey post-coup with implications for journalism. Ed Vaizey reflects on his legacy as Minister of State for Culture and Digital Economy. The evolution of live streaming and its impact on news coverage is examined, along with challenges in the arts and media sectors.