Plunky Releases His 25th CD Album: Drive it

Urban jazz saxophonist Plunky follows up his nationally acclaimed hit “Drop” with Drive It, a new 14-song CD album of piping hot dance music, funk, jazz and Go-Go. The hour-long disc revs it up, puts it in gear and stomps on the gas. Destination…the dance floor of the hottest spots in the city for grown and sexy music lovers.

http://www.plunkyone.com
http://audio.cdbaby.com/5c527eac/p/plunky12-03

The CD takes off with the up tempo title song “Drive It,” a hypnotic instrumental groove with mega hit potential amongst urban radio and club audiences alike. Next, Plunky brings back a 80′s inspired Euro-retro-dance sound with “Gotta Keep Moving,” followed by the horn driven party starter “Every Way But Loose,” a remake of his 1982 release, which charted in both the US and London. Plunky also pays homage to the Mid-Atlantic Go-Go sound with a medley of DC flavored songs like “Life – You’re Full Of It” and “A Swing In Everything.” In addition to jazzy instrumentals there are also funkafied teasers like “Toy Box”, which is playful and risqué ala Cameo; and, “Synchrofunkinicity,” a Parliamentonic diatribe with a nasty low end.

Drive It is a musical voyage of rhythmic styles: vocal and instrumental; smooth but pumped up; diverse yet consistently moving… This album is chock full of strong grooves destined to become urban radio and club favorites.

Nationally syndicated radio host Michael Baisden and other urban and jazz deejays made Plunky’s “Drop” the urban-contemporary jazz song of the past year. Drive It will solidify Plunky’s place in the forefront of the new urban music scene. Plunky is already planning an East Coast US promotional tour, a Drive It tour in France in December, in addition to highly anticipated club dates in his hometown of Richmond, VA.

With Drive It Plunky reaches a silver milestone: the 25th album release of his 35-year career. Drive It proves he knows how to shift gears and keep it moving.

CD Release Date: August 29, 2008
CD Release Party: Saturday, September 6, 9:00 PM, Martini Kitchen & Bubble Bar, 1911 West Main Street, Richmond, VA 23220

Distributed by Liaison Record Distribution, 9435 Washington Blvd., Suite M, Laurel, MD 20723, 301-776-4566. Hear samples at http://www.cdbaby.com/plunky12

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World in Action – Waterwell Drilling Rig – china Top Head Drive Drilling System

Origins
World in Action was the pre-eminent current affairs program produced by Britain’s ITV Network in its first 50 years. Along with This Week, Weekend World, First Tuesday, The Big Story and The Cook Report – and the news-gathering of ITN – World in Action gave ITV a reputation for quality broadcast journalism to rival the BBC’s output.
For the first 35 years of its existence, ITV had a near-monopoly of television advertising revenue. Roy Thomson, who ran Scottish Television famously described ITV as a “licence to print money”. In return for this income, the broadcasting regulator insisted that the ITV companies broadcast a proportion of their programmes as public service TV. Out of this was born the network’s reputation for serious current affairs, eagerly grabbed by program makers under Granada’s founder Lord Sidney Bernstein.
Some of the dominant figures in 20th century British broadcasting helped to create World In Action, in particular Tim Hewat “the maverick genius of Granada’s current affairs in its formative years” and his World In Action successor David Plowright: but also Jeremy Isaacs, Michael Parkinson, John Birt and Gus Macdonald and, its most long-serving executive-producer, Ray Fitzwalter. World In Action trained generations of journalists and, in particular, film-makers. Michael Apted worked on the original Seven Up. Paul Greengrass, who spent ten years on World In Action, told the BBC: “My first dream was to work on World In Action, to be honest. It was that wonderful eclectic mixture of filmmaking and reportage. That was my training ground. It showed me the world and made me see many things.” He later told The Guardian: “If there’s a thread running through my career it’s World in Action – the phrase as well as the programme.” Although its rivals produced many memorable programs, it was World in Action “slamming into the subject of each edition without wordy prefaces from a reassuring host-figure” which consistently gained a reputation for the kind of original journalism and film making which made headlines and won major awards. In its time, the series was honoured by all of the major broadcasting awards, including many BAFTA, the Royal Television Society and Emmy Awards.
World in Action’s style was the opposite to its urbane BBC rival’s, especially to the London BBC. By repute, especially in its early days World In Action would never employ anybody who was on first-name terms with any politician. Gus Macdonald, an executive producer of the programme, said it had been “born brash”. Steve Boulton, one of its last editors, wrote in The Independent that the programme’s ethos was to “comfort the afflicted – and afflict the comfortable.” Paul Greengrass told The Guardian in June 2008 that the chairman of Granada TV once told him: “Don’t forget, your job’s to make trouble.”
World in Action out-lasted all of its contemporaries in ITV current affairs, killed off as the commercial pressures on the network grew with the arrival of multi-channel TV in the UK. Eventually World In Action, too, was removed from the schedules by its own [but by now dramatically different] creator, Granada TV, following pressure from the ITV Network Centre. World In Action, with its worldwide view and coverage, was replaced in the schedules by Tonight. Investigative legacy
From the beginning, and especially from the late 1960s, World In Action broke new ground in investigative techniques. Landmark investigations included the Poulson Affair, corruption in the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad, the exposure of the shadowy and violent far-right group Combat 18, investigations into L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology and, most notably, a long campaign which resulted in the release from prison of the Birmingham Six, six Irishmen falsely accused of planting Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombs in Birmingham pubs.
World in Action’s appetite for controversy created tension with the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the official regulator during most of the series run, which had the power to intervene before broadcast. Sir Denis Forman, one of Granada’s founders, wrote that there was “trench warfare” between the programme and the industry regulator, the Independent Television Authority (ITA), in the years between 1966 and 1969 as World In Action sought to establish its journalistic freedoms.
The most celebrated dispute was in 1973, over the banning of The Friends and Influence of John L Poulson, the definitive film about the Poulson Affair, itself one of the defining scandals of British political life in the 1960s. Poulson was an architect, who was jailed a year later for corrupting politicians and civil servants to advance his construction business. The regulator, which was then the IBA, banned the film without seeing it and without giving official reasons other than “broadcasting policy”. As a protest, Granada broadcast a blank screen – which bizarrely recorded the third highest TV audience of that week. After a public furore which saw newspapers from the Sunday Times to the Socialist Worker unite in condemnation of “censorship”, the IBA held a second vote, having by then seen the film. By a single vote, the ban was lifted and the programme, retitled The Rise and Fall of John Poulson, was transmitted on April 30, 1973, three months after it was first scheduled.
In 1980 the programme examined the business practices of the then chairman of Manchester United F.C., Louis Edwards. Edwards ran a wholesale butchery business that supplied schools in Manchester; WIA exposed practices of bribery of council officials and the supply of meat that was unfit for human consumption to such institutions; Edwards’ businesses were subsequently prosecuted and lost their contracts.
World in Action tackled the British intelligence services; as well as the Navy over its recruitment practices: senior Navy personnel famously ‘door-stepped’ the director of the World In Action’s film in question. The programme broadcast revelations by whistleblowers from both GCHQ, the government’s electronic eavesdropping and surveillance headquarters, and from the Joint Intelligence Committee.
Its most audacious investigation of the intelligence community was perhaps an extended edition in July 1984 titled “The Spy Who Never Was”, the confessions of a former MI5 officer, Peter Wright. Spycatcher, Wright’s subsequent account of the period when he and colleagues had, as he put it, “bugged and burgled our way across London”, revealed what had in effect been a planned coup against the then Labour government of Harold Wilson. Wright appeared to have been in charge of the technical side of things. ‘The Wilson Plot’, as it became known, was corroborated to varying degrees both before and after the film’s transmission in various other books by journalists and in volumes of memoirs by others involved in the conspiracy. Wright’s book was the most explosive of them all. Wright, embittered by a still unresolved pension dispute, fled to Australia where the book was written and finally published – to the fury of Mrs Thatcher – with the assistance of the original programme’s chief researcher, Paul Greengrass. Publication in Britain was initially banned outright by the government of Margaret Thatcher.
The series was rarely away from the courts and the threat of legal action. The Scientologists tried [and failed] to stop World in Action’s broadcasts about them through the courts and In 1980, members of the programme’s staff and senior executives at Granada TV announced that they would be prepared to go to prison rather than submit to a House of Lords ruling that the programme reveal the identity of an informant who had supplied WIA with 250 pages of secret documents from the then state-owned steel company British Steel. British Steel was at the time locked in an industrial dispute with its workforce.
In 1995, Susan O’Keeffe, a World in Action journalist, was threatened with prison in Ireland for refusing to reveal her sources. She had investigated scandals within the Irish meat industry in two films in 1991, setting in motion a three-year Tribunal of Inquiry in Dublin, which found that much of her criticism of the industry was substantiated. The Tribunal, though, demanded that she name her informants, and when she refused to do so, she was charged by the Irish Director of Public Prosecutions. The case became a cause clbre in the Republic of Ireland, and in January 1995 she faced trial for contempt of court but was cleared of the charge. She was honoured in the 1994 Freedom of Information Awards for her stand.
In its last few years, the programme was involved in two high-profile libel cases. It won the first (along with The Guardian) against the former Conservative Cabinet Minister Jonathan Aitken, and lost the second, against the high street chain Marks & Spencer.
On April 10, 1995, Jonathan Aitken (himself a former journalist for Yorkshire Television) called a televised press conference three hours before the transmission of a World in Action film, Jonathan of Arabia, demanding that allegations about his dealings with leading Saudis be withdrawn. In a phrase that would come to haunt him, Aitken promised to wield “the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play … to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism.” Aitken was subsequently sentenced to 18 months in prison for perjuring himself in the libel case.. World in Action followed the collapse of Aitken’s libel case with a special edition whose title reflected the MP’s claim to wield the “sword of truth”. It was called The Dagger of Deceit. Television techniques
Although the series’ lasting reputation is for its investigative work, it also led the way in introducing other techniques to mainstream TV. In 1971, years before reality programming became the staple diet of the TV schedules, World In Action challenged the Staffordshire village of Longnor to quit smoking, a forerunner of many of the popular-challenge documentaries which enjoyed success in the 21st Century reality boom.
In 1984, World In Action caused a sensation by challenging a rising young Conservative Member of Parliament, Matthew Parris, to live for a week on a 26 unemployment benefit payment to test the reality of his own critical views on the unemployed. (Parris subsequently abandoned Parliament for a career as a broadcaster and writer.) The same year, World In Action revealed the tricks behind political oratory by coaching a complete beginner, Ann Brennan, to deliver a speech which won a standing ovation at the annual conference of the Social Democratic Party, using techniques developed by Professor Max Atkinson. The eminent political commentator Sir Robin Day, covering the conference for BBC television, described Mrs Brennan’s performance as “The most refreshing speech we’ve heard so far.”
World In Action helped to pioneer the technique of using covert cameras, not just in investigative work but also in social documentary, including, from the earliest days, the treatment of gypsies, the old in care (“Ward F13″) and poverty in England. The arrival of high-quality miniature cameras allowed ambitious projects such as Donal MacIntyre’s award-winning programmes in October 1996 on the illegal drug trade, and the future Conservative MP Adam Holloway’s disturbing reports on the reality of life among the homeless in 1991.
World In Action gave rise to a number of spin-off series, most famously the Seven Up! documentaries which have followed the lives of a group of British people who turned seven years old in 1963. The most recent, 49 UP, was shown in 2005. Michael Apted directed most episodes; parallel series have also started in the last decade in South Africa, the USA and Russia. ITV’s popular consumer series, House of Horrors, in which shoddy builders are invited to carry out minor repairs to a house festooned with covert recording devices, originated on World In Action.
More recent current affairs series on other channels, such as the MacIntyre series on BBC and Five, and Channel 4′s Dispatches, commissioned by Dorothy Byrne, a former WIA producer, may be seen as having inherited certain aspects of World in Action’s hard-hitting journalistic style. World In Action and popular culture
One of the programme’s hallmarks was its willingness to embrace popular culture, at a time when its competitors preferred a more highbrow approach. One of the very earliest editions reported on overspending at the Ministry of Defence in the style of a contemporary gameshow, Beat The Clock. The programme was so controversial it was banned from being shown on ITV by the then regulatory body, the Independent Television Authority (ITA); instead, ten minutes of it were shown on the BBC as an act of journalistic solidarity. The gameshow device re-emerged in 1989, when an academic study of the uptake of tax-funded benefits by the middle-class was transformed into a mock quiz show named Spongers, fronted by a well-known star of game formats, Nicholas Parsons.
Popular music played a significant role in WIA’s history. An early edition, in 1966, carried a fly-on-the-wall account of daily life aboard one of the then pirate radio ships, Radio Caroline, at a time when the British Government was determined to preserve the radio monopoly of the BBC by driving the “pirates” off the air.
In 1967, a young researcher named John Birt established his early reputation by persuading the rock star Mick Jagger to appear on World in Action to debate youth culture and his recent drug conviction, with Establishment figures, including William Rees-Mogg of The Times, who had written a famous editorial defending the singer. Jagger so enjoyed the experience that he invited the Granada team to film The Rolling Stones at the band’s free 1969 concert in Hyde Park, London. The resulting film, The Stones In The Park, was one of the iconic concert films of the Sixties. John Birt rapidly moved on to edit World in Action and eventually run the BBC as its Director-General.
The rise of Thatcherism and the misery of mass unemployment saw WIA examining the phenomenon through the eyes of another emerging band, UB40, in A Statistic, A Reminder (1981), a line taken from one of the band’s songs. Six years later, a special edition of the programme was devoted to the Irish rock band U2 and their charismatic front man Bono. Like The Rolling Stones before them, U2 allowed World in Action to film one of their classic concerts in 1987 in Ireland. This footage, shot by the future Hollywood director Paul Greengrass, was shown only once on ITV because of copyright restrictions, although it circulated among fans of the band as a bootleg. A small section of the film was posted on YouTube in 2006. The full documentary was made available on the itv.com website in 2008.
In 1983, Stevie Wonder, at the height of his popularity, gave the programme a musical exclusive when he agreed to let a World in Action crew record him performing an unreleased song, written to help the Democratic politician Jesse Jackson’s electioneering, for The Race Against Reagan. Another popular singer, Sting, appeared in a more critical World in Action episode, which questioned the effectiveness of his Rainforest Foundation.
Perhaps the most bruising encounter between WIA and popular entertainment was the 1995 film Black and Blue which featured a covert recording of a performance by the veteran comedian Bernard Manning as the star of a charity function organised by the Manchester branch of the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers. Manning’s racist and homophobic performance, loudly applauded by those present, caused outrage when WIA broadcast excerpts, sparking an intense debate about the willingness of British police officers to embrace a diverse culture. Leading contributors Journalists
World in Action employed many leading journalists, among them John Pilger; Michael Parkinson; Gordon Burns; Nick Davies, Ed Vulliamy and David Leigh of The Guardian; Alasdair Palmer of the Sunday Telegraph; John Ware, BBC Panorama’s leading investigative reporter; Anthony Wilson, whose second career as a music impresario was immortalised in the feature film 24 Hour Party People; Michael Gillard, creator of the Slicker business pages in the satirical magazine Private Eye; Donal MacIntyre; the writer Mark Hollingsworth; Quentin McDermott, since 1999 a leading investigative reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation; Tony Watson, editor of the Yorkshire Post for 13 years and editor-in-chief of the Press Association from December 2006; and Andrew Jennings, author of Lords of the Rings, who has campaigned vigorously for more than a decade against corruption in international sport.
Two former World in Action journalists uncovered one of the biggest broadcasting scandals of the 1990s. Laurie Flynn, a central figure in the British Steel papers case, and Michael Sean Gillard revealed that large parts of a 1996 Carlton TV documentary, The Connection, about drug trafficking from Colombia, had been fabricated. Flynn and Gillard’s expos in The Guardian in May 1998 led to an inquiry and a record 2 million fine for Carlton from the then regulator, the Independent Television Commission (ITC), as well as provoking a passionate debate about truthfulness in broadcast journalism. Presenters
Unusually for a current affairs programme, WIA’s standard format was as a voice-over documentary without a regular reporter although a handful of WIA journalists did appear in front of camera, including Chris Kelly, Gordon Burns, John Pilger, Gus Macdonald, Anthony Wilson, Nick Davies, Adam Holloway, Stuart Prebble (who later became the programme’s editor), Mike Walsh, David Taylor and Donal MacIntyre. Guest presenters were used on rare occasions, among them Jonathan Dimbleby, Sandy Gall, Martyn Gregory, Sue Lawley and Lynn Faulds Wood. Perhaps its most celebrated guest presenter was the distinguished American anchorman Walter Cronkite, who came out of retirement to cover the 1983 British General Election for the series.
A small group of narrators delivered the vast majority of WIA’s voice-overs. The science presenter James Burke did a number of commentaries on early editions of the programme. Other main contributors included David Plowright, Chris Kelly, Jim Pope, Philip Tibenham and Andrew Brittain. Among the guest narrators who contributed occasional commentaries were the popular actors Robert Lindsay and Jean Boht. Producer-Directors
The series was known for its gritty visual style, almost always shot on location, and a number of its producer-directors went on to work on major film projects. Those working on the series in its early years included Michael Apted, later to direct Coal Miner’s Daughter, Gorillas in the Mist and the James Bond film The World is not Enough, as well as the Seven Up! documentaries, and Mike Hodges, who went on to direct Get Carter and Flash Gordon. Later, Paul Greengrass, director of the feature films United 93, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum and of the drama-documentaries Bloody Sunday and The Murder of Stephen Lawrence, cut his directing teeth on World in Action. According to The Guardian, Greengrass was listed in 2007 as “the 28th smartest” person in Hollywood.. Leslie Woodhead, director of The Stones In The Park, the award winning A Cry From The Grave, many “Disappearing World” films and also regarded by many as a founder of the drama-documentary movement, worked on World in Action for many years as a producer-director and executive. Long-time World in Action alumni who went on to direct and produce Granada’s international award-winning “Disappearing World” films include Brian Moser, its instigator and original producer, and Charlie Nairn.
Among the more recent generation of film-makers to emerge from World in Action were Alex Holmes, who became editor of the BBC2 documentary strand Modern Times and went on to write and direct the Bafta-winning dramatised documentary series Dunkirk for the BBC; and Katy Jones, a former WIA producer, who became a key collaborator with the screen writer Jimmy McGovern as a producer on his award-winning drama-documentaries Hillsborough and Sunday. Broadcasters
WIA was a starting point for several key programme-makers who went on to major roles in British broadcasting. John Birt became Director-General of the BBC, having been Programme Controller of the London ITV franchise LWT, where he created the company’s current affairs flagship, Weekend World.
Several WIA staffers were promoted to significant roles in Granada Television, among them David Plowright, who became its chairman and later went on to become deputy chairman of Channel 4. Steve Morrison became chief executive at Granada. Gus Macdonald held the same role at another ITV franchise, Scottish Television.
Stuart Prebble, a former editor, became chief executive of ITV, and Steve Anderson became Head of News and Current Affairs for that channel. Both have since moved on to the independent production industry. Ian McBride, who led the team which made the Birmingham Six programmes, became Managing Editor of Granada TV, and was Director of Compliance for ITV until 2008.
Dianne Nelmes, who worked as a researcher and executive producer of WIA, was the founding editor of Granada TV’s hugely successful This Morning with Richard and Judy and went on to head daytime and factual programmes at ITV.
Dorothy Byrne, a former WIA producer, is Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4. Julian Bellamy, who worked as a young researcher on one of WIA’s last big foreign investigations – about arms deals between Britain and Indonesia – later headed Channel 4′s entertainment channel E4 and was programme controller of the BBC digital channel BBC Three before re-joining Channel 4 as its Head of Programming in the spring of 2007. TV production companies
A number of WIA veterans went on to set up and run their own independent television production companies. John Smithson and David Darlow, who set up the production company Darlow Smithson, responsible for the feature films Touching the Void and Deep Water and many factual TV programmes including Black Box and The Falling Man, worked together on WIA. Claudia Milne founded twentytwenty tv, which made a successful current affairs strand for ITV, The Big Story, as well as popular factual series such as Bad Boys’ Army’ on ITV and That’ll Teach ‘Em on Channel 4. Brian Lapping set up the much-garlanded Brook Lapping company, which made The Death of Yugoslavia and many other landmark contemporary history programmes. Stuart Prebble, a former editor of World In Action, runs Liberty Bell, best known for the popular Grumpy Old Men series on the BBC. Another former editor, Steve Boulton, started an eponymous company, which made Young, Nazi & Proud, a Bafta-winning profile of the young British National Party activist Mark Collett.
One of the biggest British independent production companies is All 3 Media, which controls several other leading companies, including Lime Pictures, formerly Mersey Television, makers of Hollyoaks. It is run by Steve Morrison, a former WIA producer. Political connections
Although in its early days World In Action was reputed never to employ anyone who was on first-name terms with any politician, a number of British Parliamentarians since have World In Action on their curriculum vitae. The most recent is the Conservative MP Adam Holloway, elected to the House of Commons in 2005. The British Cabinet Minister Jack Straw worked on World in Action as a researcher, as did Margaret Beckett who served as Tony Blair’s last Foreign Secretary. Chris Mullin, Labour MP for Sunderland South, played a major role in the programme’s campaign on behalf of the Birmingham Six. Gus Macdonald, now Baron Macdonald of Tradeston, and from 1998 to 2003 a Government Minister, was formerly an executive on the programme. John Birt (by then ennobled as Baron Birt), was personal advisor to the British Prime Minister Tony Blair between 2001 and 2005. Editors
Editors of the programme (sometimes with the title of Executive Producer) were, successively, Tim Hewat, Derek Granger, Alex Valentine, David Plowright, Jeremy Wallington, Leslie Woodhead, John Birt, Gus Macdonald, David Boulton, Brian Lapping, Ray Fitzwalter, Allan Segal, Stuart Prebble, Nick Hayes, Dianne Nelmes, Charles Tremayne, Steve Boulton and Jeff Anderson. Anderson also became editor of World in Action’s replacement Tonight, before becoming Head of Current Affairs at ITV in 2006. Mike Lewis, a former WIA producer, was appointed editor of Tonight in October 2006. Academic connections
Professor Brian Winston, Pro-Vice Chancellor (External Relations) at the University of Lincoln, who has also held leading posts at the Universities of Westminster, Cardiff, Pennsylvania State and New York, was a researcher and producer in the early series of World in Action.
Ray Fitzwalter, WIA’s longest-serving editor and the man behind the ground-breaking Poulson investigations, became a Visiting Fellow at the University of Salford School of Media, Music and Performance.
Gavin MacFadyen, who worked on early series of World in Action as a producer-director and was best known for his under-cover human rights films, was made a Visiting Professor at City University in 2005. He is also Director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism. David Leigh, who made Jonathan of Arabia, the film which provoked Jonathan Aitken’s self-destructive libel action, was made Britain’s first Professor of Reporting at City University, London, in September 2006. Camera work
Although a great many director/producers, journalists and editors passed through the programme, one cameraman played an overwhelming role in shaping the appeal of the series. George Jesse Turner, born on the Lancashire coast, close to Granada’s roots, served on the programme from 1966 until its end. By his own count, he shot the principal footage for some 600 of its 1,400 editions, as well as filming all of Michael Apted’s documentaries in the Seven Up! series. Turner was shot himself – in the backside – by an Israeli bullet whilst he and Allan Segal were filming a clash between Fatah guerrillas and the Israeli Army in 1969. Shortly before he retired from Granada, Turner was honoured by Bafta in 1999 for his work as a documentary cameraman.
Among the many cameramen who also contributed to WIA was Chris Menges, who went on to become a distinguished cinematographer – Kes, The Killing Fields and The Mission are among his credits – and a film director in his own right, on features such as A World Apart. Title sequence
The programme’s distinctive identity owed much to its striking title sequence. The music, based on a descending series of organ chords, was called Jam for World in Action and is usually credited to Jonathon Weston, though the American musician Shawn Phillips disputes this. He has posted his claim of authorship on YouTube. The programme’s logo, and the centrepiece of its titles, was the Leonardo da Vinci drawing, the Vitruvian Man. Controversy
In August 1978 World in Action aired reports from the United States that microwaves were dangerous and caused cancer which later proved unfounded. This fallacy was encouraged and further reinforced which resulted in the compounding of peoples fear that these appliances were dangerous. UK microwave sales plummeted immediately after the documentary aired. Potential purchasers were particularly anxious that radiation would somehow escape through the oven walls or door. External links
British Film Institute database of World In Action programmes
TV Ark archive of World In Action title sequences
Encyclopedia of Television
ITV North West England – World in Action titles for 1963 and 1995
Network DVD – World in Action Vol. 1
Nostalgia Central – The World in Action 1963 to 1998
Paul Almond – 7 Up
World Socialist Website – 14 March 1998
‘Televrit’ hits Britain: Documentary, Drama and the growth of 16mm Filmmaking in British Television
‘Scandal at the regulator’ (World in Action and the Poulson affair)
ITV’s official WIA page, containing links to four classic episodes
World in Action at the Internet Movie Database Books and articles
Jonathan Aitken (2003), Pride and Perjury, London: Continuum International Publishing Group – Academi.
Ray Fitzwalter (2008), The Dream That Died: The Rise And Fall Of ITV, London: Matador.
Ray Fitzwalter, David Taylor (1981), Web of Corruption: The Story of J. G. L. Poulson and T. Dan Smith, London: Granada.
Denis Forman (1997), Persona Granada, London: Andre Deutsch
Peter Goddard (2004), ‘World in Action’, in Glen Creeber (ed.), Fifty Key Television Programmes, London: Arnold.
Peter Goddard (2006), ‘”Improper liberties”: Regulating undercover journalism on ITV, 19671980′, Journalism, 7(1): 45-63.
Peter Goddard, John Corner and Kay Richardson (2001), ‘The formation of World in Action: A case study in the history of current affairs journalism’, Journalism, 2(1): 73-90.
Peter Goddard, John Corner and Kay Richardson (2007), Public Issue Television: World in Action 1963-98, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Luke Harding, David Leigh and David Pallister (1997), The Liar: The Fall of Jonathan Aitken, London: Penguin Books Ltd.
Jonathan Margolis (1996), Bernard Manning, London: Orion Books
Chris Mullin (1990), Error of Judgement: Birmingham Bombings, Dublin: Poolbeg Press.
George Jesse Turner, Jeff Anderson (2000), Trouble Shooter: Life Through The Lens of World in Action’s Top Cameraman, London: Granada Media. Notes
^ Political Studies Association pdf
^ John Birt’s MacTaggart Lecture 2005
^ Discussion recorded at London Frontline Club, May 2008
^ *Ray Fitzwalter, The Dream That Died: The Rise And Fall Of ITV, London: 2008.
^ a b Guardian 4/12/2004 Tim Hewat Obituary by Philip Pursar
^ Denis Forman, Persona Granada, p. 222
^ Peter Wright, with Paul Greengrass Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer, Australia: Heinemann, 1987, p54
^ Denis Forman, Persona Granada pp. 216-7
^ “The 50 Smartest People in Hollywood”. 28 November 2007. http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2007/11/smart-list-intr.html. Retrieved 2008-08-04. 
^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0810478/
^ George Jesse Turner & Jeff Anderson, Trouble Shooter, p. viii
^ George Jesse Turner & Jeff Anderson, Trouble Shooter, pp. 7-13
^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/electricdreams/1980s/microwave Categories: 1960s British television series | 1970s British television series | 1980s British television series | 1990s British television series | 1963 in British television | 1963 television series debuts | 1998 television series endings | British television documentaries | ITN | ITV television programmes | British television news programmes

Being Found Online (the NEW PR) : Inbound Marketing to help drive visitors to your sites

Change; we hear a lot about change today. President Barak Obama spoke widely of change in his lead up to the presidency and as we now know, it was his mission statement and attitude towards his governance of the USA. Amidst political rhetoric, there was change on another scale that was taking place right through the political campaign. Politicians are known for their vast budgets during their campaigns and there was none greater than this. The Obama political campaign not only topped budgets but there was a change far greater in their approach to the campaign itself. This political campaign was the first ever US presidential campaign that targeted internet marketing unlike ever seen before. Some speculate that the personal one-to-one nature of the internet marketing campaigns were part of the driving force in the Obama victory.

Change; there is great change taking place in the internet marketing domain unlike ever seen before. On average a person is hit with over 2000 sales or marketing messages each day. This is almost too much to contain when you think about it. Telemarketing, trade shows, seminars, direct mail / response, TV ads, news paper ads, banners, billboards, etc. clutter our lives so much that meaningful messages are often diluted or drowned in this ocean of messages. The marketing and public relations domains are hard pressed these days to come up with penetrating ad content that reach their target audience. The great change we notice taking place in the internet marketing domain today deals with a concept termed inbound marketing. This strategy deals with the concept of being found by consumers rather than pursuing and hitting consumers with marketing messages.

The concept of being found is like a tropical bird that flutters colourful feathers and dances to a beautiful beat in the hope that its partners hear them and advance in their direction. Being found is all about developing an expert opinion in your industry and attracting visitors naturally to your sites. The concept of being found needs to be applied meticulously as one can imagine, there are plenty of birds making plenty of noise in the jungle.

Being found entails trying to understand who you are trying to attract in the first place. What is the marketing persona i.e. your target market? If you are a hotel based in Leicester Square in London, UK then your target market could be tourists visiting London looking for a central location to stay; or the theatre market with so many production shows in close proximity; or even perhaps the younger tourist club goers catered for in the region.

Marketing for being found in the internet domain carries two basic ground rules – content and engagement.

Without content there is very little value to the consumers you want to bring on to your site. Content could be in the form of a blog site, articles, reports, white papers, press releases, eBooks or useful snippets of information. The critical characteristic of the content should be that it is useful and interesting to the target market. Content is absolutely critical. Let us explore some of these content tools.

Blogging for business is one of the simplest forms of creating content. It is short and if interesting could hold an audience captive. It is important to not only blog about who you are but more so the wider context of your services and products. Consumers are savvy. They know when a business blogs for the purpose of profit. They are not interested in subscribing to product descriptions. They seek unique value. A hotel near Darling Harbor in Sydney, Australia could capture a wider audience by talking about the happenings in its surrounds. For example speaking about tours from the harbor, the opening of the Lindt café close by, the Sydney aquarium and updates on its seal population. Perhaps if one is targeting the Japanese market, the mention of the Sydney Fish Market being in walking distance to Darling Harbor and providing some of the freshest seafood in the world would provide that edge i.e. that unique bit of knowledge which makes subscribing to your blog worthwhile and a true value addition. The key is to make content interesting, non commercial and more so viral in its nature.

Article writing campaigns add tremendous value to your site by the exposure they provide your site through their numerous channels of distribution. They also add fabulous SEO value to your site. eBooks are useful when given out free due the viral nature of the product i.e. people love to share free things especially if its current and interesting.

Speaking of SEO it is critical that the content we spoke of previously follows strict SEO guidelines. SEO is not as complicated as many people make it sound. SEO takes time and it is not a miracle strategy that promises immediate results. It takes time. Once you get your head around that concept it is not that complicated. It involves for the most part using the appropriate keywords i.e. words that your target market are likely to type on search engines in order to find you. A powerful set of keywords used in attractive content is a key step to SEO. Building links is possibly even more important. That is the same as asking other sites or blogs to hold your web link on their URLs. That basically counts as a vote for your site. The more votes you have the more important Google or Bing think you are and the more SEO value you hold. The more SEO value you hold the higher up the search engine results your go. Of course SEO experts would also say that your web URL, titles, descriptions, the use of ALT text, anchor text and the listing of your sites on search engines such as Google or Bing are important and they are indeed. However instead of trying to trick search engines I think what most companies or businesses should do is to try and focus on the most significant element of SEO – content and votes. The more interesting your content and its significance to your target market and other sites, the more likely you are to attract more visitors to your sites.

As much as content is important to the strategy of being found, it is pointless unless the businesses engages with its consumers. The internet has made the lives of marketers simpler and more resourceful. Never before have sales and marketing teams ever been able to engage directly with so many consumers (millions!) using such simple tools. The internet has become social. There are watering holes in every savannah and it is up to marketers to try and find them. Watering holes are where your customers or target market gather. Where the elephants, buffalo and giraffes gather to drink water is where you want to be if you are trying to sell the latest and tastiest varieties of green herbal delights. Social media platforms have made engaging consumers even simpler. Engagement need not be complex but it can turn out to be lifestyle marketing. Hanging around where your consumers hang around to talk is an age old theory. For example where would you hang around in ancient Israel to discuss the latest news – the Synagogues; or where would you go to in old London to discuss politics and trends – Speaker’s Corner. I am sure you understand what I am saying. The internet has made news sharing and discussions even simpler. There are more watering holes available today than any great African grassland holds. Blogs, Google Forums, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Answers, Linked In groups, Facebook Fan pages, Facebook groups, Twitter, You Tube, Hi5 and MySpace are all watering holes where consumers gather. It is up to you to listen out for topics of interest and engage consumers; or even start new conversations. Do not be blunt, nobody likes a salesman pushing products where value addition is sought after. Always remember to focus on adding value. Make sure your consumers see the value addition and seek out your product rather than have your product pushed at them.

Forums are abundant today. I contribute to and edit a blog spot named www.StrengthTrainingChronicles.com  which engages weights trainers, rugby enthusiasts and gym goers with useful material. In order to engage with my consumers and discuss / learn new trends I Google searched Forums for such watering holes.  The results I received were unmanageable. From specific community / social web sites such as bodybuilding.com to countless numbers of forums focusing on varying aspects of the sport the research results were too many to count. Results ranged from geographic variations from London to LA and sport niches from StrongMan competitions to Nutrition. Finding watering holes is simple. Communicating with your consumers and adding value is what will bring more consumers to your site. This is public relations campaigning and brand building as never witnessed before.

Bringing guests to your home is wonderful for most of the time. But do you let the kids play around the vases or bring the movie crowd into the garden? Having a specific landing page is essential. This welcomes your target market to a target web page. Once found, visitors must be made into leads. Leads are people interested in listening to you about your product or service. Leads must be then converted into sales. Leads sometimes take time and need to be nurtured with emails or promotions together with calls to action   

If it cannot be measured it cannot be managed. Being found must be quantified in order to determine if you are being found to begin with and by the right consumers. There are so many companies that have gone bankrupt in 2009 by paying little attention to ROI (returns on investment) or budgeting their use of internet marketing. ROI is all about making the decision if your course of marketing action was worth it or not. It is important to make note of the number of visitors to your site, the ratios of lookers to bookers and the ratios of those moving onto your landing page and then entering their email information onto forms. These figures are particularly useful when gauging a new marketing tool you have employed such as engaging a certain forum or a press release or article. Google Analytics and other tools make these functions simple.

We spoke of change in the beginning and there is great change in the horizon. We are seeing a convergence of web design companies, sales, marketing, advertising agencies and public relations into one company focused on being found via inbound marketing. The days of effective TV, Radio and advertisements on magazines are shrinking as the number of ads clutter useful listenable messaging. Meaningful, attractive and lucrative value addition to any business via inbound marketing and being found is set to make waves of change in the world of marketing as the internet becomes a necessity for business.

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Branding Efforts Drive Sales When Combined with Direct Response

The term “Branding” has been in use in American marketing vernacular since the 1800s, first being used for cattle in the west to identify members of the herd belonging to a single owner, but branching out to consumer goods shortly thereafter, one of the first of which was used to identify beer served at certain pubs, with a small symbol on the door that was also used on the beer’s label.

Brands can be a symbol, a word, a name, even a graphic element (think the Nike swoosh), but each brand carries a set of characteristics that are brought to mind whenever someone sees it.

Direct marketing practices came into being shortly thereafter, when a now-defunct soap miller created a flyer posted on people’s doors that offered a free soap sample if they brought the flyer into the store, but it was only distributed to the people on the west side of town, where the rich people lived, thus the list select was wealth and geography!

These two disciplines have in the past been seen as divergent in goal and practice, but current thinking would have it otherwise. Studies have shown that sales boosts can be achieved by using a combination of the two approaches, mixing the heavy rotation and creative enchantment of branding, with the mechanics of call to action, offer and response device of direct response. This extends from creative executions to media strategy to back-end mechanics and PR.

Longitudinal studies performed by a select group of high-volume consumer product marketers have shown a synergistic relationship when combining branding type creative executions with direct response mechanics and back end, to the tune of 50-75% improvement over sales of the same product using either approach singly.

The Ads Have It . . .

In most cases, marketers and ad agencies have been creating branding ads in order to raise awareness, launch brand extensions to existing products, shift perceptions of the product or announce or formulate a new use for a product. They simply presented the product, reinforced the brand visually and ideologically, and repeated the process heavily to build consciousness among the audience.

The targeting was largely done with media alone, for television using the program viewer demographics, for radio the listener demographic and stations or program format serving as differentiators.

Not much thought was given to tracking, or accountability of branding ads, as it was widely understood that few could unequivocally demonstrate a direct cause and effect relationship between the appearance of the branding ad and the increase in sales among a distinct population sector.

Sales were tracked on a regular basis, broken out many different ways on reports using a variety of analytical tools, but none could correlate a sales blip directly with the appearance of the ad, and could not use such a correlation to quantify the “dosage” or frequency, or the program selection or timing of the placement. Thus, the ad schedule could not be used as a predictor of sales activity, and conversely, the sales build up could not be used to fine-tune the ad placements to maximize their impact.

Additionally, with no response mechanism other than to buy the product at a retailer, there was no reliable way to market test one creative approach or offer against another directly as is common practice in direct response. However, even knowing this, U.S. and global companies spend billions of dollars each year on branding ads in an effort to keep in step with their competitors, build awareness and broaden their appeal to consumers in a general way.

Longitudinal studies were conducted by the Ad Council and other academic organizations in the late 70s regarding advertising’s effectiveness in general. The conclusions were contradictory, and noted that the more you advertised, the more likely it was that sales would rise, up to a point of saturation.

Far from clarifying the situation, this study muddied the waters for corporate marketers for years, until larger corporations with deep pockets and savvy media departments could develop ways to maximize the value of the dollars they were spending. Media costs have far outstripped creative and production expenses in most media including radio, TV and Print, and distribution is the largest of all the concerns for advertisers, according to a study by Ad Age Magazine circa 1990.

Direct Is The Way . . .

On a parallel path of development, direct response, the art of targeting the right audience with the right message at the right time, was having its own growing pains. Marketers realized early on that there were several major components to success in their business model and that efficiency topped the list for direct marketers. Fewer pieces mailed meant lower cost, and lower cost meant higher profit margins. But in order to mail fewer, the package had to be more effective to make up the corresponding loss in response volume.

Testing proved to be the path to optimizing effectiveness, and testing programs are a staple in any good modern direct mail program. The simple act of changing a color on an outer envelope could have notable, significant impact on response, so wide spread testing programs have become common.

Direct response is not limited to the postal system. Direct response radio and television hit a huge wave of popularity in the mid-80s, when direct response, long-form television was developing. Pioneers like Ron Popiel (of the famous Ronco company), started pitching products on TV in larger blocks than the traditional :30 and :60 spots, using product demonstrations to highlight the product’s benefits, and aggressively urging viewers to “Call now, operators are standing by to take your order,” creating urgency and driving response ever higher.

These ads were usually run in the very late evening, and early morning hours, primarily because media costs dropped disproportionately with viewer numbers, and a block of thirty minutes could be had for pennies on the dollar compared to daytime, prime time viewing hours. In the hands of skilled pitchmen, these products looked extremely powerful and valuable, painting scenarios in which ordinary people could easily envision themselves, and offering a solution for just a few dollars.

For Just .95 . . .

The leading price point for most of these products was .95, on the assumption that if you broke out of the ceiling, you would lose a predictable portion of the potential buyers due to risk aversion among the late night, post-2AM audience profile, largely blue collar, often night shift workers, security guards, insomniacs and nursing mothers.

Some of these ads took on a new direction in the later 80s after many of the basic functions had been put in place and the infrastructure to support the burgeoning DRTV industry had grown more robust. With very low-price point products, the cost per unit was so low, that you could literally sell two or three of the product for the originally advertised price, and the additional volume would outweigh the additional cost. Sales soared, and clones came out of the woodwork.

Value Addeds reached the point where if you could capture the personal information from a potential buyer by getting them to respond to virtually anything, then you had captured unlimited marketing use of that bit of data, and huge house lists of buyers developed based on buying a .99 – .99 product range. They were essentially giving away the product to capture the name. The key is to find a product that reveals something useful about the buyer, like selling a cleaner that works well on teak boat decks to uncover a niche of boat owners to sell sails or fittings to.

A landmark study conducted by the Communications Department of the University of Oklahoma showed that after a certain level of frequency, virtually any advertisement could be used for branding, and shown to increase recognition for the brand it carried, which translated to retail sales of the product even in a direct response situation. In short, if you sold products in retail environment that had been previously available only through DRTV, the brand carried, and it took with it extra cache for having been “seen on TV”.

Products like Ginsu Knives, the Pocket Fisherman, Juice Tiger, and others entered the popular vernacular, often synonymous with cheap or just entertaining, but nonetheless moving units in record numbers.

The net result of this is more units sold for the product manufacturers and marketers, at a minor cost of the dilution of the direct response pool of data. By this time, however, list analysis technology and consumer information and data modeling had become so prevalent, available and cost effective; the effect on direct marketers was minimal.

DRTV remains a viable channel to launch new products of any price point, thanks to the breakthrough of some high-ticket items adopting the strategy of breaking the price into credit payments.

Products such as the Bowflex exercise gear, a giant machine promising fitness benefits beyond belief, is currently available via retail, e-bay, and direct online, but started out as a DRTV staple. It sells for thousands of dollars, but the ads still cling to the Easy Payment model, at the .95 price point – they’ve just increased the number of payments.

Together Is Better . . .

The Oklahoma Study opened the doors to brand ads to extend their reach into the direct response realm, and conversely, for brands that didn’t have a good hold on the broad consumer market to gain a foothold through high frequency buys and shorter adapted blocks of time. 2-minute spots that both push brand and offer a phone number have increased their prevalence, and are working well for established products with solid order processing infrastructure.

Direct buying via the Internet has increased the general public’s comfort level with buying through alternate channels to retail. The rise of credit availability, and America’s accompanying indebtedness as a result, has also boosted the confidence of direct retailers and built sales dramatically for some products. All these factors delivered together have formed sort of a “perfect storm” of retail sales, allowing directly sold products to develop brands more readily, and to allow for branding ads to engage the audience more directly through the internet.

Drive to web branding ads have become commonplace, and nearly every product on the shelves today in the traditional retail environment has a web address on it somewhere, whether for customer service purposes or for more product information.

Cross-selling opportunities abound through this channel, as real estate on the Internet is relatively cheap and virtually unlimited, and a full range of products can be presented in multi-media fashion, offering both advertising and a direct marketing channel in one instance through a single website. It’s the perfect blend of branding and direct response, and it can come to full fruition now that broadband access has risen to a common level nationally and globally.

Predictions Are Worth Their Weight . . .

Based on the factors related above and a landmark study conducted by media specialists at Michigan State University that showed that retail purchasing on the web will eclipse all retail in volume by the year 2015, it appears the future could be now . . .

Clearly, the media mix is changing, differentiators between media are blurring and blending, the power of selectivity and targeting is on the increase across all media, including print, and the power of one-to-one marketing will finally become a full-scale reality, as brands drive reputation once again, and response can be measured accurately. As systems converge and centralized media monitoring becomes possible and later practical, media rates will stabilize, and a new scheme for media payments will develop, based solely on audience participation.

Product purveyors will do well to keep on the cutting-edge as this convergence develops, as the sidelines are widening and getting further from the center of relevance, and the speed of convergence is accelerating beyond the ability of large firms to catch up if they get too far behind.

Drive Repeat Sales With Email Marketing and SEM

Email marketing and search engine marketing is a powerful and cost-effective marketing tool to reach your customers and bring them back to your web site or online business.

With an SEO website design agency as your email marketing design partner, they can help you send email campaigns with ease! With email marketing, you can set-up as many different subscriber lists as you want, and automatically take care of your sign-ups and unsubscribes. Most email marketing tools even clean your lists for you — taking hard bounces and unsubscribes off your list.

Make sure your Reno SEO agency offers custom email reports showing you how effective your campaigns are. You should track the actions your customers take after they click, so you can measure the real effectiveness of your email campaigns.

Most of our Reno web design clients use this service in conjunction with their online businesses.

If you are considering a web design company, ask them if they can handle your email marketing campaigns and online advertising as well.

It’s also important to check and see if your SEO web design agency can handle your SEO, SEM, PPCfunctions of your online business. Pay-per-click campaigns can really add a lot of traffic to your site.

PPC campaigns are super easy to set-up and get running. However, what you will find as you dig deeper, is that a really good online ad campaign can get pretty complicated.

Make sure with each ad group you run, you have relevant landing pages associated with that ad group. The best thing about pay-per-click advertising is that you can specifically target your users. Having relevant landing pages will increase your conversions substantially.

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