Scandal and corruption at the Radio Times
Posted Thu Jul 20 12:57:02 BST 2000 by "A Film Fan"
From the 'Good Old Radio Times Comment':
"FILM REVIEWS: Does anybody have any info on the original bloke who used to review these? Apparently he got sacked for nicking his reviews from Halliwell or something. The film guide book, not the Spice Girl. The reviews are now done by a gang of people and are disparate, yet twee as fuck. They are also never updated. We've read that one about Monty Python and the Holy Grail (which reckons that the LP is funnier than the film) three times now."
Around 1992, Derek Wynnert was the Radio Times top film reviewer, even leading to a tie-in book called 'The Radio Times guide to Movies' or some other similar title. Anyway, through reading this book, many film buffs noted that he had stolen directly from many sources, but especially stealing entire reviews from 'Halliwell's film and video guide'. (I don't know which ones, this requires further investigation.)
News spread that Wynnert was sacked and many people tried to get his job, including film historian Tony Sloman, who gave them a few samples of his work (programme notes for the National Film Theatre) and Roger Hughes, the then Editor-in-chief, decided to hire him. Sloman then suggested some other names for jobs, including Tom Valance and Alan Eyles. Many of his choices still write for the Radio Times..
The film reviewers only get £15 per review (which isn't much considering they only write about four reviews per week) and no royalties when their review is reprinted. For the new Radio Times film guide (to replace the pulped Derek Wynnert version) the reviewers only get £10 per new review and no royalties of the old ones.
Critics aren't treated with much respect. Only recently have initials been added to then end of reviews so that it is known who wrote them. And now that the RT have nearly twenty film reviewers on their staff, and that the old reviews are still being repeated, several of the the older writers have been 'phased out', not receiving any any commisioned reviews for over ten weeks.
Finally, a letter from this weeks Radio Times:
Five - Star Hotel
-------------------------
Congratulations and thanks to BBC1 for giving me one of the best laughs from a sitcom I've had in years. The writing, actors and timing of Heartburn Hotel (Friday) are all brilliant. Please repeat it soon, as during one episode I laughed so much I missed some of it. And please bring back Jackie Downey in the next series, as Harry's wife. She deserves an award. Brilliant.
Sheila Oldfield,
Kendal, Cumbria.
Compare this to the "'Dead Ringers' made me laugh til I was sick" letter a few weeks back...
Any comments?
Subject: Re: Scandal and corruption at the Radio Times
[ Previous Message ]
Posted By James on Thu Jul 20 13:31:59 BST 2000:
Alan Jones, who seems mainly to be there to review 'cult' films with blood or people shouting in Spanish in them, was one of the blokes who used to hang around Malcolm McLaren's shop 'Sex' circa the Pistols era. He was once arrested for wearing one of Malcolm's 'provocative' shirts in public. There's a bit about it in "England's Dreaming". So let's have no more naysayers claiming the RT doesn't represent the true spirit of punk.
Subject: Re: Scandal and corruption at the Radio Times
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Posted By Monkeysquasher on Thu Jul 20 16:37:50 BST 2000:
Sad, sad people.
Subject: Re: Scandal and corruption at the Radio Times
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Posted By Alan on Thu Jul 20 17:48:15 BST 2000:
>Five - Star Hotel
>-------------------------
>
>Congratulations and thanks to BBC1 for giving me one of the best laughs from a sitcom I've had in years. The writing, actors and timing of Heartburn Hotel (Friday) are all brilliant. Please repeat it soon, as during one episode I laughed so much I missed some of it. And please bring back Jackie Downey in the next series, as Harry's wife. She deserves an award. Brilliant.
>Sheila Oldfield,
>Kendal, Cumbria.
>
>Any comments?
How much do the staff get paid for writing these?
Subject: Re: Scandal and corruption at the Radio Times
[ Previous Message ]
Posted By James on Thu Jul 20 18:13:50 BST 2000:
I reckon the letters are real. There are people who write like that. Not very many, at a guess, but it's all a matter of how they select what must be a tiny proportion of the total mail received.
And there really *are* loads of people who think 'Dead Ringers' is the funniest thing ever broadcast in the history of audio. Look at the R4 newsgroup. These things come in waves, sanity is not statistical and all that.
Subject: Re: Scandal and corruption at the Radio Times
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Posted By Beccy on Fri Jul 21 13:18:40 BST 2000:
I've got the Radio Times Film book and treated it as a bible for a few years - though being 1994 it is sadly a little out of date now. Still good for the classics though. I got it for a Christmas present from my mum. originally she bought Halliwell but I made her take it back and change it cos I hate the Halliwell one. interesting then that one copied from it is far superior. I think. Well, the presentation is so much better and it's jsut nicer. The blurbs are generally longer than Halliwells which is partly what attracted me to it in the first place.
The main evidence of the copying was that the Radio Times one featured the same mistakes as the Halliwell one.
I still love my RT one though. And was using it intensly just 2 days ago. But seeing as my main use was for info re. actors etc the IMDb has taken over as my main source.
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