PlinthiPaul blog

Having been trumpeting its 70,000 viewers as a triumph for Sky Arts 1/HD, I’m surprised and somewhat disappointed to find that, while Sky Arts’ web site is pretty clear –

We know you can’t watch the plinth 24/7, which is why we bring you an exciting weekly round-up show every Friday at 7pm on Sky Arts 1 / HD.

– in fact the show is not on every Friday after all.

Tonight, and next Friday (after my own time on the plinth), there’s no One & Other coverage in the usual 7pm slot; instead, there’s a half-length (30-minute) programme, cryptically entitled “Antony Gormley’s One & Other Compilation”, with no further description appearing to have been supplied to DigiGuide.

What I don’t yet know is whether this compilation is a compilation of past programmes in the series, or of plinthers from this week.

If it’s a compilation of past programmes, this will be a real disappointment. It’ll mean a fortnight’s worth of plinthers (yes, including me) get no coverage on the programme, and those of us filling our customised extra-large Sky+HD boxes with the whole series to look back on will have an incomplete record.

On the other hand, if it’s a new programme, full of back-to-back plinthing clips from the past week, just lacking in studio guests and interviews, that would be no bad thing – it might even fit in more plinthing than normally features in the whole hour!

When this project kicked off in a blaze of publicity and with web viewers flooding in in greater numbers than expected, I suggested at the time to Sky Arts through their web site that they should consider doing a half-hour program exactly like that; the only difference was that I envisaged it as a daily compilation, in addition to the weekly discussion, interview and analysis studio programme. So if it is new material, I’ll be very interested to see how it comes out.

Indeed, after mixed reviews for the usual weekly show on Twitter – especially after some of the more disappointing guests in recent weeks (hello, Arabella Weir) – there’s even an outside chance that this new format could turn out to be even better than the usual show – although that will take some doing when you consider that this is the show which brought us an interview with the fantastic Gerald C!

I suppose if nothing else, this does at least explain why my e-mail to One & Other asking if they were interested in covering PlinthiPaul.co.uk on the show was ignored: there is no show!

Update: the mystery deepens

I’ve just re-watched the end of last week’s programme. Stand-in presenter Tim Marlow signed off as follows:

I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got time for – fortunately! Next week, Clive Anderson’ll be back with all the highlights from the plinth – that’s Friday at 7 o’clock, exclusively on Sky Arts.

So the question is: what’s changed since then?

OneandOtherweb on Twitter have confirmed tonight’s and next week’s shows are “compilation shows”, but not yet explained which of my two possible meanings of this phrase they’re referring to. Have Sky dumped the programme completely? What’s going on? I’ll let you know if I find out!

Further update

DigiGuide stores the dates it downloads programme/schedule information as well as the schedule itself. I’ve just scanned back through the past couple of weeks and it appears it downloaded the “Antony Gormley’s One & Other Compilation” (8pm today) details way back on Wednesday 5 August. Why, then, did Tim Marlow still think Clive Anderson would be back at 7pm today two days after DigiGuide knew otherwise?

This evidence now suggests it’s not as last-minute a change as it first appeared, and someone just forgot to tell the people putting together last week’s programme – whoops.

The central question remains, though – why drop coverage for two weeks of a successful, fixed-length event?

It’s hard to think of a parallel situation where this would happen: ITV announces that this week’s Britain’s Got Talent contest took place but the presenters are away so they won’t have coverage this week? Channel 4 takes Big Brother off air for a couple of weeks while the housemates are all still in there? (The only difference with those two are that they sound quite positive outcomes )

Unfortunately, it looks like Sky aren’t as dedicated to their TV coverage of this great project as we’d all been pleased to think they were. I’ll reserve final judgement ‘til I see tonight’s half-hour show at 8pm, but OneandOtherweb’s silence in reply to my question –

@OneandOtherweb But does that mean compilations of past shows (pointless) or compilations of this week’s plinthers (good)? :-\

– doesn’t bode well…

Final update: all’s well that ends pretty well really!

Fortunately, it was basically the good option – a show primarily focused on the highlights of this week. Unexpectedly, it was presented by Clive Anderson, in a series of recorded introductory segments. (Did anyone identify the plinthers behind him to work out when it was recorded?!)

As expected, the loss of interviews and discussions did mean there was probably about the same quantity of highlights of the week as usual, just without the chatter between them.

One particularly good idea was replacing the top five plinthers of the week, usually chosen (purportedly) by the studio guest, with the top five most-watched plinthers online from this week. I suppose doing that directly would favour people from early in the week but in principle it’s a good idea. I didn’t actually recognise any of them though, although I was dishing up dinner at the time so wasn’t paying full attention (shocking, I know).

Strangely, at the end of the programme, Clive said he’d be back at 7 again next week – quite when this was recorded that he still wouldn’t have known what DigiGuide knew last Wednesday I don’t know, but last Friday’s live show presenter didn’t know either so I suppose it’s not surprising.

Particularly odd was the final couple of minutes, in which Clive said he’d leave us with “Plinther 891, who caused a bit of a stir this week”. Did she? First I’d heard of it. I genuinely wondered if they might have recorded the closing segment ten times, with random plinther numbers from the week used, in the hope one would be particularly interesting – then presumably 891 was the most exciting of the ten they chose!

After all, we all know what really caused a stir this week, and while he featured briefly in the first highlights package, the general silence about this showed why a live format ultimately works better for an unpredictable, live event like One & Other.

Not a disaster, and probably not worth this blog post in the end, but a disappointing apparent change of plan from Sky Arts, and one which I hope they’ll revert back from soon.

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