TV online

TV-on-demand, via time-shifted recordings and downloading via the internet, is spreading fast, reports BBC News.

Full-time manager of Edinburgh city of literature

THE Edinburgh Unesco City of Literature initiative has appointed a new full-time development manager, reports The Scotsman.

Sophy Dale will join the team on March 7 and will work in partnership with other organisations such as the Edinburgh City Council, the Scottish Executive and Scottish Arts Council.

After Unesco officially designated Edinburgh as the first City of Literature in October, the project is now entering a crucial phase.

Ms Dale will identify and co-ordinate activities and initiatives associated with the designation, and help to build a new international network of cities of literature under Unesco’s Global Alliance programme.

In the coming months the project will be announcing some of the confirmed core projects, which include an international seminar and a city-wide reading campaign.

Secret of my success

Jim Crace in The Guardian offers some (slightly) tongue-in-cheek advice to aspiring novelists.

One of the rewards of being a novelist of even limited success is that several times a week, by phone, by email, in person, you will be approached by complete strangers - unpublished writers - keen to obtain your help and advice. It would be truculent and unfriendly not to respond.

Censorship in America

"Let us be grateful that Janet Jackson did not bare both breasts," says Frank Rich in The New York Times.

Public television is now so fearful of crossing its government patrons that it is flirting with self-immolation. Having disowned lesbians in the children's show "Postcards From Buster" and stripped suspect language from "Prime Suspect" on "Masterpiece Theater," PBS is editing its Feb. 23 broadcast of "Dirty War," the HBO-BBC film about a terrorist attack, to remove a glimpse of female nudity in a scene depicting nuclear detoxification. Next thing you know they'll be snipping lascivious flesh out of a documentary about Auschwitz.

Record advance for debut novel

Warning: do not read this post if you have recently had a manuscript rejected.

Michael Cox has been given an advance of £430,000 for his debut novel, The Meaning of Night, reports BBC News. It is believed to be the highest advance ever paid to a first-time novelist.

Mr Cox, 55, admitted: "The ironic thing is I probably wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been ill. I'd had the novel in my head for 30 years but never had the time to sit down and write it.

"Over the years I've drafted a few pages and then discarded them. It's been swirling around in potential form all these years.

"Then at the beginning of last year I had a tumour behind my left eye and I started to lose my sight. As part of the treatment I was put on a corticosteroid called Dexamethasone, which relieved the pressure on my optic nerve.

"The side effects of the medication left me fizzing with furious creative energy. I couldn't sleep and didn't know what to do with myself.

"I got a discarded first chapter out and started to work on it again. I couldn't stop - day after day, night after night."

Sideways to success

Rex Pickett, author of the novel Sideways, tells Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian about his struggle to get the book published and how it came to be made into an award-winning film.

In the mid-1990s, Rex Pickettconsidered himself a failure: a never-published novelist, depressed, penniless and miserably divorced, who used an interest in wine to mask what was really, if we're being honest about it, a drinking problem.

And so, with nothing left to lose, he wrote Sideways, a novel about a never-published author, depressed, divorced, and drinking too much, who takes his closest friend - a hopeless womaniser who's about to get married - on a pre-wedding wine tour that almost ends in catastrophe. Most of that really happened, too.

The main difference is that Miles, the central character in Sideways, never does get his book published. Whereas Sideways itself was made into a film, released in the UK last weekend, critically adored, and has now been nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture.

"It has changed my life a little bit," Pickett says, with a hint of sardonic understatement. "I drive a car now that, when you get in it, it smells like it's going to start."

Download The Omen

February's screenplay of the month from Screentalk is The Omen, written by David Seltzer. It's available to download for free as a pdf.

Film adaptations in the West End

Many recent successes in the West End have been adaptations of books and films. And film critic Peter Bradshaw, in The Guardian, is impressed.

When I embarked on my cinematic tour of the West End, I expected nothing but tacky, obtuse plunderings of movie gold. What I got was some slick, clever, insightful versions that kept a creative faith with the celluloid original, and in some cases even improved on it. Any fastidious qualms about adapting films into plays are groundless; my cine-snobbery has been quite upended.

Bookstandard.com

Trade magazine publisher VNU Business Media have launched bookstandard.com, a website for the publishing industry.

Content includes breaking news, first-look book reviews, proprietary charts, searchable databases and expert analysis. Some content will be free, with the rest available for a $9.95 monthly subscription.

Publishing's continental drift

A pronounced continental drift characterizes U.K. publishing nowadays—ownership of the big groups has moved across the Atlantic to Europe. The battle for supremacy is now between the Germans, the French and the British, waged by Bertelsmann, Hachette and Pearson. It is only a matter of time before this struggle moves to the U.S., where the vulnerability of groups such as Simon & Schuster and Time Warner could prove tempting to the expansionist Europeans.

From The Book Standard.

West End revenue record

West End theatre receipts for 2004 were at an all-time high of £341,758,566, reports BBC News.

Overall attendances rose 3% from 2003, although they were just short of the attendance record of 12,064,100 set in 2002.

The majority of these were for musicals, with over 7m attendances in 2004, while just under 3m people attended a play - a 3% rise on 2003 figures.

The remainder of tickets sold - around 1.6m - were for "other entertainment" - including opera, dance, one-man shows, revues and stand-up comedy.

Fringe Reunited

The organisers of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival are setting up a networking database featuring information on every act that has performed in the world’s biggest arts event, reports The Stage.

Organised by the Fringe as part of its initiative to develop services for those taking part in the event, it is hoped Fringe Reunited will enable some of the 350,000 who have worked at the festival in the past to get in touch with one another and continue collaborating. The database will be online so it can be easily accessed to either look up or add an act.

Corrie wins South Bank Award

Coronation Street has won the 2004 South Bank Award for Best Drama, reports BBC News - the first time that the accolade has gone to a soap.

John Irving on adapting for film

John Irving in The Guardian on how his book A Widow For One Year became the film, The Door In The Floor. And for once a writer is happy about the adaptation of their novel for the screen.

I have told [Tod Williams] that his screenplay is the most faithful translation, word for word, to film of any of the adaptations written from my novels - including my own adaptation of The Cider House Rules. That's true. But his choice, to make only the first third of the novel as a movie, has a radically altering effect. One I completely accept.

EastEnders boss stands down

Just four months after joing BBC's flagship soap, Executive Producer Kathleen Hutchison has quit the show "by mutual consent", reports BBC News.

A spokeswoman has denied that new BBC controller of continuing drama series, John Yorke, came close to halting transmissions for a fortnight after a storyline shortage.

Yorke, a former executive producer of the show, has been announced as Ms Hutchison's temporary replacement.

He said: "Kathleen has done a fantastic job of managing EastEnders during this period of change - I am very grateful to her for all her hard work and for leaving the show in such a strong position for us to build on."

Kara Miller at Sundance

Guild member Kara Miller has a film showing at the Sundance Festival and is writing an online diary for The Script Factory.

Weird. I was sitting in the same room as Tarantino and Soderbergh and a whole host of others had done in the past (this was also the place where the Sundance Labs are held). One filmmaker told me he'd spent the whole brunch sitting beside Tom Vinterberg (Festen, Dear Wendy) and it was amazing. I know anything is possible. Because I'm here. Sitting in this room. Dreaming is believing. I've met loads of directors (shorts and features) including the lovely Dave McKean who I met with his family on a long haul flight back in 2003 (his kids taught me how to play Pokemon cards). He was making his film Mirrormask and I was prepping Elephant Palm Tree. And now we're both here. So cool.

Radio reviews from The Stage

There aren't many places where you can find regular reviews of radio drama, but The Stage is one of them. This month Moira Petty looks at Fontamara (adapted by Andrew Farrell Readman from the novel by Ignazio Silone), The Fire Raisers (adapted by Charles Wood from a play by Max Frisch), The Drovers Path (by Vanessa Rosenthal),
Letters to Fan Fan (by Deborah Davis), and The Beatification of Jaswant Singh (by Matthew Coombe).

Guild gives evidence to Select Committee

The Writers' Guild was one of the organisations invited to present evidence about the state of public support for theatre by Culture Select Committee in the House of Commons, reports BBC News.

Of particular concern was the recent announcement by the Department for Culture Media and Sport that funding for the Arts Council was to be frozen - a cut in real terms.

Writer-in-residence - Radio 3 Africa Season

Throughout 2005, Radio 3 is broadcasting a season of programmes exploring the music and culture of the African continent as well that of communities of African descent throughout the UK.

They are looking for a writer-in-residence to contribute to the Africa season on air, online and at public events.

Full details are available from the BBC Writersroom.

The closing date for applications is 11 February 2005.

Levy wins Whitbread Book Award

Andrea Levy has won the 2004 Whitbread Book of The Year for her novel Small Island. Sir Trevor McDonald, chair of the final judges, said: “All the books are winners and the decision was very difficult, but Small Island was written with enormous charm and was a clear choice for Whitbread Book of the Year.”

Pimlott Prize

The Fabian Society and The Guardian have launched a political writing prize in memory of Ben Pimlott, leading Fabian thinker and political historian. A prize of £3,000 is on offer for a biographical sketch of any figure, past or present, which "best illustrates the political challenges of our age."

The closing date is 18 March 2005.

Full details are on the Fabian Society website.

Writer/producer relations

The Writers' Guild is running a one-day seminar, "Trust Me Baby One More Time: A Guide to Writer/Producer Relations", on Friday 25 February.

Aimed at screenwriters, and run by Carl Schoenfeld, it will explain the requirements a film project needs to meet on the quest for the green light.

Topics covered will include:

• Overview of the technical, economic and market expectations the film meets during production and distribution
• Building good working relationships and effective companies
• The organic pitching guide
• How a producer takes control of copyright to make the exploitation of the film possible
• The Screenplay as business plan
• The UK film industry environment
• How the production team uses the screenplay to plan the film making process
• The various roles of a Producer
• What happens at the various stages of a production
• National and international distribution and writers’ profit participation

The seminar is open to all, but there is a discount for Writers' Guild members.

Full details are on the Writers' Guild website.

Leigh up for two Oscars

Guild member Mike Leigh has been nominated for two Oscars - Best Director and Best Original Screenplay - for Vera Drake. The Star, Imelda Staunton, is also nominated, for Best Actress.

BBC News has an excellent guide to all the nominations.

Cult of youth

Are publishers putting too much pressure on young writers, asks Carl Wilkinson in The Guardian.

Martin Amis is the archetype. The Rachel Papers was published in 1973 when Amis was just 24 and won him the Somerset Maugham Award. 'The event passed,' he wrote in Experience, 'in what now seems to be improbable tranquility. No interviews, no readings, no photo sessions.' Unthinkable today.

Cobravision

In an innovative new sponsorship deal, Cobra beer is inviting aspiring film-makers to submit 10 five-second films on a single theme for screening in "CobraVision" slots during ad breaks in films on ITV2 and ITV3.

Out of the winning films that are played on TV an overall prize of £5,000 and a holiday in India will be awarded to the director awarded with first prize. The second prize winner will receive £3,000 and a holiday in India and the third prize winner will receive £2,000 and a holiday in India. Shortlisted finalists for the CobraVision awards will each receive Cobra Beer for a Year.

The closing date is 1 November 2005, but early entries are welcomed.

Full details are on the Cobra beer website.

Why play should come before grammar

Philip Pullman in The Guardian argues that children should learn to play with language before they are taught the formalities of grammar.

A word often flourished in this context by the common sense brigade is "basics". It's always seemed curious to me that commentators and journalists - people who write every day and who presumably know something about the practice of putting words on paper - should make such an elementary error as to think that spelling and punctuation and other such surface elements of language are "the basics". These, and deeper features of language such as grammar, are things you can correct at proof stage, at the very last minute, and we all do that very thing, every day. But how can something you can alter or correct at that late point possibly be basic? What's truly basic is something that has to be in place much earlier on: an attitude to the language, to work, to the world itself.

The art of procrastination

The joy of not writing, by Henry Shukman in The Guardian.

For the last decade I have been working on five fiction manuscripts. One of them is two decades old (and still incomplete). By the time I was 22 I had written three novels (two of them abandoned); no procrastination there, you might think. But the next part threw me: going out to buy a teach-yourself typing book took me five years. It seemed I'd rather do almost anything than that: a PhD (begun but never written), copy-writing, working at an airport, on fishing boats, as a musician - anything rather than take a simple but somehow immeasurably difficult step towards helping my manuscripts become actual books.

Children's TV and radio

A report by Peter Corey from last year's Voice of the Listener and Viewer Conference: “Children’s Radio and Television in a Globalised, Multi-Channel World”, on the Writers' Guild website.

Penguin rejects authors compensation claim

Penguin books have rejected demands from authors for compensation after sales of their books were hit distribution problems, reports Saeed Shah in The Independent.

In a meeting at Penguin this week, a delegation led by the distinguished historian Antony Beevor, the author of Stalingrad, was told the publisher was not willing to make a payment to all its authors to cover them for lost sales due to their books being missing from shops.

The computer system at a massive new Penguin warehouse at Rugby failed in the spring last year, leaving distribution of Penguin books in the UK in chaos. It meant many titles were simply not on shelves in bookstores for much of the year.

Stan Lee wins his 10%

A judge in America has upheld Spider-Man creator Stan Lee's demand for 10% of Marvel's profits from the hugely successful Spider-Man films, reports BBC News. The two films have made more than £850m at the box office.

The BBC also has an excellent interview with Lee who reveals, among other things, that he put the hyphen into Spider-Man so that the name didn't resemble Superman too closely. It infuriates him, he says, when people leave it out. "Some day," he jokes, "I want to write a story about a villain who steals hyphens!"

Chichester Festival Theatre

Michael Billington in The Guardian praises the boldness of Chichester Festival Theatre where new writing is combined with work from Europe, classics, and a smattering of star names.

I've argued till I'm blue in the face that, in the arts, caution kills while risk ultimately pays off. It's an approach made possible only by subsidy, and Chichester currently gets £1.8m from the Arts Council and local authorities. But if you look at which theatres have prospered in recent decades, it is invariably those that have been artistically daring.

BBC Writersroom

The BBC's website for writers, BBC Writersroom, has been redesigned. Always a good resource, especially for new writers or people looking to submit unsolicited scripts to the BBC, it is now even easier to navigate.

At Writersroom event in London last night, Kate Rowland, the BBC's Creative Director for New Writing, affirmed the Corporations commitment to Writersroom as its central resource for reaching out to new writing talent.

Several new programmes are in the pipeline for 2005, including a writers festival in the autumn in Leeds, a new look Dennis Potter award for one-off drama and a open competition for original TV drama series.

Not details have yet been announced, but we'll keep you posted.

Writers' Guild Poetry Night

The Writers' Guild is holding a Poetry Night tomorrow, Thursday 20 January at the RADA bar on Gower Street from 7pm.

It's a chance to hear a wide range of poets reading their work, and to socialise with fellow members.

Guild members and non-members are welcome. Entry is free.

For more information contact the Writers Guild: info@writersguild.org.uk

Richard and Judy's book club

Behind the scenes of TV's most powerful book club, with Suzi Feay in the Independent.

The 2005 bookclub only started last week, but already their first choice, Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind, sold over 10,000 copies the week before the show aired, and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife, featured this Wednesday, sold just over 23,000 copies - probably because Judy Finnegan couldn't resist giving it an advance rave.

Barriers for minority ethnic led production

Minority ethnic led independent production companies face particular barriers to success in the film and television sector, according to new research conducted by the Institute for Employment Studies for Pact and the UK Film Council.

The research recommends a number of positive actions for policy bodies and key organisations including:

• the provision of general support for careers, training, and business advice, and explore targeted support
• encouraging the further development of networks, by policy bodies and key organisations both individually and collectively, to improve communication within and between the TV and film sectors
• tackling risk-averse attitudes of those in commissioning/funding
• improving and opening up the commissioning process to create a greater meritocracy
• monitoring the range of companies securing commissions and funds to evaluate trends over time.

Rocliffe New Writing Forum

Award winning Director Indhu Rubasingham will be co-chairing the Rocliffe New Writing Forum on 25 January 2005.

Created in 2000 as a platform for new writing the, New Writing Forums present 5-8 minutes of four different scripts, rehearsed for 30-40 minutes with a director, the writer, and actors who are cast on the night.

The scene is then performed to an audience of actors, writers, directors and producers, who then give the writer feedback on his or her work. After each scene the cast become the audience and another scene is performed.

The Forums normally take place in London.

Visit the website for more details or email info@rocliffe.com

BAFTA Film Award 2005 nominations

Nominations have been announced for the BAFTA Film Awards 2005, to be held on 12 February. They include, in the Original Screenplay category:

• The Aviator - John Logan
• Collateral - Stuart Beattie
• Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind - Charlie Kaufman
• Ray - James L White
• Vera Drake - Mike Leigh
  

US Sitcoms

With the passing of Friends, Frasier and Seinfeld, is the US Sitcom on its last legs? Jason Deans in Media Gaurdian (free registration required) investigates.

In the past few years sitcoms have been waning in popularity and now find their place in network primetime schedules being usurped by reality TV. US entertainment industry trade paper Variety recently reported that there were only 33 comedies on the networks last autumn - down by nearly 50% from a high of 62 in 1997.

Goodbye Mal, hello Mackie

With Mal Young departed, the BBC's new Head of Drama Series and Serials, Laura Mackie appears to be taking things in a new direction, writes Maggie Brown in Media Guardian (free registration required), starting with a series of Dickens and Shakespeare adaptations.

The classics project does not means that the BBC is retreating from weekly dollops of ever popular Holby City and Casualty, which provide a ratings safety net. Other gritty adult strands, such as Waking the Dead and Silent Witness, are being built up. Yet the focus is clearly changing. For seven years, Young pursued a single-minded drive to make popular drama series work on BBC1. Mackie, 44, signals a touch on the tiller, at the very least: "The brief is essentially to develop dramas that feel original, and in some cases are risky." Some existing shows may get the chop.

The new post-Young drama structure has split series from long-running series, which are run by John Yorke.

DVD revolution

The increasing importance of DVDs is changing the way the film industry operates, argues Tim de Lisle in The Guardian.

In the cinema, if the big get bigger, the small get squeezed out, because there are only so many screens; but in DVD-land, a gentler Darwinism prevails. Your local supermarket may stock only the top 50 titles, but HMV has thousands. There are an estimated 29,000 titles in print, which is about five times as many as video. DVD has been good for several species of small fish: arthouse films, foreign films, ethnic-minority films, classics, and especially documentaries.

WGA Awards nominees

The Writers Guild of America, west and East announced nominations for outstanding achievement in writing for the screen during the 2004 season.

NB The two different WGAs have different approaches to capitals in their name ("west" and "East"). So now you know!

Download Aristotle's Poetics

Aristotle was the very first script guru. Screentalk has a free download of his Poetics.

“I propose to treat of Poetry in itself and of its various kinds, noting the essential quality of each, to inquire into the structure of plot requisite for a good poem; into the number and nature of parts of which a poem is comprised; and similarly into whatever else falls within the same inquiry."

Spring adaptations

The spring schedule will see a number of adaptations of contemportary novels on our TV screens, reports Sally Kinnes in The Times.

“I think people in television are always keen to adapt contemporary novels, but most don’t have enough story to make even a two-hour movie,” says Andrew Davies, the medium’s best-known adaptor. “You get airport novelists like Jeffrey Archer, with masses of plot, but the characters are so crude and the story is so awful, they insult your intelligence.”

Behzti author defends her play

Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, author of the play Behzti that was withdrawn by the Birmingham Rep following protests from Sikhs, has written an article in The Guardian defending her work.

My play and the foreword to it are in the public domain, and I whole-heartedly stand by my work. I was very saddened by the decision to stop the play but accepted that the theatre had no alternative when people's safety could not be assured. Contrary to some reports, nothing in Behzti was ever altered as a result of pressure from anyone. As any drama practitioner knows, new writing evolves during rehearsal, and any changes made were simply part of the usual creative process between writer, director and actors. Nor, as has been suggested, did I ever veto any attempts to restage Behzti. And I will, when the time is right, discuss the play's future with relevant parties.

Curse of the "pet project"

Alexander is just the latest in a long Hollywood line of "pet projects" that have failed to meet expectations, argues Caryn James in the New York Times. She includes Beyond The Sea, Battleship Earth and Gangs of New York in her list of unsuccessful films driven by a lifelong passion by an actor or director.

The failure of so many pet projects is more than fluky coincidence. Such films have their own set of problems. Over the years, endless script revisions can drain the life and energy from a movie, which then staggers into the world as if emerging from decades in a dark attic, as withered and creaky as Miss Havisham.

And the filmmaker's passion is often so blinding that he forgets to explain to the rest of us why Alexander was so great or Bobby Darin was such an idol in the Spacey household.

Kali short films

Are you an Asian women working on a short or full length theatre script you would like to develop? Kali Shorts is the first stage of Kali Theatre Company's writer development programme. Selected writers will be able to join the Kali writers' group and receive support in the development of their work.

Plays must be written by women with an Asian background and be between 15 and 60 minutes in length.

The closing date is 25 March 2005.

Full submission details are on the Kali Theatre Company website (the website refers to the 2004 competition, but it appears that entry conditions are the same).

Radio 3 producer resigns over Springer opera

Antony Pitts, a senior producer at BBC Radio 3, has resigned after watching the BBC2 broadcast of Jerry Springer The Opera on Saturday, reports MediaGuardian (free registration required). His main concern was that the piece was blasphemous.

His examples of blasphemy included "the ridiculing of the figure of Jesus on the cross, dressed to imply sexual perversion", "the repeated mockery of the wounds of Jesus, linked to acts of crudeness" and "the singing of 'Jerry eleison' as a contemptuous travesty of an act of worship".

The work has been defended by BBC Director General, Mark Thompson, and Director of Televsion, Jana Bennett.

Student essay competition

Voice of the Listener & Viewer is inviting entries from students for an essay writing competition on ‘The Future of UK Public Service Broadcasting in the Digital Age’. The winning entrant will receive a cash prize of £1,000.

Entry is open to students studying for a UK registered undergraduate or post-graduate degree or qualification, or an NCTJ recognised journalism qualification. Entries can be submitted as either a written essay of not more than 2,000 words or as a short audio or video feature of no more than 10 minutes in length.

The closing date for the competition is Tuesday, 31st May, 2005, and the winner will be announced in the summer of 2005. The top three entrants will also receive two weeks work experience with a television production company.

Full details about the competition, and an entry form which has to be completed, are available on the VLV website at www.vlv.org.uk, or by post from 101 King’s Drive, Gravesend, KENT DA12 5BQ.

Jocelyn Hay, Chairman of VLV said: "Faced with economic, social and technological change, public service broadcasting is having to be increasingly innovative about its future. VLV’s Student Essay Competition is designed to allow the broadcasters, journalists and digital creators of tomorrow to tell us about their vision for the future of public service broadcasting. We want to hear about the challenges and opportunities facing public service broadcasting, as well as the threats. I hope that this competition, one of a range of initiatives VLV is undertaking in its 21st anniversary year, will bring forward some exciting ideas and new thinking about public service broadcasting."

Mal Young interviewed

As he settles down to life outside the BBC, Mal Young talks to Maggie Brown in The Stage about his plans working with Simon Fuller's 19TV.

“He [Fuller] was fascinated by my kind of dramas, especially the success of Holby City. He said he had been developing a drama with [acclaimed scriptwriter] Tony Jordan. Simon is the sort of person that if he wants to do something, he goes out and gets the best people. He is an entrepreneur, an initiator.”

Jordan had developed a treatment for a peak-time American network, Fuller wanted Young to executive produce it.

“We are developing it now,” says Young. “Tony has come up with a fantastic treatment.

“It is a stripped drama, akin to EastEnders, based in Chicago, and focused on working class lives, unlike the staple American sitcoms."

Young says that he only left the BBC because he would be able to get fully involved in 19TV's shows.

“I’m an interferer. I love the casting, the writing. I’m a show runner, in the American style - someone who runs an amount of output and gets their hands dirty.”

He thinks his move into the independent sector is perfect timing.

“There is no other indie that would specialise in what I want to do. My brand can go from Doctors to Waking the Dead to low budget films.

“Here I will be able to take an idea to four or five different outlets. Jane Tranter, BBC drama controller, has said she wants me to develop shows for her. I know what BBC1 needs.

Atwood signs remotely

The Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood is developing a remote book-signing machine that will allow readers to get their novels autographed without the author having to traipse to bookshops across the globe, reports book2book.

The idea occurred to her while undertaking gruelling tours with Oryx and Crake last spring.

Penguin loses the plot

A state-of-the-art warehouse was designed to improve efficiency in the Pearson empire but it created chaos and delivery delays, reports Guy Dennis in The Telegraph (free registration required).

In practice, the new facility rolled out last spring as smoothly as a bouncing rugby ball, dragging Penguin's venerable name through the mud. Quite simply, the distribution centre didn't work. The software failed. Chaos ensued. Penguin's books weren't delivered to shops, infuriating retailers and authors alike, while Pearson Education managed to postpone using the Rugby warehouse.

"It's affected me very badly," says Jane Shilling, one author published by Penguin. Her first book, The Fox in the Cupboard, was published at the end of March, or as she says: "Exactly into this warehouse horror."

Her book received glowing reviews, but her joy soon turned to dismay. "I started going to bookshops and would see that it wasn't there and ask: `Where is my book?'," she says. "It was very difficult for people to get hold of copies."

Too many books?

Luke Johnson in The Telegraph (free registration required) wonders if the publishing industry will drown in new titles.

They say there are three ways of achieving immortality: rear a child, plant a tree, or write a book. Quite a few of us seem to be having a go at the third category - over 1m titles a year are published around the world, according to the appropriately named book So Many Books by Mexican Gabriel Zaid.

But his conclusion is optimistic. For the book trade, progress has meant diversity and that is probably a strength.

New titles, formats and imprints help keep the business vigorous - as does originality. Ultimately, British book publishing will only be successful if it is original and creative: be it Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, books can generate ideas and stories that fuel all other forms of entertainment. Derivative content will never grow the industry - fresh talent and imagination are needed to keep it alive.

The challenge for theatre

The protests at Birmingham Rep proved that playwrights still have the power to divide communities. But, asks David Edgar in The Guardian, how can they unite them?

Should the Birmingham Rep have entered into a conversation with the Sikh community that was misinterpreted as a negotiation over the play's content? How does a theatre that accepts the challenge of giving a public voice to invisible and often embattled communities fulfil that role without compromising the need to be open and truthful about the consequences of that invisibility and that embattlement? Does a theatre have a responsibility to balance dissident perspectives with more positive portrayals (as has happened, willy nilly, in plays about the African-Caribbean and Muslim communities)? Do extreme events in a fictional drama need to be provable, plausible or feasible?

John Logan - screenwriter

John Logan, one of Hollywood's hottest screenwriters, with credits including Gladiator and The Aviator, is profiled in The New York Times.

As well as showing the rewards of movie writing success ("Once a struggling playwright who only a decade ago paid his bills by shelving books at Northwestern University, Mr. Logan drives a Lexus convertible, vacations around the world...and takes meetings with some of the biggest stars and directors in Hollywood") the article also highlights a common Hollywood theme: disputes about writing credits.

Mr. Logan's handlers at the Creative Artists Agency also enhanced his status before he began writing "The Aviator" by building into his deal an unusual provision guaranteeing him sole screenplay credit, Charles Evans Jr., one of the film's producers, said in an interview. The guarantee blocked the producers, who included the normally hands-on filmmaker Michael Mann, and even Mr. Scorsese from hiring writers to revise Mr. Logan's work or from professing any part in the screenplay's authorship, whatever they may have contributed.

Asked whether he had such protection, Mr. Logan smiled. "I don't know," he said.

Arts Council funding cuts (update)

The Guild has received a reply to its letter accusing Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell of accepting a “cut in real terms” in funding for the arts.

Jowell didn’t reply in person, but asked civil servant Phil Clapp to write instead. Clapp writes: “it is true that the latest spending round was undoubtedly tough, but we believe that there is considerable flexibility . . . to maintain funding for arts organisations and artists in real terms.” He concedes: “As Tessa Jowell has publicly stated, the challenging settlement for the Department has not allowed us to put as much into the arts sector as we would like.”

Clapp says that Arts Council of England funding will increase in April 2005 by £45 million to £412 million per year. But it will stand still for the next two years, meaning a £30 million cut in real terms because inflation “will have to be absorbed”. He makes it clear that it is up to ACE how it slices up the limited funds available.

The Guild’s criticism focused on theatre funding, which sees no increase at all. The Guild has predicted closures of theatres and touring companies, fewer commissions of new work, more restrictions on cast numbers and production values.

Phil Clapp’s letter does not deal with this issue. He falls back on “further efficiency savings”; “re-shaping arts education spending to release funds” and “flexibility in existing budgets to make resources available”. The Writers’ Guild does not believe any of these phrases will translate into a single penny for theatre funding.

Guild General Secretary Bernie Corbett has written to the Chief Executive of Arts Council England, Peter Hewitt, enclosing a copy of Clapp’s letter and asking whether theatre funding will go up, or down, or remain the same both in cash terms and in real terms. Hewitt is also asked to explain whether new funding for large projects such as the South Bank Centre and Liverpool Capital of Culture will drawe funds away from existing theatres and companies all over the country.

José Rivera interiew

Screenwriter José Rivera, whose film The Motorcycle Diaries was one of the critical hits of 2004, is interviewed by Richard Stayton for the Writers Guild of America, west.

Some of the best collaborative work I have ever done with a director was with Walter [Salles] because he doesn't rewrite you. He makes very precise and interesting comments on everything you've written, and some of them yield new things. For example, I knew he wanted a certain atmosphere of Buenos Aires captured. And I remember writing a scene where he rides over a bridge and the motorcycle slithers through this traffic accident. Just little things like that where he would have an idea and I would come up with details.

Rape in soaps

While praising The Archers on Radio 4 for its recent rape storyline, David Aaronovitch in The Observer asks why rapists in soaps are almost never one of the central characters.

It seems to me that this is a very interesting psychological insight. Our sympathy with soap characters is based on identification. But while we can easily see ourselves as potential victims of rape or assault, we find it impossible to allow a connection with the rapist, the molester and the wife-beater. By making the rapist an outsider who leaves after the crime, the scriptwriters externalise evil for us. It is not within us or those who are close to us, but entirely contained within others. So the writers first frighten us with something real, and then reassure us with something unreal, which is the notion of our own essential and eternal correctness.

Honours for Guild members

Three of the UK's leading writers, and long-standing Writers' Guild members, were honoured in the New Years Honours list.

Alan Plater received a CBE. Guild President from 1991-95, Alan has worked in theatre, TV and film. An early contributor to Z-Cars, his credits include the The Beiderbecke Affair for ITV and the recent award-winning TV play, Last Of The Blonde Bombshells.

Ray Cooney, who has received an OBE, is one of Britain's most successful and popular playwrights. Best known for farces such as Run For Your Wife, he has, to date, had 17 plays produced in the West End.

John Sullivan, who has also been awarded an OBE, is best known for creating and writing the hugely successful sitcom, Only Fools And Horses. His impressive list of credits also includes creating the sitcoms Citizen Smith and Just Good Friends.

Parsons and Naylor (update)

It appears that the Guild's impression that Radio 4 comedy series Parsons and Naylor was not being recommissioned (see below) was false. Assurances have been given that it will return in 2005. The Guild was concerned about the loss of the show since it provides the only current opportunities for non-commissioned comedy writers on Radio 4.

Behzti (update)

Further to earlier reports on this blog, the Writers' Guild has set out its full position in support of the writer of Behzti, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti. The Guild has also signed the following letter written by Ben Payne, Associate Director of Birmingham Rep:

“We, the undersigned, deplore the violent events that have very regrettably led to the cancelling of the remaining performances of BEHZTI (DISHONOUR) by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti at Birmingham Repertory Theatre on grounds of the safety of the audience, performers and staff of the theatre.

“We all have the right to be protected from abuse on the grounds of our race or religion. We also have the right to peacefully protest if a work of art offends us. We do not have the right to use violence and intimidation to prevent that work of art from being seen by others.

“We particularly deplore the stance of those community and religious leaders of whatever faith who have condemned the production of this play, misrepresented it in clear ignorance of its intent and content, but have not condemned those who have used their faith as an excuse for hooliganism.

“To verbally and physically threaten a writer, audience members, performers and theatre staff is unacceptable. To attempt to censor a play because some incidents in it would thereby be rendered less offensive to some people if they were set elsewhere is unacceptable. To stop the production of a work of art by means of force and continued threats of force is unacceptable. To make death threats against a writer and a writer’s relatives is unacceptable.

“Doubtless, some will see the fact that the play’s production has been brought to an end by this campaign of intimidation as some kind of victory. The reality is we all lose by it. The violent abuse of power to silence the individual in a community is one of the main themes of this writer’s play. It is a sad irony therefore that the violent actions of some of the protestors on Saturday have actually only served to confirm the play’s relevance to us all.

“It is a legitimate function of art to provoke debate and sometimes to express controversial ideas. A genuinely free, pluralist society would celebrate this aspect of our culture. Those who use violent means to silence it must be vigorously opposed and challenged by all of us, whatever our faith, belief or opinions.”

Comedy Award for Dominic Minghella

Guild member Dominic Minghella emerged triumphant last night from the British Comedy Awards, after his series Doc Martin won Best TV Comedy Drama. The show, starring Martin Clunes and made by Buffalo TV, made its premiere this year and attracted both high ratings and critical praise.

The full list of Comedy Award winners can be found on BBC News.

Radio review of the year

Nick Smurthwaite in The Stage looks back on a good year for talk radio.

In a recent interview, Jenny Abramsky, the BBC’s director of radio and music, spoke of “the resilience of radio” and its ability to reinvent itself.

Because of the primacy of television in our mass culture, there have been Jeremiahs in the higher echelons of broadcasting, predicting the marginalisation of radio for some years. But the hands-on champions of radio, such as Abramsky and Melvyn Bragg, are dedicated to its survival as a force to be reckoned with.

As an example of its outreach

BBC Get Writing (update)

Our report earlier this month that the BBC's Get Writing website is to close has been confirmed by a Guild member, Chris Page, who spotted the announcement on the site itself.

Chris writes:

This week, posted on the BBC Get Writing Website, was a notice that Get Writing would be closing in April 05 due to funding, and a community of over two hundred thousand people will be scattered to the four winds. As you might imagine, we are not happy with this decision.

Get Writing is a very valuable home for published authors, authors who seek publication and other writers, whether they aspire to write for a living or scribble for a hobby. It is a place of like-minded individuals whose aims are to create written works ranging from short stories, non-fiction and other popular genres – it is our home in a very competitive world.

We like it here. Get Writing provides not only a platform for our own ideas, but also a support place for other writers and a lifeline for many of us that can’t work through disability and a chance to have some influence in a world that seems to have forgotten all about us. It is an essential place for those of us that have to create and bring enjoyment to others – a place of the ‘word’.

It is our understanding that the BBC’s mandate is to promote creativity – to push the mind along, after all the BBC are world famous for the training they give to their staff, so why on earth would you start moving backwards when you have twenty thousand creative minds trying to push the BBC into this century? We believe in Get Writing and believe that was should keep our voice – our creativity alive.

So please support our attempt to keep something truly magical alive, help us to write, to create, to be one community – we are your future, we are writers!

Download the Maltese Falcon

The Screenwriters' Store has a new selection of scripts available for download, including The Maltese Falcon.

Behzti dropped after protests

Violent protests by Sikhs in Birmingham have led the Birmingham Repertory Theatre to drop Gurpreet Kaur Bhatt's play Behtzi, reports BBC News. The theatre dropped Behzti, which depicts murder and sex abuse in a temple, on safety grounds after protesters clashed with police.

Neil Foster, of the Birmingham Stage Company, said the decision to cancel the play had been made by "cowards".

He said he was now looking at staging the performance at the Old Rep Theatre.

Mr Foster told BBC Radio 4's PM: "I think it's one of the blackest days for the arts in this country that I've ever experienced."

Update: The Guild has been busy defending the rights of writers (Gurpreet Kaur Bhatt has, reportedly, gone into hiding). Guild General Secretary Bernie Corbett, quoted in both The Independent and on BBC News, said that the decision to withdraw the play could lead to other theatres becoming reluctant to stage risky material.

"If you can get a big enough crowd, then you can suppress something. That's a terrible principle. Over the next months and years, it makes it less likely that they're going to take the plunge with anything slightly challenging or controversial, about any subject at all, where a mob might be whipped up."

Parsons and Naylor

News has reached the Writers' Guild that Radio 2's topical comedy show Parsons and Naylor is unlikely to be recommissioned. This means that, for the first time in 34 years, there are now no topical radio programmes open to new writers on the entire radio network.

Indeed there is only one programme that takes non-commissioned material, Radio 4's Bearded Ladies, which is not scheduled to return for several months, and only runs for six shows a year. BBC Radio comedy department is always trying to develop new formats, but attempts to bring on new programmes over the last few years have all ended in failure.

Guild General Secretary, Bernie Corbett, has written to the Controllers of Radio 2 and 4 complaining about the situation:

"It is worth pointing out that many of the most successful writers of the last 30 years began their careers on shows like Week Ending and News Huddlines, for example David Renwick (One Foot In The Grave, Jonathan Creek), Andy Hamilton & Guy Jenkin (Drop the Dead Donkey, Bedtime), Ade Edmondson (Bottom, Bad News), Andrew Marshall (2.4 Children), Ian Brown & James Hendrie (My Family), Mark Burton, Pete Sinclair & John O’Farrell (Spitting Image, Have I Got News For You).

The Writers’ Guild hopes you will give urgent attention to this and consider whether Radio 2 ought to introduce a new vehicle for topical comedy contributions by non-commissioned writers, before an already endangered species becomes an extinct one."

Update: Good news! It appears that the rumours were false and that Parsons and Naylor has in fact been re-commissioned. Apologies for the misinformation.

The Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award 2005

The Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award 2005 aims to help the development of emerging practitioners in the field of experimental theatre and, in general, to encourage the new generation of creative artists.

Support is aimed at assisting artists in the transition from fringe to studio spaces. A grant of up to £30,000 and a three week run at The Riverside Studios (Studio 3) in November 2005 will be awarded to an individual or company for a production of their choice. Bold, innovative and challenging projects will be favoured.

Full details are available on their website.

Menagerie competition for young writers

Menagerie Young Writers Development Programme is committed to opening up writing for the theatre to a diverse range of new young voices. Their aim is to discover, support and develop the best first time young writers from the eastern region of the UK and beyond.

They are looking for six first time writers for bursary places on a series of four interconnecting intensive weekend workshops over a period of two months, beginning in April 05.

These workshops will aid the development of a one act play from initial idea through to completed first draft. The plays will be given a script-in-hand performance to the general public alongside work being developed by established professionals at Menageries 'Heat' showcase at the beginning of June 05.

Full details of how to apply are on the BBC's Writers Room website.

Arts funding cuts (2)

The theatre world has been left reeling by the news (reported below) that funding for the Arts Council was being cut in real terms, reports The Stage.

“We knew it would be bad but not that bad” was the response from the performing arts to the news that government funding of Arts Council England is to be frozen at £412 million for the next three years - a cut of £30 million in real terms when inflation is taken into consideration.

Richard Pulford, joint chief executive of the Theatrical Management Association and the Society of London Theatre, warns that the cuts will be “keenly felt in the quality and range of productions"

“We know that the £25 million has worked. It has improved the quality of work, it has improved morale immeasurably. The improvement has begun to be felt in West End theatre and at the same time we have been able to do something to address the endemic problem of low pay in the theatre. It is deeply dismaying,” he said.

“I can’t see how the arts council can be safeguarded from the effects of this and the effects are going to be felt in the most devastating way. There is no question of making up this money from anywhere else. We can’t undo, and wouldn’t want to, the improvements in wages - there’s no question about that. That amount of money in Exchequer terms is the copper in the pocket of a rich man.”

Spooks credits

Spooks, the highly successful BBC 1 drama series, will no longer be quite such a mystery to viewers following an agreement between the Guild, the BBC and the independent producer Kudos.

From now on credits will appear on digital repeats of Spooks, DVD releases, and the Spooks website. The BBC has promised never again to produce or commission drama series without a guarantee of writers’ credits.

For more than a year the Guild has been complaining that Spooks carries no writers’ credits – in contravention of the Guild’s agreements with the BBC and the independent producers’ trade body PACT. It is also an offence against the BBC’s internal producer guidelines.

The idea behind Spooks was that viewers should believe their TVs had been taken over by alien forces – and credits would have ruined that illusion. Guild General Secretary Bernie Corbett commented: “It was always rubbish to pretend that intelligent viewers regarded this as anything other than high-quality drama entertainment.”

As a settlement of the issue the following agreement has been reached:

1. After each episode has been broadcast on BBC One a preview of the following episode will be broadcast on BBC Three. The broadcast on BBC Three will have an end title sequence which will credit the writer (and other key contributors) of that episode in the usual way.

2. The “Spooks” website will continue to carry full credits information but the site will be reviewed to ensure better orientation to the credits as well as improved presentation of the credits on the site.

3. Subsequent DVD releases (from season two onwards) will include full credit information as per the website as an additional feature of the DVD. It has not proved feasible for technical reasons to include credits for viewers on digital platforms via their red button.

The following joint statement by the BBC, Writers’ Guild and Personal Managers Association, has been agreed:

“A disagreement between the BBC, Kudos Film and Television and the writers' representative organisations (the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and the Personal Managers Association) concerning the absence of the writers' credit on "Spooks" has been resolved by agreement on a package of measures in relation to this programme which address the concerns raised.

“During the discussions on this matter, the BBC acknowledged that the absence of credits on this specific programme had been the result of unique circumstances and established no precedent concerning the standard provisions dealing with the writers' entitlement to a credit.

“The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain said it had agreed to treat “Spooks” as a special case on the understanding that writers’ credits would appear on all future BBC productions and commissions.”

Guild protests against cut to arts funding

Writers' Guild General Secretary Bernie Corbett has written to the Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell to protest against the "standstill" in funding for the Arts Council that will amount, in real terms, to a £30m cut.

In his letter Corbett says that:

Only recently we were saluting the Government on its arts funding settlement, which enabled much-needed new funding to be agreed. While this left the UK far behind many other European countries, we could welcome a significant step in the right direction. In particular there was a shot in the arm for local and regional theatre (although the Writers’ Guild does not believe a fair share of the new money was ever spent on new writing).

Now, before the new spending has even had a chance to bed down, we are back into a depressing spiral of cuts. This will mean closures of theatres and companies, fewer commissions of new work, more restrictions on cast numbers and production values, etc., etc.

Bad sex prize for Wolfe

American author Tom Wolfe has received this year's Bad Sex Prize from the Literary Review, reports BBC News. The award recognises the worst descriptions of sex in literature.

Wolfe, 74, whose Bonfire of the Vanities epitomised 1980s power and excess, was nominated for three passages in his latest publication. One included the line: "...moan moan moan moan moan..."

Evening Standard Theatre Awards

Guild member Harold Pinter was honoured at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards today. The playwright, along with actress Judi Dench and the South Bank institution were each given Special Awards, honouring their unique contributions to the nation's cultural life and marking the Standard awards' own half-century.

Alan Bennett won Best Play with This History Boys and The Charles Wintour Bursary for New Playwriting, worth £30,000 went to Owen McCafferty for his play Scenes from the Big Picture, seen last year at the National Theatre.

Sylvia Plath's Ariel, revisited

A new edition of Sylvia Plath's collection of poems, Ariel, has been published, reports The Economist. Some have claimed that the original editor, Ted Hughes, made his selection "in ways which would favour his own reputation and manipulate hers," but on the basis of the newly published poems The Economist ses no evidence for this.

Plath left a manuscript of 40 poems in a black folder. Of those 40 poems, Hughes removed 13 and substituted others, many of which were written in an extraordinarily fertile month towards the very end of Plath's life. The poems which Hughes removed from the manuscript are, generally speaking, inferior to the new ones that he chose to include. They are slacker and more anecdotal, and their rhythms drive forward less compulsively. They are no less savage in their subject matter, but they lack the force and concentrated power of the ones that replace them. In these rejected poems, we feel that Plath is writing around a subject rather than emerging from deep inside it.

Away from the Plath-Hughes controversy, The Economist reminds us just how powerful the poems remain.

Can any poet have asked so many unanswerable questions of God, the self and a chilly, inhospitable world within the space of a single slim volume?

First books

In The Times, leading writers remember the excitement of their first published work. Margaret Attwood writes:

The book consisted of seven poems — short poems, luckily — for which I had won a university prize. It was printed in a cellar, on a flatbed press owned by a friend and colleague. Along with a fellow poet, I set the type. We had to do each poem separately, as there was a shortage of letter As.

Arts Council Wales to be run by Assembly

Arts Council Wales will soon disappear in all but name, following the decision by the Welsh Assembly to take on all of its important fucnctions, reports The Stage.

To oversee the future, the government is establishing a culture board to be chaired by the minister - currently Alun Pugh - with membership from the arts council, National Library, National Museums and Galleries, local government and the Welsh Books Council. The directly funded bodies will be the Welsh National Opera, BBC National Orchestra, Academi, Diversions, Clwyd Theatr Cymru in Mold and the Welsh language Theatr Genedlaethol.

No date has been set for the changeover, although it is thought that April 2006 is the most likely date since this is when the Welsh Development Agency undergoes a similar move.

Writing as therapy

Dan Harris goes back to his childhood in an article for the Writers Guild of America west's magazine, Written By.

As a writer, I think I've cleared one of the first major hurdles. I've written a film that is personal to me, and miraculously it's been made. I can only hope that my "therapy session" connects with other people. Life is hard, and it often pulls no punches. Sometimes when you think it cannot get any worse, it does. Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel dies just as you approach it. But sometimes there is healing in catastrophe. Sometimes people are given a second chance.

Movie Plot Generator

Movie Plot Generator, 27,000 plot possibilities in a single book. Fortunately it's tongue in cheek. I think.

Whether it’s “a single mom fighting crime with a wise-cracking robot” or the story of “an orphaned grizzly cub trying to lose his virginity to an all-star ‘80’s soundtrack,” your favorite combination is sure to be the next big blockbuster.

Writers Passage West Midlands - deadline reminder

The deadline for Writers Passage West Midlands is 17 December. The Script Factory and Screen West Midlands are looking for eight writers to take part in a nine-month development programme.

The programme is only open to writers who live or work within the West Midlands and have completed a first draft screenplay.

Full details are on the Script Factory website.

Plays struggle on Broadway

Only five new plays opened on Broadway this season, reports Jesse McKinley in The New York Times, as musicals continue to dominate the stage.

"The disappearance of the Broadway play poses a significant problem for anyone whose wants to make a living writing plays," said John Weidman, president of the Dramatists Guild, "which, by extension, poses a problem for anyone who cares about the future of the American theater."

With big-name musicals and star-studded, limited-run revivals considered the only relatively safe bets in a famously risky industry, the roster of those producing new plays has shrunk to a precious and wealthy few who are driven by artistic idealism, personal vanity or, very often, both.

It's a similar story in London. The opening of Mary Poppins means that for the first time in history there are now more musicals than plays in the West End.

Getting published

The New Writing Partnership, a new literary arts organisation in East Anglia, ran its first programme of workshops and events this month for "emerging writers, publishing professionals and others in the literary world", reports Christina Patterson in The Independent. The aim of the event, according to its director, Trevor Davies, was to "create a new interface between writers and the writing world".

"Nobody should be publishing all these books," says Andrew Franklin, publisher of the mega-selling Eats, Shoots & Leaves. "I wish fewer people would write and fewer people would publish books." Others on the panel are less gloomy, but the fur flies when the discussion moves to money. Franklin calls agent David Godwin "a Thatcherite" and Godwin's cheeks go scarlet. Eyes shine with excitement. Next year, we agree, it should take place in a gladiatorial arena.

"Freedom" award for John Deery

Guild member John Deery is to be honoured by the US National Board of Review of Motion Pictures for his debut film Conspiracy of Silence.

Along with Farenheit 9/11 and The Passion of the Christ, Conspiracy of Silence, a film about corruption and abuse in the Irish Catholic church, will receive a "Special recognition of Films that Reflect the Freedom of Expression”.

John Deery was presented with the Hartley-Merrill International Screenwriting Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001. As a result of this he was invited to attend the Sundance Screenwriters’ Lab where he developed the story and raised finance to make the film.

Sate of Play - the movie

Writers' Guild member Paul Abbott's award-winning BBC drama series, State of Play, is set to be a mjor film, reports BBC News. The film rights were sold to Universal Pictures by Abbott, who will also be the executive producer on the film. "It's a blistering political thriller and we want to make an equally blistering movie," said US producer Andrew Hauptman.

Children's BAFTA winners

The winners of the 2004 Children’s BAFTA Awards have been announced. They include:

• Animation: Brush Head (Jonathan Boseley, Andy Williams, Dan Berlinka for Toon
• Disney/Dandy Productions/Disney Channel UK)
• Drama: Featherboy (Peter Tabern, Dermot Boyd for Childsplay/BBC1)
• Pre-school animation: Yoko! Jakamoko! Toto! (Christopher O'Hare, Tony Collingwood, Andrea Tran for Collingwood O'Hare Entertainment/CiTV
• School drama:The Illustrated Mum, based on the book by Jacqueline Wilson (Julia Ouston, Cilla Ware, Debbie Isitt) Granada/C4
• Writer (adapted): Debbie Isitt - The Illustrated Mum
• Writer (original): Tony Collingwood - Yoko! Jakamoko! Toto!

Thompson announces BBC cuts

Around 3,000 jobs will go at the BBC, says Director General Mark Thompson. Most will be in professional services, including human resources, training, finances and legal services. In addition, several departments including Children's TV and Radio will move to a new home in Manchester.

BBC News has a good summary of the changes, while The Stage concentrates on a pledge that more money will now be spent on original programming.

Unforgiven analysed by John Truby

If you're a fan of screenplay analysis you will be interested in John Truby's analysis on Unforgiven on the Screenwriters Store website.

If you're like me, the opening of a new Western - our national genre - is news for rejoicing. When I heard that David People's script is thematically ambitious, I was even more excited to see this film. But all of that just made Unforgiven a bigger disappointment. Unforgiven is a textbook example of what happens when you don't track your theme through the structure.

You can also download a copy of the screenplay and judge for yourself.

Patrick Marber

As the film of his play Closer is released in America, British playwright Patrick Marber talks to the Writers Guild of America, west.

I was very open to how we were going to do it. There was one part of me that wanted to rip up the play and start again... and then there was another part of me that thought, well, this is an interesting shape and an interesting way of telling a story and it worked on stage so why shouldn't we make it work on film. Mike was of the latter view. He loved the play, and a lot of the time he was persuading me to keep stuff in that I wanted to cut. It was kind of the reverse of the cliché writer-director relationship. I was all for rewriting it and he was always trying to preserve stuff I wanted to cut. I did do a lot of rewriting with lots of new material in the screenplay that's not in the play, but it all stems from the play.

BBC Comedy Wales

BBC Wales Comedy department are looking for narrative comedy scripts for radio and television broadcast.

The brief
Writers are expected to be either Welsh, based in Wales or for the characters/situations to have a Welsh flavour. This does not mean they are looking for sitcoms about rugby, sheep or miners but are seeking situations that are funny and just happen to be set in Wales or that the main characters are Welsh. The overriding concern is that the scripts are funny.

The outcome
The department is looking to pilot six sit-coms for BBC Radio Wales early next year with two of the best being commissioned for a series on the station. BBC Wales are also looking to develop narrative TV comedy that has the potential to go network.

Contact
Please send scripts by post to:
BBC Wales Comedy Department
Room M1010, Ty Oldfield, Llandaff
Cardiff, CF5 2YQ

For more information, you can call the Comedy Department on 029 2032 3516

The bodging of the BBC

Another "circle of life" begins at the BBC with Mark Thompson's reign as Director General, but why is their no prospect of returning power to the programme makers, asks Peter Preston in Media Guardian (free registration required).

Sometimes, as you patrol the pavements outside the plastic-shrouded building site called Broadcasting House, the governance of Britain and the voice of Britain blend symbolically into one. One day the covers will come off. One day the blessed, beating heart of radio will return where it belongs. One day - and countless millions on - we'll be right back where we started from.

Caryl Churchill

Caryl Churchill, celebrated British playwright, profiled by Sarah Lyall in the New York Times.

If Ms. Churchill's plays have one signature, it is their highly stylized conceits. The works are as creative in form as they are varied in content, as if she wants to push the boundaries each time. They feature, in different instances, flashbacks, twisted chronologies, huge leaps of logic, elements of absurdity, overlapping dialogue, different actors playing the same character in different scenes, interjected songs and, in the case of "Serious Money," dialogue written almost entirely in verse. "She is a structuralist," said Max Stafford-Clark, director of the Out of Joint theater company and longtime director of Ms. Churchill's work. "It's not just the range of subject matter, but also the form which is continually surprising to critics and audiences."

History lessons

Why are British theatres neglecting the past, asks Michael Billington in The Guardian.

We have been taught, by a series of dreary, knee-jerk textbooks, that virtually nothing happened in British drama between 1945 and 1956. In fact, there were plays like John Whiting's Saint's Day, lately revived, that foresaw violent social disintegration. There were also intriguing post-war works on private dilemmas and our sexual hypocrisies: not least Emlyn Williams's Accolade, dealing with the double life of a famous writer who, on the eve of being knighted, is discovered to have had sex with a 14-year-old girl. And, at a time when the issue of whether Alexander the Great was gay is back in the news, it might be worth a second look at Terence Rattigan's Adventure Story, which drops heavy hints as to its Grecian hero's bisexuality.

Wood brings Acorn Antiques to the stage

Guild member Victoria Wood is bringing her Acorn Antiques sketch to the stage in a new musical, reports BBC News.

Speaking at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, in London, Wood said she first mooted the idea for a musical back in 2001.

"I wanted to write a musical and it was just like a brainwave," she said.

"I thought 'why not make it about Acorn Antiques?' It is something that people may recognise."

Jokingly described by Wood as a "modern morality tale", the musical is set in a small theatre in Sutton Coldfield where the director - played by Neil Morrissey - is hoping to rehearse his new work.

Acorn Antiques will open at London's Theatre Royal Haymarket in February 2005, directed by Trevor Nunn.

BBC will not back-track on digital services

BBC governors have said that No radical changes will be made to BBC digital TV and radio services, despite criticism from government-commissioned reviews, reports BBC News.

The reviews concluded that low viewing figures meant BBC Three and Four were poor value for money and needed to become more mainstream.

But BBC chairman Michael Grade said innovation was as important as improving audience reach.

Governors said digital services must be given more time to develop.

Tinniswood Award

The first Tinniswood Award for radio drama scripts, named after the late, great Peter Tinniswood, has been won by Christopher William Hill for his play Killing Maestros.

The Award, run by the Writers' Guild and The Society of Authors, was presented by Richard Eyre at a ceremony last month.

There's a full report by Guild Radio Committee Chair, Alan Drury, on the Guild's website.

Playwrights keeping it short and sweet

There is a growing trend among playwrights for short plays without intermissions, reports Charles Isherwood in the New York Times.

Oddly enough, as plays seem to have grown shorter, movies have ballooned. Hollywood doesn't appear to be heeding the conventional wisdom about the American population's decreasing attention span. Over the last couple of decades, the average running time of a movie seems to have inched upward from that appealing benchmark of 90 minutes. Now, even the most formulaic action pictures run a full two hours, if not more. Blame the auteur theory, if you like, which enshrined the director as the sole author of a movie and led to the consolidation of power in directors' hands.

Perhaps it's time theater producers began more aggressively exploiting this disparity. They could promote their shows' running time as a selling point. "Half as long as 'Alexander!' " "Guaranteed to be shorter than a Steven Spielberg movie!"

Verity Bargate winner

Matt Charman has won the prestigious Verity Bargate award with his first full-length play, reports The Stage.

The award, run by the Soho Theatre, aims to find and promote new talent from across the UK. Charman's play, A Night at the Dogs, was inspired by his time working in a crash repair shop in West Sussex.

“I had made scribblings before but it is my first full-length play. I was in pantomimes as a kid and always doing things in the back garden but then got to university and grew up and was more interested in producing and getting new stuff together. When I left university I worked with these guys at the garage one year and it occurred to me they were incredibly interesting people and I just wanted to get it down.”

BBC Get Writing site to close

MediaGuardian (free registration required) reports that staff have been told that the Get Writing site, which cost around £400,000 to launch with an attendant nationwide campaign of creative writing workshops, will close down just months after it was relaunched.

The site, aimed at adults who want to develop their creative writing skills, was launched in September 2003 and relaunched a year later as one of the centrepieces of the BBC's online learning strategy.

As we reported on this blog a few months ago, the site is aimed more at beginners than writers wanting to submit work to the BBC, but it was always rather unclear what it's relationship was with the BBC Writersroom.

Public service the key for BBC

The BBC should focus on public service broadcasting, an independent panel set up by the government has said. There's a full report from BBC News.

Value for audiences and consistent high quality programming were the priorities, it said.

The panel, headed by Lord Burns, has published a paper on the clarity of the BBC's public purposes and remit, and how it is funded.

It will be discussed on Friday in the last of a series of debates on how the BBC might be run and regulated in the future.

The debates have been held before an invited audience and broadcast over the internet.

There was general support among the panel for the continuation of the licence fee for the next few years.

Scriptapalooza

Entries are invited for the 2005 Scriptapalooza film writing contest. It's one of the best known competitions, and is endorsed by the Writers Guild of America, west. The closing date is 15 April 2005.

Technical problems

There were some pretty severe technical problems at Blogger.com yesterday, so apologies if you came to the blog. At the moment the last two days posts have been lost. Hopefully they will be recovered today.