Church in a spin

With adverts in between every BBC programme it’s hardly gone unannounced, but the introduction by the BBC of the ‘iplayer’ really is one of those technical developments which could mark a sea-change (in PR speak) in the way we use the interweb. I’ve already caught up with several programmes I missed thanks to playing Charades, listening to new CDs, trying on new socks, going to church or otherwise enjoying Christmas in the real world.

Learning Italian last year, I marvelled at the way ‘'Rai Click’ , the website of Rai TV, meant I could keep track of the comings and goings in the Italian soap opera, ‘Capri’ or try get used to verbs by watch Italian kids TV (which is very scary, let me tell you.). ‘Why can’t the BBC do this’, I’d be heard to moan. Well now they have, and , fair play, it’s a lot better than those pixelly Italian images. Its also much better than YouTube which is just a series of grainy ‘You’ve been framed’ style home movies really, and Joost which is very good but doesn’t enough interesting stuff. Hence last night, as baby Eva was being fed and the family were vegging in front of a DVD, I was able to catch up on the complete ‘Extras’ Christmas Special, cringe at Ricky Gervais’s gaffs on my own (much better than cringing with your in-laws) and indeed move from one room to another – pushed out of the kitchen into the dining room (thank goodness for wifi!). I tell you, it’s the future. But is it also an own goal by the Beeb, and another step down the road to the end of conventional TV foretold by the man from Apple (see earlier blogs)? Only time will tell.

TV apart, it’s been quite lively on the church front, it being Christmas ‘n all, and as always people say ‘you must be very busy at this time of the year’. Normally the answer would be no, but its turned out to be ‘more than I expected’. Boxing Day dawned mild and miserable but it didn’t deter hundreds of hardy walkers from taking part in the traditional Boxing Day Pilgrimage from Ripon Cathedral to Fountains Abbey. An interesting lesson in the use of press releases ensued. I had written in my earlier release that the new Dean, leading his first walk, would be accompanied by his wife and dog. Well, that’s what he told me – indeed he’d even told me that his dog was called ‘Sooty’ and was a cross Labrador/collie, and as that’s the kind of detail the papers like, I put it in.

I took lots of pictures, everyone set off, I returned home to send out a few pictures with an updated release, and as I was adding the story to the front page of the diocesan website I realised I’d seen no sign of the dog. So I left that bit out. Well, the dog was there, according to next day’s Yorkshire Post, based on the earlier press release, so I’m not arguing. If it says so in the paper then it must be true. Ooops.

In the Daily Telegraph an even more contentious claim was made by Jonathan Petre - that a fifth of all bishops are facing the axe. So that must be true too. Except that of course it isn’t. If they ever reduce the number of Bishops, and another scenario is to increase them, it would be done through a simple process of ‘natural wastage’. As it is, the article was probably based on some hearsay from the Church Commissioners and lacked the much more exciting possibility, implicit in the headline – that dioceses could be merged (or axed as JP himself wrote back in 2003). That was what Bishop John probably expected to be quizzed on when Radio 4 rang him up in the wake of the Telegraph article, and he was all for discussing the merits of a Diocese of West Yorkshire, but I was able to warn him that he didn’t need to go down that road unless he wanted to. Whether or not he did (and he seemed keen), we will only know on Sunday morning, Radio 4, some unearthly hour, when I’ll be on the road to the in-laws in Scotland for Hogmanay as I think it's still called. Happy New Year!