Media Top 100- No.29# Helen Boaden

Job: director, BBC news and current affairs

Age: 51

Industry: broadcasting

Annual programming budget: £329m

Staff: 3,000

2006 ranking: 17

Helen Boaden’s role as director of BBC News and Current affairs is to control the output broadcasted on the BBC News and current affair documentaries such as ‘NewsNight’ and ‘Panorama’. Appointed by the BBC in 1983, Helen has worked in every aspect of BBC News from BBC Radio 4 ‘Today Programme’ to BBC1’s news bulletin to News 24 to online. She is also the BBC’s first ever female director of BBC News.

Other dates:

• 1997- Appointed as BBC's Head of Business programme's


• 1998- Head of Current Affairs (first female to hold this position)


• 1999- MBA (Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania


• 2000-2004- Controller of Radio 4 (Radio 4 won Gold Award for station of the Year in 2003 and 2004).


• 2002- Controller of BBC7

She as also been in many other roles including head of TV news Peter Horrocks, Panorama editor Sandy Smith, overseeing the show in its new 30-minute Monday night slot, and Craig Oliver, poached from ITV news to editor the 10 O’clock News on BBC1. In addition her husband Stephen Burley works for the Evening Standard.

The changing shape of the British

Obesity is a BIG problem, just like 'climate change'. Society and our lifestyles are said to be the blame for it. Our current lives consisit of just sitting around watching TV or on the computer and not taking in enough exercise, and eating the wrong 'type' of food. The topic is serious. By 2050, if the current trends continues 60% of men, 50% of women and 26% of children will be overweight. 'It has taken roughly 30 years for people to get the message that smoking is bad' and maybe the same in trying to tackle obesity. Clear evidence of campgains encouraging, children especially, to go out and get exercise. For example, the Shrek characters were used in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services advert in a bid to tackle the issue and by using children's favourite Shrek characters to help persuade them. (I have already touched on this issue on my other blog: http://chintan-shrekthethird.blogspot.com/2007/09/shrek-health-advert.html)
The evidence that people of the UK are becoming more obese as in the 1950s due to traditional labour-intestive work i.e. ironing, washing, walking to the shops etc. women burned up three times more calories than women of today.
Technology is a big blame for obesity in that by technology making tasks labour saving it requires humans not to work as much and so burn of less calories. Also the arrival of TV changed our lifestyles.
British Nutrition Foundation- "I those days, we ate healthly. Now we have fast foods and convience foods".

• BBC 60'Clock News (Wed 17th Oct 07) and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7048763.stm

Turner completes online contents deal

Turner Broadcasting System Europe has announced a number of deals that will see content from its TV brands appear across several online platforms. By TV brands expanding to the internet, it shows how powerful the internet is. Many companies are converting their brands to the internet in order to extended the company life cycle (expand) or survival e.g. TV Hits magazine.

• http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/broadcasting/a77385/turner-completes-online-content-deals.html

'Dispatches' lauches live web debate strand

Channel 4's Dispatches is launching a late night web debate strand next week. Late Night & Live will enable viewers to watch Dispatches and then take part in a live web debate on Channel 4's website, beginning with China’s Stolen Children, which airs on Monday October 8 at 8pm. This shows the media are becoming more interactive with their audiences. Things such as phone in lines and emails are used. For example, Sky Sports News has contact details such as text and emails in which they read out the viewers opinons in topics. The media are being more interactive in that they are allowing their audiences to put their opinions across.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/broadcasting/a77030/dispatches-launches-live-web-debate-strand.html

Sky goes public with Picnic plans

Sky has gone public with detailed plans of its proposed pay TV offering on digital terrestrial television. The service, were it to be approved by Ofcom, would be called Picnic and would initially offer three MPEG-2 streams, which at different times of day would carry Sky Sports 1, Sky Movies, Sky One, a children's channel and a factual channel. The reason to why Sky are carrying out with this deal is because. "The launch of Picnic will be a big step forward for customers who are hungry for value and simplicity".

• http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/a76765/sky-goes-public-with-picnic-plans.html

Bloggers silenced as curbs bring internet blackout

• "Its been difficult to get information out because the internet has been closed".


• "The group, based in Norway, said about half of all communications to the rest of the world were blocked by the regime".


• "There were 31,000 internet users in Burma in 2005 in a population of more than 47 million. Today, less than 1% of the population is thought to be online at home, but internet cafes".

This shows how important the internet is in our current times. The internet is the most powerful and dominant form of media. Now it has also become important for recieving the news. In the past we recieved the news from our tv's and newspapers, however since the introduction of the internet, things have changed. Now days instead of having to wait for the BBC6 o'clock news or wait for tomorrows newspaper, the public can just find out all the latest news with just a click of a mouse.

• http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,,2180971,00.html