So here we are in September and, yes, there’s a new term feeling in the air although for me this is more than slightly blurred by two massive weekends at the end of summer to celebrate a friend’s 50th in Wales and then at a festival in Dorset.
Meanwhile work has been manic as I’ve prepped marketing assets, lots of them, for Inside Out Dorset festival of outdoor arts (17-26 Sept), along with evaluation, donation materials (it’s all free to attend), tried to manage a marketing officer I have never met in the flesh – all that. I’m sure you’re busy too.
In other news, one daughter has started sixth form and my older daughter celebrated her 19th birthday at the End of the Road festival, the first festival I’ve taken my kids to as adults (we went to Camp Bestival when they were tiny in 2008 and again in 2012). The 19-year-old is off to uni in a couple of weeks and the garage is filling up with uni essentials including, apparently, lots of houseplants.
I’m attempting to take some down time for myself at the end of the month as I’ve worked through August, although admittedly I’ve had quite a few weekend shenanigans over the summer in Derbyshire, Dorset multiple times and Wales.
I’ve hardly had time to read the news although I was chatting with a TV industry contact the other day who feels that the privatisation of Channel 4 is more or less inevitable – following the direction of travel set in 2014 when Channel 5 was sold to US media company Viacom.
For me, just as with Brexit, too few people are making the case loudly enough for the status quo when it comes to preserving the BBC and keeping Channel 4 in public ownership. What can we do about that? This is a case of you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone. Privatisation of C4 will affect the livelihoods of hundreds of independent TV producers, whose existence is precarious, at best, after Covid and frozen income streams.
Lucy Rouse PR Blog 