“We have an approach to news coverage that is so unprofessional as to be provincial,” says Paolo Garimberti, former head of news at RAI2. “If he provides good news and sports coverage, I’ll welcome it.”Murdoch will have to see what the possibilities are: if he can control a general network channel or settle for specialist broadcasting in news, sport or feature films. If his Italian gamble pays off, he will be able to make economies by importing and exporting programmes around the world, and beaming in news pictures gathered by Sky.And what can we expect to happen to the cheesy game-shows, semi-naked women and other Fininvest hallmarks that established Berlusconi’s notoriety? “It’s unlike Murdoch to change much if an operation he buys is going well,” Christopher Hird says “His instinct is to take a product downmarket … but in the case of Italian TV, there’s nowhere further downmarket to go.”. Gummer’s lottery logic

Who will benefit from the pounds 80m plus of lottery cash to be directed into British films? Peter Gummer, chairman of the Arts Council Lottery Board, does not rule out putting money into films with US backing “Each on its merit,” he says. Nor will there be an insistence that scripts are written by Britons He spots a market gap in encouraging medium-budget films.

The scheme is to be run on the same basis as the British Screen Fund. The key difference will be that the lottery money can be used to fund distribution. Other candidates for funds include independent cinemas wishing to add air conditioning.. Making the Grade

Britain needs a better system of selecting the people who sit on media regulator bodies, Michael Grade, chief executive of Channel 4, told a recent Institute of Public Policy Research seminar. He said that in South Africa the selection process was supervised by the judiciary, “appointing the best candidates from the thousands of nominees who responded to a public invitation to apply.

The members thus selected are intelligent and fully in touch with the needs of the population.” Now who could he be comparing them with?. A bug in the continuity

Is this the longest chase in TV history? In a recent episode of the BBC drama Bugs, the heroine Jaye Griffiths is pursued by a thug up a lift-shaft in the Observer’s old Battersea office. They emerge on the roof of the Daily Telegraph’s former building in London’s Docklands No wonder they’re panting.. The English are drawn to “dreaming spires” but inclined to be anxious about “Oxbridge freemasonry”. This week’s worry is the suggestion by a college treasurer that Oxbridge students or their parents will have to find increasing sums of money for tuition or other charges.

This raises fears that recent trends toward admission on the basis of educational achievement rather than family wealth might be reversed, although it tends to ignore the fact that most universities are exploring ways of raising more money from students and their parents, beyond that paid by the state. In other countries, fees paid by students haven’t reduced the numbers going to university. The more interesting point which arises from this latest Oxbridge debate is not whether the colleges should ask students to pay more, but whether Oxbridge colleges still have a valid claim to the pounds 2,000 per student top- up in tuition fees they receive direct from the Exchequer.
This bounty relies upon the claim that Oxbridge offers the highest-quality teaching and research in the country, comparable with the best universities in the developed world. The claim is based on three propositions.First, one-to-one tutorials are supposed to provide superior teaching.