Life Yes, Liverpool is the centre of the universe again in media terms. As well as the visit by Boris Johnson (typical that he'd go to LIPA first -- what where you thinking? Oh right, you weren't, not at all), the council voting this evening to ban smoking in enclosed work places there is Taxi TV, the television station which is spreading spore-like through the city's cabs. It appears to be a small plasma screen plugged into a laptop running Windows Media Player on random and sits on the left hand side of the driver, the peaking through their window towards the passenger seats. The content is a mix of advertisements, informercials and advertisments.
A similar concept was tried in the city's buses for a while. It didn't work then and doesn't work now. The problem is that the length of the average journey is such that the programmes need to be short and punch, which doesn't lead to much depth. Also because the sound is frequently inaudible it has to work much of the time in visuals and these tend to be quite bland. The only glimmer of life are presented slots in which a Liverpudlian girl getting her 'big break' who visits various shops and tourist attractions. She has an easy manner and in fact one of the slots I've seen in which she was shown about a museum by former-Everton manager Howard Kendall was quite poigniant. But in general, the only way this could work with a much greater variety and quality of programmes, possibly with a much bigger media partner such as the BBC.
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