This is running on-air across Europe right now and can be seen in the Corporate section.

They loved it. And we loved making it for them. Although just perhaps a little too much. You can see this in the Sports section.

Maybe we could get them to agree to a film shoot with Bradley Wiggins next time? We live in hope.

You can see this commercial in the Corporate section.

Beds and Beats are one of the biggest names in radio production. Their music and talkover beds are heard all over the UK and across the world on the biggest radio stations like BBC Radio 1, Heart, and the biggest radio station in the US, New York’s Z100. They used this video to help showcase their new look online to their clients.

We shot this film in glorious High Definition and used Quantel eQ to give the final pictures a touch of elegance, with an audio mix to make you weep. Dave and the Beds and Beats team were truly delighted with the final version which you can see in the Corporate section.

Using After Effects we created an animated 3D piece with futuristic architecture as the theme to reflect Sberbank’s ‘new Russia’ image.

With a few late nights and lots of strong coffee we can now confirm this is now on-air. You can see the final version in the Corporate section.

Poor Jonathan was even getting a kicking from his presenter colleagues at the BBC. Newsreader Fiona Bruce attacked the money he was earning as “a hell of a lot”. To be fair to him, he got lucky – very very lucky – and must have the best agent in town to have bagged that deal. I mean, if I was offered £6m a year would I say “No thanks chaps”? Would I hell – I’d take it with open arms. Plus another frequently neglected fact is that he also managed to get his own production companies, Open Mike and Hot Sauce, to produce many of the shows. Ross was not only in a win win situation – he was in fact in a win win win situation.

I’m not going to talk about Ross’s misgivings and controversies – that’s been done to death in every paper already and is frankly boring. We all know what he did and what he said. However the big question on everyone’s lips is Where does Wossy go now?

Well there aren’t that many channels out there with the money he commanded at the BBC. Sky One has been mentioned a lot in the news as his next destination – but in fact it’s really more of a shop window for Sky Sports and Sky Movies without the big budgets the networks have to play with. ITV’s worrying financial situation certainly means they won’t have the ability to compete on the finances – although they would clearly welcome him back with open arms. Channel 4 and Five also will be unwilling to pay huge sums of money out – although Ross’s risque personality would fit in better at Channel 4 and would probably be uncensored in the main which would help the negotiations. However, network TV is not the same anymore – the glory days of 10 million viewers will be confined to history before long. The BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Five will be one of up to 50 Freeview channels available in every household before the year is out. And in the homes which take Sky or Virgin the number of rival channels will be in the hundreds. So TV programme budgets will most likely be cut and not increased as the battle for viewers intensifies.

So where does Wossy go? Well, clearly he’s one smart guy – after all he got the biggest salary the BBC has ever paid out – so he won’t be sitting on the sidelines for long. As a presenter he is a hired hand and plays to the call of the channel who hire him. However in July 2008 something rather interesting, albeit low-key, happened. Tim Lovejoy, the architect of Sky Sports legendary Soccer AM show quit to launch Channel Bee – a short-lived website he created in partnership with Spice Girls svengali Simon Fuller’s 19 Entertainment. What Lovejoy realised was as a presenter he had no rights to be employed by Sky Sports, or anyone else for that matter, when his contract came to an end. He would only ever be employed there as a presenter and wanted to own a chunk of his own media. A chance meeting with Simon Fuller after he interviewed David Beckham convinced him the merits of taking ownership of a format and only when you are the brand guardian can you call the shots. Simon Cowell’s production company SyCo own the rights to The X Factor and as a result they control the shots and make the real money. If Lovejoy had owned the rights to the Soccer AM format he could have sold it to numerous territories worldwide as well as being the presenter for as long as he wanted to.

So why should Jonathan Ross go to ITV or Channel 4 only to have the same shackles applied on what he can and can’t say, as well as the difficulty in negotiating a new pay deal? Well I don’t think he will. I think he is smarter than that – as does Simon Cowell for sure. Simon Cowell and Topshop’s Philip Green are launching a global entertainment powerhouse which will be built around moulding popular culture, creating offshoots, and having concert and merchandising deals. The X Factor is just the beginning. If Cowell and Green want to start their new venture with a bang, what better personality would they want on-board as their new star presenter? Ross knows the UK TV industry intimately and brings to the table a guaranteed audience of several million viewers on any show he fronts. If you wanted to create a new global format you need someone with the calibre of Jonathan Ross just like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? turned to Chris Tarrant when they wanted to propel the format into the big time. And yes, Tarrant was a major shareholder in the production company Celador too.

So if Jonathan Ross is smart (he is) and gets the right backer on board (he will) then the £6m a year he earned at the BBC will be dwarfed by his next pay cheque if he manages to own the next programme format either outright, or with the backing of either 19 Entertainment or SyCo. But one thing I’m pretty sure of, that he won’t be a presenter on his next channel simply because he needs the work. Instead it’s more likely he’ll be calling more of the shots himself, plus if he has a financial stake in the format he is more likely to be careful on what he says too when we do see him. So we’re all winners.

My thoughts are with all these VOD services, will the public migrate from their traditional viewing habits as these VOD operators are hoping. Sky recently launched Sky Anytime+ which features lots of on demand programmes on their new HD boxes tailored to the subscriptions. Before this, the only service providers offering VOD on TV was Virgin Media and BT Vision. Customers have adapted well to viewing on their PC’s with the likes of the BBC iPlayer but this hasn’t dented BSkyB’s impressive 10m subscribers one bit.

When you look at the online services, such as Blinkbox, there are quite a few players now in the market: Lovefilm (bought by Amazon recently), SeeSaw (owned by transmission specialists Aquiva), and Vudu (which Wallmart bought last year). Working in TV myself I can tell you that buying up content for these online services is very expensive. Getting exclusive content, considerably more so. Sure all the aforementioned companies have deep pockets but at what point will they walk away from the picnic?

BSkyB’s Anytime+ service is crammed full of exclusive content linked with their exclusive deal with HBO, plus film studio deals boasting deals that prevented their competitors from showing films when Sky weren’t in a position to show them on-demand themselves. Now they are though and the Anytime+ service is a reason for the other guys to start to worry. For instance, Virgin Media sold their channels (Living, Bravo etc) to BSkyB so they could change their focus on building an on-demand product for their customers. Again, BT Vision’s main selling point has been on-demand programmes – including an HBO-branded section in the EPG. Now Sky has taken the HBO programming away and on demand is now widely available elsewhere how will they respond to this new threat from Sky?

Sky already offer a good selection of their programming online through their Sky Player service so they are doing a very good job to cover their bases. So if this is the case, and they continue to lock in exclusive studio deals – don’t forget the 20th Century Fox connection – then the acquisition of Blinkbox by Tesco could well prove to be a purchase of a great product but without any major content. A battle between Britain’s biggest most profitable retailer and Britain’s most profitable broadcaster could may be on the cards before long.