We haven't been this excited about snooker since the days when the Matchroom Mob hit the charts with Snooker Loopy. Last weekend's Power Snooker finals, broadcast on ITV4, were fun and exciting to watch. The equivalent of Twenty20 cricket or Premier League darts, it featured top players in the game, including the eventual winner Ronnie "the Rocket" O'Sullivan, attempting to score as many points against their opponent over a 30-minute period. At last, snooker has reached the modern era and potential sponsors should take note.
Investec Autumn Internationals
Ah, autumn - the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ... More importantly, it's the season of Autumn International rugby, shown exclusively live on Sky Sports, kicking off this weekend with England versus New Zealand and concluding on 27 November against South Africa. The crush in the train, the queue at the bar, the roar of the crowd and the crush in the train home is all a crucial part of the Twickenham experience. It's also one of the reasons - along with the shooting season - why autumn is, in our view, the most wonderful time of the year.
News International's pay-wall figures
The first tentative results of News International's pay-wall, which was erected in July, make for quite interesting reading. More than 200,000 people have been converted into paying for access to the digital editions of The Times and The Sunday Times - 105,000 of these chose to pay for the digital-only access. NI claims that its subscribers are more "engaged" than others but then it would say that. Of course, it's still early days but this does make the dynamic between NI and other publishers that allow free access to everything more complex. We think this could be good news - newspapers have been giving away too much of their content for free and surely if something has a value, then it also has a price?
AND ONE THING WE DON'T ...
The letters page of The Telegraph
So ITV finally gets around to producing its first decent drama for decades with Downton Abbey and all the thanks it gets is letters from retired colonels from Tunbridge Wells in The Daily Telegraph moaning about its historical accuracy and originality. Given how lowbrow and cheap most of ITV's Sunday night fare has been since the glory days of Prime Suspect and Cracker, we're actually quite surprised that readers of The Telegraph even watched the channel. Equally, the BBC licence fee is something that they probably disapprove of also; you would have thought they'd be pleased that they can watch a quality television drama for free, even if the odd TV aerial does occasionally wander into shot.