A weekly roundup of media news, sans effort

Quote of the week

“I haven’t been home. I came straight here.” ITV presenter Holly Willoughby, live on air with fellow This Morning host Philip Schofield, admitting the pair had been out all night partying after winning a National Television Award for their work, and then winding up at Ant’s house playing the messy game Pie Face, resulting in mint sauce stains on her dress.

Weekly High

This week the action comedy Ride Along 2 opened in the UK. To mark the occasion, stars of the flick, Ice Cube and Kevin Hart, decided to fly into Manchester Airport and make a surprise appearance at the first screening in the city’s Odeon Printworks. How’s that for a surprise?

 

Weekly Low

In more serious news, Sky News’ Darren McCaffrey decided to ask Professor Sir Norman Williams, senior clinical advisor to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and former President of the Royal College of Surgeons, one simple question: “Where is Jeremy Hunt?” The minister has been avoiding press attention as more than 40,000 junior doctors went on strike last week over pay and contractual disputes. The answer was all about avoidance, so the question was posed once more, at which point a government aide stepped and simply said “We’re not doing all this nonsense.” Not exactly text book public relations.

Stories To Keep An Eye On

Google’s head of advertising is promising a further crack down on ‘bad ads’ in 2016, last year the tech giant apparently disabled more than 780million deemed to be guilty of malpractice. 

Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson is starting up his own PR company.

Latest newspaper circulation figures from the UK ABC are in, and they don’t look good. Here’s a great analysis from The Media Briefing as to why even digital hopes might not be realistic going forward.