MassCom Magazine

Sir Tom Stoppard is to work with BBC television for the first time in more than 30 years, making a five-hour epic tale of the Great War which he hopes will revive the reputation of one of Britain's finest novelists of the early 20th century, Ford Madox Ford.

The public's desire for the online coverage of stories from David Beckham's wardrobe to Catherine Zeta-Jones's dress disasters has seen advertisers flock to its site. The growth in online revenues is a welcome development for news services looking to make the internet pay, but some are questioning whether free sites can yet be self-sufficient.

The gap between the broadband speeds advertised by internet service providers and the actual speeds customers receive has widened in the past year, the communications watchdog revealed yesterday.

BBC bosses were today hoping to repeat the success of former One Show presenter Christine Bleakley by unveiling a replacement who even looks like her.

UK consumers are less willing to pay for online content than web users in other countries, according to new research. It spells bad news for publishers looking to boost revenues from the internet.

Last Friday, Richard Desmond bought the television channel Five for £103m and there was barely a murmur of protest in the media. Yet his purchase of the Daily Express in December 2000 created a terrific hullabaloo. Many thought that a man whose fortune was founded on pornography might not be a proper person to own a national newspaper. The Guardian had doubts, having produced evidence linking Mr Desmond with hardcore pornography. It discovered that a company owned by him had registered a website which promised live heterosexual sex, live lesbian sex as well as other images portraying a sex-crazed woman of 78, another who was pregnant, and another who went by the name of Anal Annie.

It seems the French are finding the Tour de France (ITV4 and British Eurosport) somewhat of a turn-off these days; 72 per cent of them under the age of 35 now claim to have no interest.

King of the TV sofa, Eamonn Holmes hogged headlines when he rolled off his cushions to complain about comics making fun of his girth. His namesake Sherlock also grabbed publicity with the launch of a new mystery series on the BBC tonight. Chalk and cheese or peas in a pod?

Katie Derham has been the face of the BBC Proms for just over a week, so you can forgive the staff of the Royal Albert Hall restaurant for having no idea who she is when we arrive without a booking, and for politely telling us to shove off.

Gary Lineker is poised to become a columnist on the News of the World in time for the new football season.

China's most famous blogger Han Han, praised for his searing critiques of corrupt officialdom and social issues, conceded Thursday that his biggest problems may be in the romance department.

Newspaper and magazine proprietor Richard Desmond has bought TV channel Five, it was announced today.

What persuaded did Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to sue the News of the World for making-up stories about the demise of their marriage? In recent years they could, after all, have taken hundreds of gossip magazines, show-business websites, and tabloid newspapers to the cleaners for doing exactly the same thing.

A look at this week's top-rated websites from StumbleUpon, recorded on July 23.

The 'Old Spice guy,' Isaiah Mustafa, continues to hypnotize YouTube users, causing fans to do (incredibly clever) spin-offs.

Justin Bieber fans have been playing havoc with Twitter's trending topic algorithm on the morning of July 23, sending "Diustin Biber" to the top of the charts.

Twitter will shift its technical operations to a new US data center later this year to better cope with the rocketing popularity of the hot microblogging service.

Two weeks after 10 Russian spies flew back from the United States to Moscow, the buzz of interest around the ring's most photogenic member, the feisty redhead Anna Chapman, shows no signs of receding.

A former Britain's Got Talent hopeful who blamed health problems for her poor audition said today that she holds Simon Cowell personally responsible for her public humiliation.