Inside Lord Sugar's 'you're fired' YouView bust-up with TV baron

YouView has announced that Lord Alan Sugar will leave the consortium two years after he headed up the organisation. It was reported over the weekend that he stepped down after an especially animated Apprentice-style boardroom bust-up between the peer and Richard Desmond, owner of Channel 5. Lord Sugar was apparently told "you' …

[Shagbag]

Asian Babes

One of the finest top-shelf cliterature series from Mr Desmond.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sugar and Desmond have a lot in common

They both dealt in shoddy low brow tat.

[dogged]

Re: Sugar and Desmond have a lot in common

To be fair, I'd take Sugar over Desmond.

At least he loathes Piers Morgan, so he can't be all bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sugar and Desmond have a lot in common

Leaders of British Industry, and the only redeeming feature of two equally loathesome men is that one of them dislikes someone else slightly more loathesome. No wonder we'll all fucked.

[Psyx]

Re: Sugar and Desmond have a lot in common

"To be fair, I'd take Sugar over Desmond. At least he loathes Piers Morgan, so he can't be all bad."

I would dearly love to lock all three of them in a box, and bury it.

[Irongut]

I'm always amused when everyone and their dog proclaims Murdoch unfit to own Sky yet they never say a word about Dirty Desmond.

[El Presidente]

I'm always amused

When everyone and their dog, on the one hand slags off Dirty Desmond whilst on the other hand ..........

[Lamont Cranston]

Ha!

Probably because Sky own all the rights to all of the Sport and Films, and then charge you for the privilege of letting them beam adverts into your home (ie. stuff you want, but don't want to pay for), whilst Desmond's 5 owns the rights to, umm, CSI and, er, Robson Greene's fishing rod, and doesn't charge you to watch (ie. stuff you don't want, but watch because you don't have to pay). All this makes Desmond seem positively benevolent, when compared with Murdoch.

[Stevelane]

Desmond may be a dirty bastard but he is our dirty bastard!

[Psyx]

"I'm always amused when everyone and their dog proclaims Murdoch unfit to own Sky yet they never say a word about Dirty Desmond."

Don't prod me on that one.

I'm still fucking disgusted that he gets away with the 'Health Lottery' bullshit. It's about as amoral as you can get.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

That explains it

"Lord Sugar earned five times the £97,000 salary paid to his predecessor Kip Meek"

Obviously, Lord Sugar didn't keep meek...

[Embed]

DTG and YouView

"Today, whatever made YouView unique has sedimented into global TV standard specifications, a process managed by the Digital TV group.". This is pure twaddle. YouView's only connection with the DTG is that it uses a bastardized version of Freeview, the standards of which are managed by the DTG. There is no global standard for hybrid- OTT with the exception of HbbTV which has nothing to do with YouView which uses a defunct Adobe platform. The Freeview platform has the technical specs to support the important functionality of YouView and catch-up players , but the Freeview shareholders (i.e. the BBC) decided instead to sink £millions into YouView and let Freeview decay into a just-plain-TV platform with some pathetic balloon adverts.

[LinkOfHyrule]

Oh Lordy Lodry!

I hope he left trailing behind him a wheelie suitcase full of broken Amstrad Sky Boxes and Animatronic Alan Sugar head prototypes, then hopped into the back of a waiting black cab and drove through the streets of London moaning about how he's the best but was set up by his team-mates!

I wonder if now he's gone, Des is going to re-brand from YouView to ScrewView and to use a phrase made famous by Diane Abbott - "Pornify" the platform offering somewhat?

Mines the one with a dubiously shaped YouView box remote that looks a bit dildoey poking out the top pocket.

[FanniM]

Even Lord Sugar leaving is good publicity as I hadn't heard about YouView before tonight. I'm fed up with Virgin so looking to change, but am not sure if YouView would be the right solution.

[jxp]

Not yet IMO

YouView is a step in the right direction but it's not there yet.

IMO to be truly compelling YouView needs to offer;

1. IPTV downloading. Its mentioned in the spec but not yet implemented. Downloading gets over the problem of slow or erratic broadband.

2. Online portal. They really need the reverse EPG on a website, even if each programme just links to the relevant iPlayer, 4od page. I know they are targetting the TV but this would build the brand image and be fairly simple and useful

3. Tablet apps. They also need to create a YouView client (online and downloading) for tablets. A lot of IPTV is low (video) quality. It doesn't need to be on a 42" plasma, an iPad or Nexus tablet would work just fine.

4. A cheap box (£50 or less) that is YouView IPTV only. I have enough Freeview boxes/TVs but I can't watch itvPlayer, 4od or Demand 5 on my smart TV. Maybe add an SD or USB slot for download storage

[The Godfather]

Re: Not yet IMO

Shit, this sounds complicated...I'll just stick with Sky (robbers)...

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it just me...

...thinking that this is crying out for a Playmobil reconstruction?