By the time this blog is published, Utopia will have finished its six episode run on Channel 4. If Poliakoff’s Dancing on the Edge was launched with one kind of hype (see Stephen Harper’s blog), Utopia was surrounded by hype of a different nature.

One of the pleasures of researching the history of UKTV drama for the ‘Spaces of Television: production, site and style’ AHRC project is finding yet more evidence of the non-teleological and non-linear nature of TV history.

Last week the BBC revealed that the Doctor Who 50 ^th anniversary special would be shown in 3D, not only on television via the BBC HD channel, but also in cinemas.

Dancing on the Edge , the five-part BBC2 series whose final episode will be broadcast on Monday, has all the hallmarks of a late-period Stephen Poliakoff artefact: sumptuous settings; deep focus shots revealing a wealth of period detail; an Expressionist use of colour with lots of vibrant, Meaningful Red; a camera that lingers on black and white photographs;

There are times when television rules our house.   There are certain shows we watch with an intense level of concentration and involvement that even prohibits exchanging opinions until the credits roll.  At other times, television functions as background, or ‘white’ noise, much as radio once did, and perhaps still does, while other activities are taking place in the home.

Sadly the 18 ^th January 2013 marked the end of *Fringe *– the little – much loved — telefantasy show that managed to hold out for five seasons against the odds at Fox, a channel notorious for cancelling cult SF shows in their infancy (see Firefly, Wonderfalls, Dollhouse ).

One of the strange things about the people in soaps is that they don’t appear to watch television. Recently in EastEnders we have had several sights of a character slumped on the sofa with a faint sound of a soundtrack on the soundtrack. But the television soon gets switched off without comment and the story resumes.

Walton Goggins.  What a name.  Worthy of Dickens, everything about it just fits when you know his work: the Depression-era mountain-boy Sunday morning re-run buzz of the Christian name and the boggle-eyed hillbilly, gin n’ grog stutter of his family name.

This Monday, at 6 am, a much-trumpeted ITV rebrand was revealed. The ITV logo has been re-designed and the 1 has been dropped to make their flagship channel ITV once more.

There’s no picture of Jimmy Savile attached to this blog. Press and TV coverage has repeated images of him, seemingly to demonstrate what an unsavoury person he was (shell suit, cigar, endless gurning). Such images encourage the speculation “why didn’t anyone object?” or “why didn’t anyone find him out?” The answer lies, unfortunately, with television more than any other institution.

It’s the time of year for predictions. Five-page research reports into what consumers want, or what capital will give them, become available for $4500. Advertising semioticians set out their stalls at conventions. Academics shill for sovereign consumers’ boundless—not even relative—autonomy, shrieking with self-confidence as new technologies once again are announced to be overhauling TV. Ah, January.