Hurrah for Marina!

Big news stories breaking today, not only has the most highly paid BBC presenter decided that he is not going to renew his contract in June but the second place for the BBC Sound of 2010 has been announced. In other news, the comedy gold is one again returning to our ears this week as Just a Minute returns for a new series to give me my weekly dose of laughter and I have made some progress with my impossible assignment.

First up the news that Jonathan Ross is resigning. I am still in two minds about this news because one the one hand I actually find him quite funny sometimes - more so the bits inbetween the interviews where he demos the latest crazy fad in the marketplace than the actual interviews themselves. I have never listened to his Radio 2 show so I can't comment on that but I will miss his Friday night shows. More so perhaps, we will be loosing the last outlet for televised music performances and a lot of the new and upcoming bands will lose their platform to progress into the mainstream marketplace without this boost. This was something that I had initially not considered until I read an article in NME about how much influence the performances on his show actually have on real sales. It turns out that often after performing, there is a noticeable increase in single and album sales so never underestimate the power of TV! There are hopes however that the Beeb will use this primetime slot for music programming although without any high profile chat shows on the TV now, I'm sure they will be looking for his replacement.

Number two on the Sound of 2010 list went to my favourite artist of the moment, Marina and the Diamonds. If you have been paying even the smallest bit of attention to these ramblings over the past few months, you will have noticed that I have mentioned this very talented woman quite a lot and I am so glad that she has had the recognition she deserves. I knew it was very unlikely that she would get the top number one spot because that was always pretty much guaranteed to be Ellie Goulding so number two is as good as she was ever going to get realistically. Thankfully, time is ticking away now and it won't be too much longer before Hollywood is released as well as her first proper album, The Family Jewels. Bring on February!