Fishburn Hedges

05.01.2012

I recently read an analysis of how successful Blackstone Group’s investment guru Byron Wein was with his 2011 predictions. On the basis of Mr Wein target of 50% success rate – as opposed to 33% for other gurus – I’m quite pleased with my predictions of the six stories we’d all be reading about over Christmas.

Quite correctly I predicted that the Christmas Number 1 would get a lot of coverage – not least because the Radio 2’s Chris Evans was pushing the Military Wives so hard they could hardly miss. We’ve also been swamped with retail misery in the media – though John Lewis brightened up proceedings – and there will be more misery to come in the next few days. And, yes, The Queen’s Speech was well covered, not least because there’s rarely any other news on Christmas Day.

So what about the other three predictions.

The Ratings War: Yes, the fight for top coverage on Christmas Day sparked a lot of discussion. No it wasn’t Doctor Who wot won it, or indeed Eastenders (though why anyone wants to have a giant lump of misery while digesting their turkey is beyond me). ITV scooped the pool with Downton Abbey which, though it “only” got 8.1 million viewers on the day, secured another 3.5 million on second viewing or catch up TV. Catch up enables you to skip through the adverts – so no wonder it was so popular. I’ll give myself a half point for this.

Travel Chaos: This is the dog that didn’t bark – not least because the weather was so mild. Sure we had 100 MPH winds this week, stopping trains in Scotland, and a Tube strike on Boxing Day. But no newspaper editors were inconvenienced. So no massive story.

Major Celebrity Dies: Again this didn’t happen – unless you count Kim Jong Il or Vaclav Havel, which I don’t. There was some concern about Prince Philip – which prompted a massive amount of coverage and some confusion in news rooms – but he soon made a recovery.

So 3.5 out of 6 – beating Byron Wein. Can’t complain.

Posted by Jason Nisse