Fishburn Hedges

06.09.2011

The autumnal weather and the massively increased traffic on the roads tell us that summer is over. But from a news point of view there wasn’t much of a summer at all. The riots, the News International phone hacking crisis, tumbling financial markets and Libya ensured that there wasn’t much recourse to surfing dogs during the so called silly season. PR folk who’d saved up stories to pitch in August found that the media market was largely closed.

But despite all the action in August, September promises to be a busy month - so it’s worth noting what is going to be on the agenda:

1: The Independent Commission on Banking. The report is out first thing Monday morning. And if you believe the papers, the results are already well known. But if you follow the media closely you will discover that:

a) What we thought we knew we don’t, what we thought was unknown is now known and what we thought was an unknown unknown (apologies to Donald Rumsfeld) may yet change;

b) The devil is in the detail and only the ICB knows that;

c) Osborne and Cameron want to kick this report into the long grass while Vince Cable wants to hammer the banks asap. No guessing who will win;

d) The CBI is leading the charge to try and water down any impact of the ICB report.

2: The economy stupid. If 2011 was going to be the year for growth, according to George Osborne, time is running out. The CBI (yes them again), investors and leading economists are calling for a change of tack from the Chancellor. Let’s see how he finesses this.

3: Party conferences. Yes, them again. Which will be most interesting? My colleagues here have given a pretty tough assessment of the performances of the party leaders. Ed Miliband looks like the guy with the biggest job to do.

4: The Olympics. Every major media now has an Olympics correspondent and for those of us foolish enough to watch the local news in London, it is clear that there aren’t enough stories to go around. Expect some of our medal hopes to be given the full media treatment. Expect lots of transport chaos and related stories. And there are still over 10 months to go!

So as we had no silly season, the serious season promises to be a hard slog. Bring back the surfing dogs, please.

Posted by Jason Nisse.