Just at the very moment when the official launch of the silly season seemed inevitable, along came the most dreadful atrocity from the most unexpected of all places – Norway. Then Amy Winehouse died. Couldn’t she have waited a couple of days and then she could have been given the full, unambiguous dead tragic star/hero treatment without any Norwegian neo-Nazis getting in the way.

Raymond Snoddy: It was most unfortunate that James Murdoch could not deal adequately with such a tricky question at yesterday’s select committee (a compelling drama that told us almost nothing new in any factual sense but almost everything about the key players involved) because in the mildest of ways it went to the heart of the matter…

Raymond Snoddy: “Rupert Murdoch could say “to hell with it” – though those would not be the actual words used. He could close down Sky News and save the company an immediate £20 million a year. Worse still the entire future of News International could be called into question…”

Raymond Snoddy: It has been a remarkable few days, in which three important instutitions in British society – the press, the police and the Prime Minister – have all been judged and found wanting…

Raymond Snoddy: Things are moving so fast with one journalistic atrocity following another on a daily basis, each worse in some telling aspect than the one that has gone before, that something urgent now has to be done…

As Jeremy Hunt reaches out for the disastrous “bottom-up” solution for local TV, would-be operators at yesterday’s Future of Broadcasting conference had one simple piece of advice – have the courage to stick to the original plan. It is the only one that will work…

Raymond Snoddy: If Lord Patten can handle the sometimes sulphurous politics of a major university, never mind the Tory party, then the manoeuvrings of the BBC are tame by comparison…

Raymond Snoddy: Whatever numbers are being released, there is always room for sages like Sir Martin Sorrell and John Hegarty to add that little bit of something extra – experience, judgement, balance…

Raymond Snoddy tells a story that rather eloquently illustrates just how large an issue privacy is becoming and how things can go seriously awry when the marketing community gets it even inadvertently wrong…

Raymond Snoddy: Jeremy Hunt has truly understood the benefits of delay in the political world – sometimes the most intractable problems can go away if you just leave them long enough. Time to take advantage & refer BSkyB/Murdoch to the Competition Commission; and as for the great local television project, endless delay would not be too long…