Stop Press - Business Nightmares on TV

I have just seen details of a new series starting on BBC tonight, in which “Evan Davis uncovers the scarcely believable stories of how some of the world’s most successful businesses have made monumental mistakes.”

In the first episode, titled Doomed Designs, they are looking at “changing the formula of one of the world’s favourite soft drinks (Coke), launching a detergent so powerful that tests showed it shredded consumers’ clothes (Persil), and pricing a certain car model too low (Mini)” - some more background on these three stories here. Contributors to the programme include Sir James Dyson and Sir Richard Branson - if you miss it tonight (BBC2 at 8pm) it will be on again overnight on Thursday - times shown in the link here. The second episode next week is to be called Marketing Mess-ups.

Sounds like essential progamming for A2 students in particular - perhaps as a good break from revision? And of course that other business nightmare, The Apprentice, starts again on Tuesday at 9 on BBC1.

If you can spare the time between past papers, there was another good programme last night, Lord Sugar Tackles Football. The BBC blurb about it says “Lord Sugar, one of the country’s leading entrepreneurs and a football fan, investigates the business side of the beautiful game. Despite generating billions in TV and other income, the professional English game is struggling to make ends meet. Most Premier League clubs are in the red, and debt stands at 3.3 billion pounds. Lord Sugar interviews bosses, owners, agents and players and asks what has gone wrong, who is to blame and what can be done. In typically forthright fashion, he delivers his verdict and his own business blueprint designed to help the game he has followed since childhood.” I heard him being interviewed about it yesterday morning and it did sound worth setting the recorder for - repeated on BBC2 at 23.30 on Tuesday 10th.