✒ For the London Evening Standard, run by Evgeny Lebedev, its new sister TV station London Live is naturally the most important channel around. Not only did Sarah Sands' hacks dutifully churn out pages of puff stuff last week on launch day and post-launch day, but (despite ratings for individual shows often struggling to make five figures) the paper's television listings place London Live first, before BBC1 and ITV. Other parts of the Russian's empire are less mindlessly loyal: the i ranks London Live as the 11th channel, just behind E4, while the Independent insolently treats it as the mere 12th best, out at the right-hand edge of the listings beyond Sky Arts 1.
✒ In bringing in the Daily Telegraph, the sitcom W1A made its first departure from plausibility (all the BBC stuff is patently credible). In last week's episode its bombshell front page story revealing Ian Fletcher's salary was supposedly written by the paper's "media editor"; but since 2010 they've avoided calling any of their main-paper reporters that, because Torygraph types have always suspected "the media" was a trendy lefty fantasy, infuriatingly linking decent types who do real, important work – its editors and reporters, for instance – with the odious dream merchants of television, advertising and PR.
✒ Congratulations to Discovery for its new series on Thursday cunningly called Game of Stones (about gem-dealers), which will no doubt attract some Game of Thrones fans mistakenly hitting the wrong Sky+ recording option. Monkey can foresee other channels adopting the same tactic: BBC4 might for example go for Frayn on Thrones, in which the humorist picks out British monarchs that tickle his fancy, and Channel 5 or Sky 1 for Throne of Games, a series based in both gents' and ladies' loos that sees the participants playing everything from Goat Simulator to Scrabble.
✒When Greg Dyke opens his mouth in public, whether about football or television, you can be fairly sure that someone's reputation will suffer – quite possibly his own. His contribution to Tuesday's BBC2 look back at the 80s breakfast TV wars, The Battle for Britain's Breakfast (in which Frank Bough resurfaces, but Selina Scott stays away), is no exception. The Saviour of TV-am is typically blunt on the puppeteer behind irreverent loudmouth Roland Rat, his main asset as he struggled to reduce the BBC's ratings lead. "He was the most boring person," Dyke recalls, "unless he had his hand up a rat's arse."
✒ Among the many piquant aspects of last week's Radio Academy awards nominations was the failure of Chris Evans (or indeed any BBC DJ, including Nick Grimshaw) to be nominated in the breakfast show category. Although the Radio 2 man did manage to get shortlisted in one of the unsatisfactory "people" categories – strangely split between best music personality and best music broadcaster lists – this means that, come the ceremony in May, Evans (as the event's host) will be on the podium, beaming or not, as one of the people judged better than him collects a gong.
✒ Was a spot of in-house troubleshooting necessary before Digby Jones: The New Troubleshooter (starting on Thursday on BBC2) was deemed fit to air? Advance provisional schedules gave the remake of John Harvey-Jones' seminal series the title Digby Jones: Factory Controller, but – with its nod to the Thomas the Tank Engine books, which might also be taken to be a cheeky reference to the girth of the emblematic fatcat and former CBI boss – such facetiousness was evidently felt to be unwise.
