Media Week’s Media Bitch
Today’s UK Media Week (4th November 2008) misquotes us AND confuses itself with a double negative but still manages to come up with one liners that we wish we had thought of, first a headline “It’s pods on for glitzy Westfield opening” and another one at the end of the story “Looks like somebody is switched on at CBS after all”
Damn if only we had writers as good as that, Ed
The long-awaited opening of West London’s Westfield shopping centre was a triumph, with Boris Johnson making an uplifting mayoral speech, X Factor winner Leona Lewis singing her hit single Bleeding Love, and model Erin O’Connor taking to the catwalk in the Marks & Spencer fashion show.
However, just days before the opening, it looked as though the mall’s showcase digital pods might not be ready in time. As Dailysooh.com said: “Lots of people have emailed in and told us that with less than two days to go, the new CBS Outdoor pods at Westfield are without electrical power, LAN and/or wi-fi.”
Happily, Bitch is pleased to report that no fewer than 20 of the 110 pods were up and running by the time of the opening ceremony last Thursday. Looks like somebody is switched on at CBS after all.
In our post entitled “Don’t Panic” we actually wrote “Don’t panic. We are techies so we know these things happen. Everything will be fine by opening time”
We had a tour of Westfield, London last week courtesy of Tim and Nicky at CBS Outdoor and yes there were a few Pods not running on the Thursday but overall we were very impressed with what we saw.
There are actually 75 pods at Westfield with 110 display faces (some are single sided, others double-sided). We reckon we saw about half a dozen not switched on.
We don’t think that some of them (the Pods) were due to be commissioned until Monday anyway and bear in mind that there was a hell of a lot of building work still going on even when everything was officially launched. Many of the glamorous shops are still not completely open for business even now.
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