Here comes the year of making love…

Yes when you thought it couldn’t happen, here it is on the promo for BBC Three’s 2013 season (need to be in the UK sorry).

As things gear up for next season, it will be interesting to see whats changed. Seems Fevermedia haven’t quite got up to speed yet. Their last post is STILL seeking people to take part in June.

There’s been a number of comments on the unofficial Facebook group, theres little to no more information on Digital Spy but a bit more at the BBC press office.

The lack of interest and push indicates to me, this show will go down without any major fan-fare or flames. Maybe the BBC will think again before entering the world of dating and love? Got to say, it might pass without any real comment. Which isn’t a bad thing because we all (including Fevermedia) frankly rather forget what happened…

The Year of Making Love needs me…?

a year of making love band

Fever Media, the Year of Making Love… (remember that crazy dating experience I had) have been in touch again…

They want to use my video diary for the show which looks to go live in time for Valentines day 2013…

However…

They need my signature to use it… They need a licence for existing material.

I later got a email from them with the contract.

Year of Making Love (Working Title) (the “Programme”)
For the purposes of this letter, the “Material” shall mean any and all material in whatever form including without limitation audiovisual so called ‘video diary footage’, and mobile phone screen grabs/footage uploaded by you onto the Year of Making Love web capture site ‘http://yoml.tv/’ (the Website’) and / or otherwise provided to the Year of Making Love Production Team at any time whether prior to or subsequent to the date hereof

We write to confirm our agreement as follows:-

  1. You hereby grant to us and persons authorised by us the non-exclusive right in perpetuity to record, copy, reproduce, broadcast, transmit and perform all or part of the Material for and/or in connection with the production, exploitation, promotion and/or advertising of the Programme throughout the world for the entire period of copyright in the Material and all extensions and renewals thereof by all means and in all media whether now known or hereafter discovered or developed. For the avoidance of doubt and without limitation to the forgoing you agree that the Material may be embedded in the Website.
  2. By submitting the Material to us, you thereby grant to us a worldwide, royalty free, irrevocable licence to use, copy, exploit, manipulate, distribute, reproduce (and to sub-licence such rights) the Material.
  3. You warrant that you are entitled to grant to us the rights referred to in paragraph 1 above and that the exercise of such rights will not (a) infringe the copyright or any other personal or property rights of any person or be in breach of any statute or regulation or (b) entitle any person to claim any payment from us or from any of our licensee.
  4. In full consideration for all rights and benefits hereby granted we shall pay to you the sum of £1 receipt of which is hereby acknowledged.
  5. You are solely responsible for the content of any material submitted, and any consequences of the further publication of such by us. We shall have no liability whatsoever and howsoever arising in respect of Material submitted.
  6. You agree that you shall not submit any Materials which are unlawful, defamatory, offensive or in breach of third party rights.
  7. We shall not be obliged to include the Material in the Programme.
  8. We shall be entitled to assign the benefit of this agreement to any third party but we shall remain liable to you for all of our obligations under this agreement.

What do people think I should do?

If I say no, they will just go and use someone elses
If I say yes, I have no idea how they will edit or mess with it.

Remember the show “how to have more sex” (I chalk that one up to how TV sucks!)

What should I do?

Finally matched: year of making love saga continues…

I’ve said some bad things about the pretty much dead on arrival year of making love. And my views haven’t changed one single bit, actually with the additional push for more meat to the slaughter, I’m really not liking what going on. But everytime, I keep wondering, what happen to my match? Whats she like, is she even bothered and does the maths/algorithm behind the match actually work in anyway?

So today I got a email from Fevermedia saying they had some good news and they were very sorry for what had happened but… they had details of my match.

Dear Ian,

Despite the disappointment of not meeting your match at our launch event, we’re really excited that we are now able to put you in touch!  We hope that you’re still interested in the project as your input is incredibly valuable to us. The experiment has already generated a number of fantastic couples, and we really hope that you will be the latest successful match!

Contact details of your match:

Name: ******** **********

Email: *****************************

This experiment relies on your input so please let us know how you get on!

So once again I’m slightly sucked in… As Josh says this is better than reality TV? Hopefully it won’t be like the car crash of Take me out.

I have emailed her and to be honest did a small google search (hey everyone does it now, trust me!) and discovered she has a twitter account and facebook account. I didn’t look any more deeper… honestly, I was at work and got plenty to do…

Interesting they use the term experiment again

Funny enough I got into a discussion with Matthew (head of BBC R&D) and he mentioned to me how he was following my tweets on the day of the year of making love. And we got talking about my thoughts on matching algorithms in respect to this whole experience and online dating.

What was really interesting was Matthew’s answer to could maths/science match people? He said, “no and hope not.” Which to be honest no ones ever said to me regarding this question yet. There was a unspoken and knowing look that there was so much more to the comment than just that statement. Maybe something for Geeky & Sexy or Social Preston?

So yes the Saga continues… In which direction will be interesting, because I don’t know many of the couples which were matched on the day which are still together.

A quick letter of complaint to Fevermedia

After the year of love self destruction, I’ve been holding off sending them exactly what I thought of them. Everytime I go to write, I get pissed off and start repeating some of the thoughts in my blog entry from earlier…

So in the end I wrote this because I needed to write something short and being 2 days later, it just needed to happen…

I’m still days later, generally peed off about what happened on Saturday… I wrote a blog entry which you may or may not be interested in.

I personally was interested in the experiment and meeting my match through science or more like alchemy. But it never happened on the day.
Someone at the end said they would match people via email, but as I wrote I doubt most will agree after such a terrible experience in the name of science… 🙁 Even wrote a blog to encourage people to give it a try…
So I’m still interested in carry on the experiment but wouldn’t be surprised my partner wasn’t interested and it never made the tv… Robbed is how me and many others felt, no wonder there were the signs of frustration by 7pm. As a bbc employee I was also upset to hear people say negative comments about the bbc…
I await answers…
Ian Forrester – number 2135
There’s been a number of Facebook groups/pages setup but the most active is The Year Of Making Love Contestants. Some people have gotten replies but frankly there not very apologetic about the whole event.
There’s also a number of contestant created events happening around the country, including Manchester! If Fevermedia were smart they would back some of these user created events. Something like hardship to bring people together much tighter than almost anything else.

Updated

And just when you think Fevermedia would have put their heads down.. There’s talk on Facebook that they are calling up matches and saying this…

Hi we got your e mail’s we understand you were unhappy with your match.

Can we re-match as we are are still kean on filming you and following your progress through-out the year.

Even if you don’t get on with your match think of the exposure you could get, We won’t pay you but I’m sure you guys can make money out of this.

Your new match is happy to go ahead so it just comes down to you, if you say no thats fine but just think about it as this is a great opportunity.

If this is true and honestly I wouldn’t put it pass them to do such a under-handing thing going on previous experience. I certainly won’t be involved… It goes from being a unique experiment to a freakshow, and thats not what I signed up for… As far as I can see, the contract I signed was void when I didn’t get matched first time.

So much for the science, maths or alchemy…! Once again I’d refer to my last blog