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On the nights when it’s working well (and hopefully they are becoming more
frequent) it’s hard to believe that such a show never existed before. It’s as
though Flipside jumped though a loophole in the fabric of television. Whether
it is as, ‘a human programme guide’, ‘a live listings magazine’ or ‘the
programme that does the flipping for you’, Flipside has become one of the
most written and talked about shows on digital television. Of course, it has to
work as well as a business as it does as a television show and there is no
guarantee that Flipside will still be on air when this book is published.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph in November 2003, the journalist Giles Smith
neatly summed up the show’s prospects,

"The post-modern implications of [the show] could take a decade or so for
some full-time media studies graduate to work out. By which time Flipside will
either have long been consigned to television’s ever more capacious dustbin
or will be the only thing that anyone really cares to watch. Right now I’m not
entirely sure. I’ll get back to you on this in a decade."

Hopefully in ten year’s time, many more ideas from this book will be in
evidence.

David Owen
January 2004

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