Bond 25 questions: Eve of the announcement Part II

Posted on April 24, 2019 by The Spy Commander

Everyone is getting revved up for the April 25 Bond 25 announcement.

So, according to Eon Productions’ official Twitter feed, there’s going to be an online Bond 25 announcement on April 25. But, of course, the blog has more questions.

What time is the announcement again?

The text of the tweet says it will be “13:10 BST/05:10 PST.” But the tweet embeds a video that says it will be “13:10 GMT/5:10 PST.”

BST refers to British Summer Time. GMT refers to Greenwich Mean Time. They’re not the same thing. This website refers to GMT as currently an “inactive zone” and to use BST.

BST is akin to Daylight Saving Time in the United States. GMT is akin to standard time in the U.S.

Right now, BST is five hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time (i.e. eastern time in the U.S.) So 13:10 BST would be 8:10 EDT. It would also be 5:10 Pacific Daylight Time (PDT). But that’s not the same thing as PST (Pacific Standard Time).

Oh my. What do you suggest?

You might want to be ready to go an hour earlier just in case. Given how many 007 film fans are starved for Bond 25 news, that’s probably not much of a stretch.

I see. Any other observations?

Here’s one: 007 & Co. did deals with Good Morning Britain in the U.K. and Good Morning America in the U.S. for Bond 25-related programming on April 25 and 26. The British morning show started doing promos last week, and the U.S. program began promotions this week.

So those programs were, more or less, setting the media agenda for Bond 25 over the past few days. It wasn’t clear whether there’d be an actual announcement or no.

Then, today, Eon put out the aforementioned tweet. It looks like this:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

OK, so now we know there is an actual announcement coming. But things were a little uncertain for a while. Admittedly hindsight is 20-20. But perhaps Eon should have made its advisory first, with the two morning shows following. Just a thought.

UPDATE: I have a pretty strong feeling, re: time zones, they mean BST (British Summer Time). So perhaps you shouldn’t worry and get up too early. NEVERTHELESS, this is why public announcements require care, especially when it comes to references to time of day and time zones.

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Bond 25 questions: Eve (?) of the announcement edition

Posted on April 23, 2019 by The Spy Commander

It seems we’re about to get some Bond 25 news this week. But, given how Bond 25 development has gone the past three years, there are questions even in the home stretch.

What changes from the normal media launch might we see?

During the evening of April 23, the MI6 James Bond website came out with a story that said the following:

MI6 has been informed that there will be no traditional press conference.

Instead, specially recorded segments in Jamaica will be packaged by ABC TV (Good Morning America) in the USA and ITV in the UK (Good Morning Britain) for broadcast on Thursday and Friday this week.

Anything particularly odd about that?

U.S. network ABC, which airs Good Morning America, is owned by Walt Disney Co. Competitor NBC, which airs Today, a morning rival to Good Morning America, is owned by Comcast. Comcast, in turn, is parent company to NBC-Universal. The Universal part is Bond 25’s international distributor.

So?

From a distance, it would appear Bond 25 is messing over one of its corporate partners (Universal).

Any other concerns?

The blog is wondering if we’ll find out Bond 25’s actual title this week. This decade, at this point, we were told that Bond 23 would be called Skyfall and Bond 24 would be called SPECTRE.

Maybe we’ll be told Bond 25’s actual title. But the format of this week’s media event is different enough that the blog isn’t taking it for granted.

UPDATE (April 24): Comcast also is being shut out on the European side of the Atlantic when it comes to this week’s Bond 25 events. Comcast owns a controlling interest Sky. But ITV isn’t part of Sky. h/t to reader Rob Coppinger for bringing this to my attention.

UPDATE II: Reader @CorneelVf on Twitter has a post of a program guide indicating Comcast’s Sky will have a half-hour show on Thursday called Bond 25: The Announcement.

UPDATE III: The official Eon Productions 007 Twitter feed has details about a live Bond 25 announcement at 13:10 GMT on Thursday. Twitter users can ask questions using #BOND25. This may be a social media substitute for the traditional media event for 007 films.

 

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