News Of The Week by The Fourth Wheel

Hello and welcome to the Fourth Wheel’s weekly news bulletin , which this week has been negatively impacted by downward productivity trends brought on by a surplus of deadlines and a shortfall in useable employee-hours. I’m sorry, I seem to have swallowed a corporate report. I’ve been too damn busy, is what I’m saying, and this week’s podcast is brief as a result. What I have found time for, becau...

Hello and welcome to the Fourth Wheel’s weekly news bulletin , which this week delivers something close to my perfect vision of what this is all about. Not saying I was perfect, not at all, but the blend of news is just right: some new products (good and bad), some corporate intrigue, some speculative fun and some solid industrial underpinnings. I begin, however, with a few minutes on the Met Gala...

Hello and welcome to the Fourth Wheel’s weekly news bulletin , in the week I have decided marks the real post-Watches & Wonders lull. Nevertheless there is still news, and in my dedication I have roused myself from the horological food coma to deliver it straight into your ears. In this week’s episode I touch on Anoma’s A1 core collection, i.e. the news that the brand is moving away from drop-base...

Hello and welcome to The Fourth Wheel’s weekly podcast. This week’s episode is special for two reasons. First, it’s a Watches & Wonders round-up, so it’s longer than usual (although I’ve done my best to talk quickly!) and secondly, as you will have noticed, it’s a video. Don’t expect this to become the norm just yet. But seeing as this week’s news is entirely concerned with new products, and for o...

Hello and welcome to the Fourth Wheel’s weekly news bulletin, back in your podcast apps after a couple of weeks when life prevented me putting an episode together. This week, things are starting to really simmer ahead of the full-on news explosion that will be Watches & Wonders next week. I’ve got four items to discuss. The first is some newly-announced rule changes to the GPHG. I was, as ever, po...

Hello and welcome to the Fourth Wheel’s weekly news bulletin. In an uncharacteristic move, I start this week with a look at the watches worn on the red carpet at the Oscars, but don’t worry. We are talking about the inside baseball of teasing unreleased watches, and I explain why Omega can be a lot more upfront about theirs than Jaeger-LeCoultre (but why it’s also less fun). The main item today is...

Hello and welcome to the Fourth Wheel’s weekly news bulletin. A slow week this week - we are in the ‘news limbo’ generated ahead of Watches & Wonders, wherein exhibitors are not permitted to launch anything new from March 3rd onwards, and while that does leave plenty of other potential sources of news, they all seem to be keeping quiet so far this week. With that in mind, I share a few reflections...

Hello and welcome to the Fourth Wheel’s weekly news bulletin. A lovely mixed bag this week with news from the business desk, the breaking news team and the department of opinion and analysis. Remarkably, they all sound like the same guy. Anyway, yes: I could not allow the moment to pass without having my two cents on Morgan Stanley vs Swatch Group, the most corporate of beefs we’re likely to see i...

Hello and welcome to the Fourth Wheel’s weekly news bulletin. I’m back from illness and raring to go - except I’m horrendously behind, which is why this is going out about twelve hours late. Let’s call it an experiment in hitting the all-important commute home window for all my North American listeners… This week I pick over news that Breitling’s private equity owners had to downgrade the value of...

Hello everyone. Something a bit different for you today… I have unfortunately been laid low with a chest infection, and being in no fit state to record a round-up of the week’s news (or spend hours at my desk writing one), I am instead bringing you the latest episode of The Watch Enquiry, the podcast I co-host with Tim Barber. So at least you have something to listen to! The Watch Enquiry is on Ap...

Hello and welcome to the Fourth Wheel’s weekly news bulletin. This week’s podcast is a day late: my apologies. I’d like to say I was holding it back to break a sensational story, but no… this bulletin is brought to you from the little-discussed media playbook of “having an injured toddler at home and working all night to keep every plate spinning.” Thankfully it was a slightly quieter news week. T...

Hello and welcome to the Fourth Wheel’s weekly news bulletin. Can I just say that whoever cut the brake cables on 2026, you have unleashed quite the juggernaut. Less ‘constant force’, more ‘constant drama’. As KingFlum wrote, with a phrase that I think will be lodged in my brain for the rest of the year, we are “drowning in what we wanted”. Every trend is a torrent, no watchmaker willing to risk b...

Hello and welcome to the Fourth Wheel’s weekly news bulletin. This week I pick out my personal favourites from the list of limited edition launches coming up at British Watchmakers’ Day - these were announced just today and there are some crackers, notably from Pinion, Schofield, Farer and Christopher Ward - but the other news is that for the time being there are no limited editions from Studio Un...

Hello and welcome to the Fourth Wheel’s weekly news bulletin. Week two and I’ve broken my self-imposed 20-minute limit (albeit only by about 50 seconds), but I blame LVMH for launching so many noteworthy watches. In years gone by - and this varies significantly brand-to-brand I must add - LVMH Watch Week has occasionally carried the clear sense that the best releases are being held back. I don’t d...

Hello and welcome to The Fourth Wheel’s first in-house podcast! I’m trying new things this year, and this is first. A weekly news bulletin - audio only for now - every Tuesday. I have wanted to add something to the TFW platform for a long time; not just for the sake of it, but because I have been looking for a way to ‘do news’ without exhausting myself or duplicating what you can find elsewhere. T...