BBC Media Bank live

bbc.co.uk/mediabank is finally live! Go get BBC content and use it on your site. We have just published content for Torchwood this morning, including the trail and an interview with Russell T Davies. Full site is available here:

I am so pleased this project finally really live . In the usual way it’s sort of overlapped with the feedback I have received from testers of the beta and comments in general and so we have already started working on version 2! Look out for more improvements soon…

River of News

Some talk today on Buzz Machine about Dave Winer’s mobile RSS hack of BBC (and Times) News. This seems to suck in and combine latest updates to feeds in one long stream. I agree with some of the comments about it being a reinvention of the wheel of the pre-existing BBC mobile headline update services as this just seems to elevate the importance of “new” stories over any other criteria. Do I really want every update of every story from any news source? No. I twould want to filter these and maybe this will come later down the line.

Doc Searls makes the distinction between this as a “source” of info rather than a “website” which I think is interesting, although the unmediated source is less useful than one I can mediate. I want pretty specifc things from mobile news – a particualr sports result or confirmation on the latest situation in one particular news story, not just what the newest news is everywhere.

If you’re a self-confessed news junkie, then newest news everywhere might be good enough. I think as a news provider, clearly this is one of the BBC’s responsibilities – providing the newest reliable news everywhere, but equallyimportant is for us to provide users ways of finding precisely the news they want within the whole river.

Restoration Village online, oh, and on BBC Two too

Full episodes (yay!) of Restoration Village are now up on BBC Media Bank for you to use on your site. The perennial parents’ favourite (well, mine anyway) returns for a second series -

The countryside’s forgotten architectural treasures beckon for this year’s Restoration series, which showcases 21 buildings from rural locations around the UK, all needing help to bring them back to their former glory.

These buildings once played a central role in their village and their restoration will inject new life into both the buildings and communities they stand in.
Watch Episode 1
Watch Episode 2
Watch Episode 3
Watch Episode 4 Watch Episode 4

Football on the BBC

The football season starts again and I couldn’t care less. But Match of the Day is back on the BBC and there’s a nice looking trail about Football on BBC which I have just made available on BBC Media Bank:

Plus, of course, it’s on BBC Media Bank so you can use this on your site, along with some natty pictures of Alan Shearer.

BBC Collective

I have a soft spot for BBC Collective – so I’m really pleased they have just added their weekly Video Player to BBC Media Bank. There is even a feed for the first time for Media Bank which is great:

Collective’s video player offers an exclusive selection of cultural content from beyond the mainstream. Including live music sessions, interviews, mini-documentaries and more…

You too can use it on your site.

Dragons’ Den

We are adding content to BBC Media Bank now. This morning I have just pushed the new Dragons’ Den content live to the site:

Dragons’ Den

Two new dragons join the fire-breathing millionaire investors in Dragons’ Den on BBC 2.

 

Latest Episode

*UPDATE* Full episodes of Dragon’s Den are now available through BBC Media Bank. i.e. watch the latest episode online after it is broadcast.

BBC Media Bank Ts & Cs

Ooo, following on from the meeting last week – this morning I have in my hand, or my Inbox, the approved copy of the BBC Media Bank terms and conditions. I am going to HTML-ise these right now and add them to the site. We need to get the last minor technical fixes installed and we also need to sit down and just check that Editorial Policy here are across and happy with what we are doing. This hopefully should all be done this week which will mean wewill able to soft-launch the site!

BBC News

Big BBC announcement (registration required) this morning from the Director General Mark Thompson. or BBC News take on BBC news here. Major restructure for the digital age, but no mass job cuts like the last big announcement (phew). We have more detailed briefings later in the day, so I may have a better idea of how it will affect this department and New Media, but I can say that we will now be known as “Future Media & Technology” and not “New Media & Technology”. From what I gathered this morning, it seems like a way of streamlining the BBC to commission and create content for multiple (digital) platforms and move away from creating a TV programme with e.g. a bolt-on website, or mobisode. And I can’t argue with that.

Legal Meet

Oh yes! I have an appointment set to review the Terms & Conditions for the BBC Media Bank site with the legal team tomorrow. If you’ve been following this story, you’ll know this is the main outstanding issue to launching the site. Wish me luck.

BBC Media Bank Terms

One of the main motivations behind creating the BBC Media Bank site was to offer standard types of content and one standard terms and conditions that you in the UK can agree online once and then have access to all the content in BBC Media Bank. This is taking a while to sort out and is the main thing holding up launch of the site now. Today, I got the feedback I need about these from the BBC trademark lawyers.

That’s nearly the last step, but not quite. The full Ts&Cs for this site will have to be signed off by the Head of Legal and Business Affairs. Unfortunately, she is in China at the moment! And although I’m sure she’s checking her crackberry  regularly but  it’s a bit of a tall order to check and sign documents until she gets back.

Of course, that give me plenty of opportunity to find lots of little things I want to change on the site, but the launch is so near now, I can smell it…