Content & Communication

Lovely RSS Goodness

grahambennett — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 10:13:36 +0000

Lot’s of new RSS goodness from the BBC Music site today:

This is part of lots of new higher profile RSS work from Radio & Music. Take a look at the footer of the new homepage from Radio 1: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/ Lots of AJAXy fun for the kids in the main page and then a big promo for the feeds down at the bottom. This radical technical overhaul for the site doesn’t seem to extend much beyond the front page but is something of a first dabble for BBC sites, as far as I know.

UPDATE: And from last week – five day summary forecasts for BBC Weather. This has taken a while to sort out because although the content is presented as BBC Weather, the data comes form the Met Office weather stations. Anyway, have a look at BBC Weather for all the feeds. Here is John O’Groats and Land’s End for a kick-off.

BBC Media Bank live

grahambennett — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 10:58:59 +0000

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

grahambennett — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:41:05 +0000

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

grahambennett — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 12:25:39 +0000

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

grahambennett — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 11:20:38 +0000

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

grahambennett — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 11:12:01 +0000

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.

No Such Thing As Bad Publicity?

grahambennett — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 15:56:38 +0000

I’m about a week behind the pace on this one, but I have just found out about this “uproar” over Time Trumpet, Armando Iannucci’s new comedy. I find this interesting from a syndication point of view for a couple of reasons.
a) The opening presentation of the story: 1) what an outrage this new show is 2) watch a clip here! and…
b) the way the comments following the atrticle seem to be split about 50-50 between “how dare the BBC make and show this filth” versus “oh thanks for letting me know, I’ll watch it now.”

I like conversations around our content. I am trying to facilitate these with the stuff that will be available through BBC Media Bank. These would include, for example, links to video that worked(!) and better branding. I sense that there is some concern that the content we make available through BBC Media Bank could be used in “negative” stories about the BBC, I’m just not sure I mind very much.

I haven’t seen this clip by the way, or the show – it starts tonight. But I’m more in the camp of being glad to have been reminded that it’s on.

Dragons’ Den

grahambennett — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 09:15:12 +0000

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

grahambennett — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 10:11:03 +0000

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

grahambennett — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 10:44:38 +0000

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.