Interesting Stuff 2008-06-10
"Please don't tell me that the interests of plurality were served by [closing BBC Jam]" laments Prof Steven Barnett of the University of Westminster in a pda piece looking at responses to the Trust's report on bbc.co.uk:
it is surely about time the corporation's competitors were at least big enough to acknowledge the huge public affection and esteem in which all it services are held.
In Part Two of his look at the Trust's report [see below], Martin Belam looks at external linking including Newstracker, and the Trust's note that "[w]e are disappointed to see that bbc.co.uk's linking is not leading to more click-throughs." Martin reflects:
The Trust don't appear to have benchmarked, for example, how many click-throughs content portals like Yahoo! or MSN send downstream. Nor have they measured how much traffic other British media sites send on. There doesn't appear to be any context to saying that this figure is 'disappointing'.
Still with the Trust review(s), Newswatch presenter and independent media commentator Raymond Snoddy asks "[s]o is the BBC Trust just one big pussycat?" in The Independent:
As for bbc.co.uk - well that is an excellent service that makes a strong contribution to delivering the BBC's public purpose - as long as they strengthen the financial controls to stop cost overruns.
The Backstage Blog has more on Mashed [see below]:
As you would imagine, a mere two weeks before Mashed everything is getting a little crazy around here!
What I can say so far is that the speakers on the Saturday morning are looking fantastic -
* Andy Smith - iPlayer
* Nick Gallon - how to hack the BBC's TV services
* Audio & Music Interactive - /programmes
* Robotics with Microsoft
BBC Jersey's Ryan Morrison has launched a Jersey version of BBC Introducing called, naturally, BBC Jersey Introducing to cover and support the Jersey music scene, which you can expect to encounter on radio, BBC iPlayer, blogs, Facebook, etc, etc:
If you've got any ideas for ways I can improve the show, add more social media elements etc - let me know.
But so far the highlight for me has been seeing my name in the radio times - even if it's only on the very back pages.
Speaking of the Radio Times, its editor Gill Hudson cries Save Our TV Reviewers! in organgrinder, reckoning that more access to more AV content makes it "short sighted for newspapers to be ditching TV reviews":
Last week alone, there were more than five million downloads on iPlayer; around 80 million since Christmas. That's not a slow-drip change in consumer behaviour; it's the Niagara Falls that happens when a latent consumer need is finally addressed. Of all the times to reduce the guidance on what, from all that choice, is worth watching, this would not seem to be it.
Finally, Adam Sherwin has a diary piece in The Times mocking the relaunch of the Today programme's website:
The highlight was to be a video review of each day's programme by Ed Stourton, the housewives' favourite.
When Today addicts logged on they saw an unhappy-looking Stourton positioned in front of a potted plant.
Alan Connor is co-editor, BBC Internet Blog.
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