BBC goes Fisher Price
The BBC website is one of the stalwarts of the Net for me; its been my homepage for absolutely ages because of its easy access to news, sport, TV and the myriad other things that the BBC has to offer.
Today, they’ve relaunched the homepage of the site. Apparently its been in beta development for quite some time and this final version is the result of lots of testing and tweaking. As you’ll see from the comments left on the blog announcing the change, it is not universally loved.
For myself, I’m not a fan so far. It may grow on me over time, but at the moment it very much seems a backward step; while the various modules can be turned on and off - so theoretically allowing you to create “your” BBC page - the design overwhelms the content and you’re left having to search for what you want. Yes, technically it’s very good (someone must be very proud of their coding skills) but it is not as usable as the old style homepage.
And it’s only the homepage that has been changed so far, which means that the rest of the site maintains the look it had before. It seems a little pointless just to be changing one page and not the rest but perhaps that’s a blessing in disguise; it will give the BBC a chance to re-think the new look and, even if they don’t go back to the old version, at least improve it considerably before it’s rolled out across the whole site.
BBC - TV for the nation? Um…
So we all know that the BBC launched their iPlayer earlier in the year only for Windows users. (The iPlayer allows licence holders to download certain TV programmes for up to 30 days after broadcast, to enjoy at their leisure on their computer.)
Today, the BBC announced a new deal with wi-fi providers The Cloud to make BBC programmes available through 7,500 wi-fi hotspots around the country, so that viewers can download and stream programmes while they’re out and about. At the same time, a streaming-only service was announced for Mac and Linux users “by the end of the year”.
It’s about time that the BBC (which, let’s remember, is a public service broadcaster that enjoys an unprecedented and unique funding arrangement, whereby you have to pay a licence fee for operating TV reception equipment - regardless of whether you use that equipment to watch BBC programmes or not) included Mac and Linux users in its online services. But why only streaming, when Windows users can download?
According to Ashley Highfield , director of Future Media and Technology, it’s because “We need to get the streaming service up and look at the ratio of consumption between the services and then we need to look long and hard at whether we build a download service for Mac and Linux. It comes down to cost per person and reach at the end of the day.”
I’m sorry but I don’t agree. As a licence-fee payer, I fund the BBC. Therefore, I should be able to access all of the BBC’s services, irrespective of the equipment I choose to use. For an Internet-based service, it shouldn’t matter whether I’m using Windows, Mac, Linux, or any other operating system; the service should be available. There’s quite a difference between being able to stream a programme and being able to download it; just because I use a Mac, I shouldn’t have to feel left out in the cold.
The biggest annoyance about the whole issue is that to help them with the streaming service, the BBC have signed a deal with Adobe. If you wanted to pick a company that had more experience writing software for Mac’s, you couldn’t. Would it have been so difficult to go that one step further and make the download service available?
All of this comes on top of the fact that much of the BBC’s expenditure these days seems to be on digital stations. This is not good news, as I live in an area that currently cannot receive the Freeview signal. But I also I can’t receive Sky because the block of flats I live in does not allow dishes to be fixed to the building and the communal system is too expensive (and too limited) to be viable. This leaves me with a grand total of four TV channels to choose from. At least if I could use my Mac to download programmes through iPlayer I might be able to enjoy some of those digital-only programmes that the BBC puts out. But no.
I’ve thought for many years that “the unique way the BBC is funded” does not serve the licence payer well and needs to change. The half-hearted iPlayer just makes me more convinced.
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