I’ve taken the tough decision to retire the two long-running Web Apps from this site. At the same time I’ve done a full review of all my travel reports. Details below:
Train Times for iGoogle
Although I know there is a core fanbase using the app on a regular basis, I have closed the live training running times app designed for the iGoogle home page. This sapped bandwidth on my server to the extreme, as it was constantly checking station departure boards all around the country. With at the end of the month and with no obvious place to relocate the app, it has now gone. All data will be deleted by Christmas Day or earlier.
BBC Correspondents Map
This well-respected website showed the locations and biographical information of the BBC’s network of foreign correspondents, plotted on a Google Map and listing each correspondent’s recent published stories on the BBC News website. Or, more accurately, it showed the location and correspondents from two years ago. The Correspondents Map was saved from closure in 2008 when I left the department at the BBC which looked after all the correspondent’s incoming lines, but I made a promise to myself to meet up with my former colleagues every 6 months or so with the purpose of keeping the map up to date. Although this has happened on a number of occasions since then (normally with gaps of about 18 months in between!) it hadn’t been updated for at least two years. To avoid further embarrassment, this has also been closed.
Travels section review
I have been though all of my travel reviews, updating web-links, noting out-of-date or inaccurate information, and adding a map and advertising throughout articles. Why not take a look?
Leave a reply - Posted: 18th October 2013, 4:27pm - Category: Web Apps, Websites
I was proud to be part of the launch team of BBC Swahili TV back in August 2012. At the time it was ground-breaking – the first World Service TV programme (beyond the five-minute bulletins provided by the Russian service to a partner in Moscow) since the launch of Arabic and Persian TV in 2008 and 2009 respectively, as well as testing the new “Multi-Purpose Area” studio in the BBC’s New Broadcasting House to its limits.
So it was fluke that I was also assigned to the programme on Tuesday, when it was celebrating its first birthday – a year on-air. A year of , and an entire 28-minute programme showing the breakdown slate because the entire studio was non-functional.
On their anniversary show, presenter Salim Kikeke took viewers on a tour of the studio, gallery and newsroom. Guess who’s in the red t-shirt in the gallery?
Update RequiredTo play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.
Leave a reply - Posted: 29th August 2013, 3:02pm - Category: World Service TV
Collaboration
A constant criticism of the BBC is that one part of the organisation rarely collaborates with others where their work overlaps. Some of this is just incorrect perception, but – especially in News – things are improving from the days when both the national news and local news would send out separate teams to cover the same story. Not just reporters, but technical staff too. Sometimes this was warranted – if you have a big story leading the headlines and only one reporter on the scene, s/he can’t report live at 6 o’Clock for the BBC1 bulletin, the Radio 4 bulletin, and the local radio station all at the same time. Likewise with domestic news and the World Service for international stories.
I’ve never understood why the BBC invests in – and boasts about – the staff based in its various overseas bureaux, nominally working for the World Service’s languages output, but then sends a London-based correspondent when a story breaks. Why not just ask the international bureau staff – or, for domestic stories, regional staff – to also report for any interested UK outlets as well?
It helps, of course, that most London production departments (and the whole of News) will very soon be together in one building in central London – New Broadcasting House. Previously, with domestic news in Stage 6 of Television Centre, World Service English-language output in one wing of Bush House, and the language services spread around the other wings, it was much harder to collaborate on stories and share material.
So I was pleased to see this week the fact that BBC World News – the commercially-funded tv channel broadcast in English for international viewers – were taking the time to interview the experts working for the BBC’s 27 language services about the Israel elections:
Update RequiredTo play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.
The video shows Ros Atkins interviewing Ehsan Amertousi and Mehdi Musawi on the set of BBC Persian, the day voting was taking place, discussing the importance of the election to their Persian and Arabic viewers.
Later in the day, Ros was back at BBC Persian while Ehsan was presenting , BBC Persian’s phone-in show, which had Farsi-speaking Iranians and Israelis on-air together, discussing the issues and dispelling myths:
Update RequiredTo play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.
Of course this looks great on TV and shows BBC World News viewers other parts of the building and the services which occupy them, but the important thing is the potential for different perspectives to go on-air, or for journalism to be guided by the ex-pat producers who know the country or region better than anyone else in the building.
It’s off-air where the most striking changes will be realised from co-location. If you’re a BBC News Channel producer (due to move to New BH in March) working on a breaking story about Somalia, or Burma, or Sri Lanka, all you have to do is travel up six flights of stairs to where you will find experts from 27 different language regions, who will – if you ask nicely – provide an expert’s view, some comments from their audience, a translation, or help with further contacts. It’s good to see Richard Porter, head of English Global News, agreeing.
That is the kind of inter-departmental collaboration the BBC should have been doing for years.
Hopefully now it will.
Leave a reply - Posted: 25th January 2013, 10:50am - Category: World Service Radio, World Service TV
