BBC World News on YouTube

The international component of the BBC, BBC World News has established a presence to non-UK web audience on that internet video service you may well have heard about -- YouTube. According to their website: "BBC World is the BBC's commercially funded, international 24-hour news and information channel, broadcast in English in more than 200 countries and territories across the globe." With this mission in mind, they are likely more willing to take some risks in other areas.

The site it clearly branded, and features news stories produced for their television outlets reformatted for YouTube. Some of these news bits are the harder hitting sort, including their most-viewed clip, an interview with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to the lighter material about living 'green.'

Views of the clips vary a great deal, with the videos with high-profile figures leading the pack. The Zenawi clip, for example, has garnered 26,673 views as of this writing. All but one of the top 15 clips have 1,000+ views, with the rest settling into the predictable long-tail curve.

26,000 isn't stellar by many measures -- my decidedly un-newsworthy video of an old Sony CD player has over 55,000 views.

Perhaps a great number of views is not what they are after. As with any established broadcast entities in this space, any experimentation should be viewed as a positive move. If it does not work, BBC World News will face neither great fiscal losses nor catastrophic image degradation.

[ Since the BBC has embedding disabled, I shall leave you with the clip of my Sony CD Player: ]

Facebook: just another outlet for the 'chattering class?'

[ image courtesy of ireallylikecake / Flickr ]

The fab BBC news podcast NewsPod from September 12th featured a report that first aired on the BBC Radio 4 service. This report asks the question, "Is Facebook the playground for the chattering class?"

Some weeks ago NPR launched an application within Facebook that allows members to play their favorite NPR podcasts on their Facebook page. As of the writing of this post, just 59 people have started using it.

Are we at the usual small & slow start of a revolution, or is this just another flavor-of-the-moment enjoying its 15 mB of fame?

[Listen to the BBC report below; the segment about Facebook starts about 17:30]


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BBC and DRM, OMG.

[ image courtesy of tgigreeny / Flickr ]

The BBC Backstage is an initiative created to encourage "open innovation" with BBC materials. Their site suggests that even though innovation like this was frowned upon in the past, it will now be fomented there. From the site:

The BBC will support social innovation by encouraging users’ efforts to build sites and projects that meet their needs and those of their communities ... The BBC will also be committed to using open standards that will enable users to find and repurpose BBC content in more flexible ways...

The blog at backstage.bbc.co.uk has an post of note that addresses some of this: it is an audio file of a debate over the use of DRM at the BBC.

Author and popular blog boingboing.net contributor Cory Doctorow wrote an article in reaction to this debate. He calls for an even more open environment and rights system, and points out some of the contradictions in the BBC's logic.

Ofcom has criticized the BBC's plans for offering content in different ways to people, with their own set of contradictions. They want the content to be limited [akin to having the things that you TiVo expiring after a period of time]. But, the also speak of the current system being beholden to commercial entities like Microsoft, the company providing the format and required players for the content.

The BBC is offering the public a chance to chime in on this subject at the BBC Trust.

This is a fine example of how complicated rights matters are in the new media world. It will be some time before put to bed the old notions of rights and true consumption habits of users and embrace what is ahead.

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