BBC News Channel: Presentation

To be honest I wouldn't call it "Emily Maitlis v Tim Vine" at all. I'm a little puzzled at that .

Still made great tv though.

There's an article at BBC Backstage on an interesting new prototype that the BBC is currently developing. ( Side-rant: Am I alone in finding the Backstage site utterly horrible to look at? What on earth is that header about? I also find it amusing that they describe Backstage as "the BBC's early adopter network", while other BBC sites have are moving on to a newer design, but anyway... )

Using the text generated for the live subtitle feed of a channel - the BBC News Channel is being used as the testbed - the prototype scans the text for keywords, and matches them to articles on the BBC News site, displaying the results on screen.

In its current iteration, it looks like nothing more than a terrible nuisance of course, but it's easy to imagine how this could easily be developed into something much more interesting. Imagine, for example, while watching the News Channel on a Canvas-powered STB, being able to press an 'info' button on your remote, that brings up a layer of articles on the same subject as the report you just watched. A URL promoted during a programme- "visit bbc.co.uk/diysos to find out more top tips" - could be instantly selected while the programme itself is paused. The whole BBCi system could be turned into something much more powerful, and it could easily provide a more intuitive and engaging way to offer a wider range of BBC content to viewers.

I'm not sure if Google has a similar system for live content - I know that they're able to generate search terms from voice conversations though, so they've obviously got some capabilities in that area - so I'm uncertain how revolutionary this prototype is on a wider scale.

Either way, though, it's good to see the Beeb continuing to review new ways of providing content, and assuming this is indeed shared with Canvas, it could be a very good thing.

The flipside, of course, is that the commercial implementations of this technology could be far more irritating and intrusive than the BBC's - some hellish nightmare TV version of pop-up ads appearing all over our screens for years to come. God help us all.

Swear box...

I've always thought this shot for the TOTH looks better, they should use it more often (apologies for the bad cap):

Has anyone dropped any pens recently?

It is a bad cap. You shouldn't wear it.

I think having Tony Blair's book at the top of every hour would be against BBC guidelines. But then we all know the BBC is just left-wing propaganda.

Poor. Very poor.



I would hardly count it as advertising. It was dealt with well, looking mainly at its affects on the Labour Leadership.

I think you may have misunderstood my post. It was a joke, based on the 'this is how the TOTH should look all the time' and Blair being on the BARCOs in that capture.

Apologies. I thought you were genuinly 'having a go', hence my reply. Sorry Jugalug.

For some reason I have caught BBC News at One on the News Channel rather than BBC One over the past couple of days so I have got the sport news insert in the headlines rather than the regional news. Both today and yesterday (or was it the day before, I forget) the sport news has overrun and been cut off. In fact, on the first day I noticed it the sport news actually leaked in to the BBC One programme because it wasn't quite cut off in time. Is this normal or did I just happen to catch it on a couple of bad days?

Can someone try to explain this to me?

I have TalkTalk TV (Formerly TiscaliTV, Homechoice before it) and so receive BBC One London over IPTV on the box. During the News at One and News at Ten, I get the sports inserts during the headlines rather than BBC London's, despite viewing on BBC One. After the news, BBC London News comes on for its bulletin, and there's always the "Now the news with Sophie Raworth and Louisa Preston" announcement before the national bulletin.

Why do I get a feed in which BBC London doesn't opt out of News Channel during the headlines? It's fine if I view BBC One London on Sky Digital, so why is this a TalkTalk only problem?

Thanks.