Recent posts in my DCMS Category
January 29, 2009
"Digital Britain" around the blog'n'tweetosphere
There will be lots and lots of ink used tomorrow in the press to publish the views of the professional media commentariat on today's "Digital Britain" report. I thought it might be worthwhile rounding up some of the early online reaction in the blog'n'tweetosphere. "Digital Britain promises universally slow broadband" was the unimpressed headline from informitv. They suggested that Carter's 'unambitious' broadband targets should be pretty easy to meet given that: "it can already be delivered to over 90% of...
Digital Britain Interim report - first impressions
Today is day that the interim 'Digital Britain' report was published by the DCMS. It follows hard on the heels of the Ofcom report into the future of Public Service Broadcasting as part of this curiously two pronged approach to sorting out the regulatory and policy future of the UK's media. I turned the Ofcom document into a Wordle cloud: I've done the same for today's Digital Britain interim report: And, as prompted by @JemStone, here is the comparison chart...
August 14, 2007
The Sun's Dream Team debut nightmare
One of the most exciting weekends of the year has just passed - the start of the football season. And it all went pretty well for my teams. Well, if the best you can hope for is to finish the weekend on -12 like Leeds did, that is as good as it gets anyway. This year I've been dragged into doing The Sun's Dream Team Fantasy Football and joining one of the mini-leagues with a few friends back in the...
March 20, 2007
BBC Jam closes today - how far will the repercussions be felt?
Today sees the suspension, pending review, of BBC Jam, the BBC's digital curriculum service, which was announced last week by the BBC Trust. Last week I littered my initial reaction liberally around various comment boxes on the web, but having had a bit of time to gather my thoughts on the subject, four points stand out for me 1) The loss of business to the independent web sector The complaints portray the BBC as a massive well-funded elephant that...
June 7, 2006
More reboot:bbc.co.uk designs - part three
I've been having a look through the late flurry of entries to the BBC's reboot:bbc.co.uk homepage redesign competition. BBC Active Home by Paul includes a very neat tiny embedded radio player at the top of the page, although he concedes that unless it uses AJAX or iFrames or some other magic-widget-tech, it isn't going to work very well for people who immediately browse away from the homepage and lose the stream. Buried in Paul's very long explanatory notes is this...
July 6, 2005
Olympic Round-Up
The BBC wasn't the only site to suffer from the volume of Olympic related internet traffic just after decision time this afternoon - whilst we had to switch to our frankly ugly mini-me version of the homepage to help the servers cool off, london2012.org died completely. Elsewhere on the web the DCMS opted for a massive splash graphic to announce the news, whilst london.gov.uk went for a more restrained approach. Meanwhile the official Olympics site used the iconic image...
November 3, 2004
DCMS Review of the BBC's Digital Radio services
Over the last couple of weeks or so I have taken the time to read the whole of Tim Gardam's review into the BBC's digital radio services. Unexpectedly it has been an entertaining read, not least because of its lack of formality in his turn of phrase: I was appointed to lead this review, and on April 30th the Secretary of State announced the start of this process, along with Professor Patrick Barwise's parallel review of the BBC's digital television...
July 16, 2004
A fortnight after Graf - and what it might mean for the homepage and for external spend
So some of the dust has settled internally after the Graf report, and we start to look forward - today we had a departmental meeting in White City, in the building that will be our new home from January. One of the areas I have a responsibility for in my new job is the delivery of the bbc.co.uk homepage - so the criticism of it in the DCMS review is naturally of keen interest. It was though written before the...
July 8, 2004
DCMS and Digital Radio
According to this story in yesterday's Independent, the DCMS is shortly to publish a report in which Tessa Jowell says "Later this year, I will be reviewing the take-up of digital radio and considering how long it would be appropriate for...broadcasting services to be provided in analogue form" The article goes on to quote Chris Kimber, Head of Interactive at BBC Radio & Music, extolling the virtues of interactivity based around radio output: "Only 10 years ago, radio was a...
July 5, 2004
DCMS Assessment of BBC Online's use of RealMedia and Search
So the Graf report was finally published today, and like many BBC Online employees I have spent much of the day scurrying through it to assimilate as much information as I can. However, I suspect that unlike the majority of the media - who naturally leapt on the obvious headline of site closures (as already heralded by Mark Thompson last week) - I headed straight for the chunky "BBC Online review - module 1: Assessment of BBC Online's use of...
February 16, 2004
BBC Charter Review responses about BBC.co.uk
I've had a bit of time this evening to look more closely at the published responses so far to the BBC Charter Review Public Consultation exercise. I was particularly looking out for references to the BBC's internet operation. My initial idea was to skim through and try to put together a balanced selection of pull-quotes about bbc.co.uk. I quickly found that this was going to be more work than I had imagined. The consultation specifically asked 'How should the...
DCMS publishes BBC Charter Review responses
As a member of BBC staff I didn't think it appropriate to submit my thoughts to the DCMS Charter Review consultation - although I suppose as a Licence Fee payer and a voter I probably should of. The DCMS has had over 1,300 responses, and on its website has now published a selection. I've only looked through some of them on one page so far - 'H' - but it is fascinating stuff. Already I've come across such diverse...