BBC's Blog, page 5

It may be a little late to say it, but happy new year to all readers.

The series of occasional “open” posts on this blog seem to be getting some good comments from you, so let’s start 2014 with another one.

Their purpose is to give you the opportunity to make a comment, ask a question or have a conversation about any aspect of the work of BBC Future Media or BBC Online.

Press button to open

As always, the ground rules are:

1. Comments need to abide by the BBC’s House Rules. Keep the conversation civil please

2. If you want to make a specific complaint about the BBC use the Complaints website

3. This open post is about the work of BBC Online – if you want to have a general discussion about the BBC, try the Points of View message board. Information about the BBC can also be found on the About the BBC blog, the BBC News Editors blog and BBC iPlayer FAQs.

I can’t promise to answer every question or comment but I’ll host and do my best.

The post will be open for comments for a month.

To try and stimulate you, what subjects would you like this blog to cover in the coming year? What would you like more of? What would you like less of?

Thanks

Nick Reynolds is Editor, BBC Internet blog

We've got live snooker aplenty on Red Button this week, as the world's top 16 players do battle on the baize at the Masters. There's also winter sports action, a look behind the scenes of one of CBBC's biggest shows, and a last chance to get to know the acts on the Sound of 2014 list.

Sport highlights this week

Ronnie O'Sullivan

Snooker's elite are taking to the baize at Alexandra Palace in London this week to compete for one of the sport's biggest titles, the Masters trophy - and you can catch the world's top players in action live every night from Sunday on the Red Button.

There's also top winter sports action, with live coverage of the women's downhill race from Altenmarkt in Austria on Saturday morning, as well as highlights from the Skeleton World Cup in St Moritz on Sunday, as Britain's Lizzy Yarnold battles to stay at the top of the world rankings.

We've got all the usual football action, too, as Jason Mohammad and the Final Score team keep tabs on all Saturday's big scores before Manish Bhasin presents the best of the Football League action.

For a full list and times of sport coverage on the Red Button see the BBC Sport website.

 

Sound of 2014

Annie Mac presents the 15 most exciting new music acts on the BBC Sound of 2014 list: Sam Smith, Chance The Rapper, MNEK, Jungle, Royal Blood, BANKS, Sampha, FKA twigs, Ella Eyre, Kelela, George Ezra, Luke Sital-Singh, Nick Mulvey, Chlöe Howl and Say Lou Lou. You can also explore all the Sound of 2014 acts and find out more about the winner online.

Sat 11 Jan, 6am-10.30am, 1pm-2.30pm, 8.30pm-1.10am
Sun 12 Jan, 12pm-5pm
Mon 13 Jan, 7am-7pm

 

Dumping Ground Extra

Dumping Ground Extra is jam-packed with a whole host of exclusive goodies from CBBC's hit drama. Press red to join Katie and Dodge for some behind-the-scenes exclusives. Find out what life is like on set with the cast, get the low-down on some new characters and check out a sneak peek from the first episode of the new series.

Tue 14 Jan, 7am-7pm
Wed 15 Jan, 7am-7pm
Thu 16 Jan, 7am-7.55pm
Fri 17 Jan, 7am-7.55pm

Please note times are subject to change.

Keep up with all the latest news by following us on Twitter @BBCRedButton.

Hello, I'm Dan Taylor and I'm the Head of BBC iPlayer, in BBC Future Media.

Christmas is always a busy time for BBC iPlayer as people seek out the unmissable TV they would otherwise have missed and unwrap new devices capable of accessing iPlayer (of which there are now over 1,000). I was away visiting relatives this Christmas so have spent much of the last few days playing catch up (pun intended).

BBC iPlayer at Christmas

We started the festive season with an early Christmas treat for viewers and fans in the lead-up to the much-anticipated third series of Sherlock. Many Happy Returns has since been viewed over 1.5 million times on BBC iPlayer and BBC Red Button with millions more watching on YouTube.

With new gadgets being at the top of many Christmas wish lists, we see a lot of new devices accessing BBC iPlayer over the holiday period. 2013 truly proved to be the year of the tablet and after they were all unwrapped, Boxing Day saw tablet viewing overtake computer viewing for the first time in iPlayer history.

BBC iPlayer: daily requests for TV programmes by device type (millions).

N.B. The graph above excludes Sky and Virgin Cable viewing since this data arrives later.

Almost a million of you downloaded the iPlayer mobile and tablet apps over the festive period (Saturday 21 December to New Year’s Day), 941,000 of you to be exact, adding to the 20 million app downloads iPlayer reached in October.

Christmas Day TV is all about families gathering around the biggest screen of the house and most viewing on the day is via broadcast TV. BBC iPlayer has an important role as a complementary platform for BBC broadcast programmes, especially on Boxing Day and New Year's Day, when requests on iPlayer really start to peak and you have time to catch-up on the must-watch Christmas programmes.

New Year’s Day 2014 took the crown as iPlayer’s best-ever day so far, with nearly 11 million requests for TV and radio programmes in one day alone (even excluding Sky and Virgin data). New Year’s Day 2013 saw 8.1m so this is an impressive +35% increase.

BBC iPlayer daily requests for TV and radio programmes (millions).

N.B. The graph above excludes Sky and Virgin Cable viewing since this data arrives later.

Christmas 2013 on BBC iPlayer

This year we saw 102 million requests for TV and Radio programmes (80m for TV, 22m for radio ) throughout the festive period (21 Dec - 1 Jan, excluding Virgin Cable data which is not yet available).

Throughout this period:

Dr Who – The Time of the Doctor was the most popular programme, followed by Eastenders and Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas Special. Other top performing programmes were Call the Midwife, Gangsta Granny and Still Open All Hours (see table below for the top 20)

Programme Requests (millions):

1 Doctor Who - The Time of the Doctor 1.964

2 EastEnders - 25 Dec 1.595

3 EastEnders - 26 Dec 1.380

4 Mrs Brown's Boys Christmas Special 1 - 1.364

5 EastEnders - 27 Dec 1.257

6 Call the Midwife Christmas Special - 1.021

7 Gangsta Granny - 1.016

8 EastEnders - 31 Dec 0.961

9 EastEnders - 30 Dec 0.937

10 EastEnders - 24 Dec 0.922

11 EastEnders - 23 Dec 0.872

12 Still Open All Hours - 26 Dec 0.842

13 Mrs Brown's Boys Christmas Special 2 - 0.820

14 EastEnders - 20 Dec 0.793

15 Death Comes to Pemberley Episode 1 - 0.771

16 Citizen Khan Series 2 Episode 7 - 0.751

17 Michael McIntyre's Showtime - 25 Dec 0.643

18 Strictly Come Dancing Series 11 Grand Final - 0.626

19 Nativity! - 0.586

20 Atlantis - Episode 12 Part 1 0.584

Happy New Year from BBC iPlayer

I hope you've had a great Christmas and are looking forward to what lies ahead in 2014. We certainly are, as we’re working hard to make iPlayer even better and look forward to bringing a new and improved iPlayer to you later on this year.

I always appreciate your feedback, so please leave a comment below. Here’s to a great 2014!

Dan Taylor is Head of BBC iPlayer, BBC Future Media.

Welcome to the new year!

And what better way to ring in 2014 than with one of Britain's great sporting traditions, as the BDO's finest take to the famous Lakeside stage for the World Professional Darts Championship. We've also got a sneak peek at some of the new faces that could shape music over the next 12 months, an exciting journey into outer space, a chance to see some of Team GB's Winter Olympic medal hopes in action and a look behind the scenes at one of CBBC's biggest shows. Read on to find out more…

Team GB's Elizabeth Yarnold
 

Mission Control

You don't need to leave the classroom to be part of Stargazing LIVE 2014. Join us for Mission Control, a live interactive programme from the W5 Science Centre in Belfast where you can watch studio experiments and demos, and help us guide the Stargazing spacecraft through high levels of radiation, cosmic rays, asteroid belts, solar winds and flares to a safe orbit around the sun.

Presenter Barra Best will be joined by our resident experts Ryan Milligan (NASA/Queens University) and Patrick Harkness (University of Glasgow).

You can send in your questions now or during the live broadcast by emailing [email protected] or tweet them to the team @bbcnireland using hashtag #bbcmc.

Wed 8 January, 1.40pm-2.25pm

 

Antiques Roadshow Play Along

Demonstrate your knowledge of antiques by playing along with Antiques Roadshow. The valuation game is simple, fun and free to play. Consider each of the objects featured in the programme, select an option before our experts give their valuation and see how many you get right.

The play along is not available on Virgin TiVo but remember you can also download the BBC's free mobile play along app.

Sun 5 Jan, 7.25pm-8.30pm

 

Sound of 2014

Annie Mac presents the 15 most exciting new music acts on the BBC Sound of 2014 list: Sam Smith, Chance The Rapper, MNEK, Jungle, Royal Blood, BANKS, Sampha, FKA twigs, Ella Eyre, Kelela, George Ezra, Luke Sital-Singh, Nick Mulvey, Chlöe Howl and Say Lou Lou.

Sat 4 Jan, 11pm-7am
Sun 5 Jan, 11pm-6pm
Mon 6 Jan, 11pm-6pm
Tue 7 Jan, 11pm-1.40pm
Wed 8 Jan, 2.25pm-5.30pm, 11pm-5.30pm
Thu 9 Jan, 11pm-5.30pm
Fri 10 Jan, 11pm-10.30am

 

Dumping Ground Extra

Dumping Ground Extra is jam-packed with a whole host of exclusive goodies from CBBC's hit drama. Press red to join Katie and Dodge for some behind-the-scenes exclusives. Find out what life is like on set with the cast, get the lowdown on some new characters and check out a sneak peek from the first episode of the new series.

Sat 4 Jan, 7am-2.30pm, 5.10pm-6pm
Sun 5 Jan, 7am-5.40pm, 6.45pm-7.25pm

 

Sport highlights this week

The sporting year gets off to a flying start on Red Button, as Team GB's Elizabeth Yarnold and Shelley Rudman gear up for the Winter Olympics in Skeleton World Cup action from Winterberg in Germany.

Back on home soil, you can catch all the action from the BDO World Darts at the legendary Lakeside, with live matches on the Red Button every night this week.

And on Saturday afternoon Jason Mohammad and the Final Score team bring you all the goals from the third round of the FA Cup.

For a full list and times of sport coverage on the Red Button see the BBC Sport website

Please note times are subject to change. 

Keep up with all the latest news by following us on Twitter  @BBCRedButton

What a merry selection we’ve got on Red Button for you this week and into the New Year. The long-awaited return of Sherlock is finally happening and we’ve got a very exciting Christmas episode for all you fans. As well as that, there’s a seasonal special from Strictly, festive fun from CBeebies and CBBC, live sport and some excellent New Year treats. With so much on, we hope you’ll stay wrapped up and entertained with the Red Button over the holidays. 

 

Sherlock Prequel

Marin Freeman as Doctor Watson in Sherlock

Tune into this Christmas mini-episode. There’s a series of seemingly unconnected crimes stretching from Tibet to India to Germany. Sherlock Holmes has been gone for two years. But someone isn't quite convinced that he's dead...

Wed 25th December, 8:25pm-5:30am
Thu 26th December, 8:00pm-5:30am
Fri 27th December, 8:00pm-5:30am
Sat 28th December, 8:00pm-5:30am
Sun 29th December, 8:00pm-1:05am
Mon 30th December, 8:00pm-5:30am
Tue 31st December, 8:00pm-5:30am
Wed 1st January, 10:20pm-5:30am
Thu 2nd January, 8:00pm-5:30am

 

Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special & Highlights

Live from the Strictly Grand Final, join Zoe Ball after the glitter comes down for the first interview with all three runners up before congratulating this year's champions – and catch highlights of this year’s competition too.

Christmas Special

Sat 21st December, 9:45pm-1:05am

Highlights

Mon 23rd December, 7:00pm-6:00am
Tue 24th December, 7:00pm-6:00am
Wed 25th December, 6:10pm-8:25pm

 

Antiques Roadshow Play Along

Demonstrate your knowledge of antiques by playing along with Antiques Roadshow. Our valuation game is simple, fun and free to play. Consider each of the objects featured in the programme, select an option before our experts give their valuation and see how many you get right.

The play along is not available on Virgin TiVo but remember you can also download the BBC’s free mobile play along app.

  Sun 22nd December, 7:55pm-9:00pm

 

CBeebies Christmas Karaoke

It may be cold outside but the CBeebies Christmas Karaoke is the perfect way to stay warm and cosy over the festive season. Sing along to a mixture of well-known Christmas songs and some brand new CBeebies numbers. Simply follow the words along the bottom of the screen and look out for some special Christmas messages from your favourite CBeebies stars along the way.

Sat 21st December, 6:00am-2:30pm
Sun 22nd December, 1:25pm-5:45pm
Mon 23rd December, 6:00am-7:00pm
Tue 24th December, 6:00am-7:00pm
Wed 25th December, 6:00am-4:10pm
Thu 26th December, 6:00am-2:30pm
Fri 27th December, 6:00am-7:00pm
Sat 28th December, 6:00am-2:30pm, 6:30pm-7:00pm
Sun 29th December, 6:00am-1:00pm
Mon 30th December, 12:00pm-7:00pm

 

CBBC 2013 - The Best Bits

Take a look back at all of 2013’s highlights and funny moments with the CBBC gang. 

Tue 31st December, 7:00am-8:00pm

 

New Year’s Day Concert

Daniel Barenboim conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in their traditional New Year's Day concert live from the Musikverein. Alongside waltzes, polkas and marches from the Strauss family, there will be music by Richard Strauss and specially filmed performances from the Vienna State Ballet, choreographed by Ashley Page and with costumes designed by Vivienne Westwood.

Wed 1st January, 10:15am-12:40pm

 

Sound of 2014

Annie Mac presents the 15 most exciting new music acts on the BBC Sound of 2014 list: Sam Smith, Chance The Rapper, MNEK, Jungle, Royal Blood, BANKS, Sampha, FKA twigs, Ella Eyre, Kelela, George Ezra, Luke Sital-Singh, Nick Mulvey, Chlöe Howl and Say Lou Lou.

Fri 3rd January, 5:00pm-6:00am

 

Dumping Ground Extra

The Dumping Ground Extra is jam-packed with a whole host of exclusive goodies from CBBC’s hit drama The Dumping Ground. Press Red to join Katie and Dodge for some behind the scenes exclusives. Find out what life is like on set with the cast, get the lowdown on some new characters and check out a sneak peek from the first episode of the new series.

Wed 1st January, 7:00am-10:15am
Wed 1st January, 12:40pm-2:30pm
Thu 2nd January, 7:00am-3:00pm
Thu 2nd January, 4:00pm-8:00pm
Fri 3rd January, 7:00am-5:00pm

 

Sport highlights this week

The Red Button is brimming with live sport and highlights over the festive period. Catch all the latest goals with Final Score and the Football League Show and follow Scrum V coverage as the Blues take on the Dragons.

There’s also equestrian coverage from the Olympia Grand Prix in London and all the latest action from the slopes, with Ski Sunday Extra and coverage of Women’s Giant Slalom and Parallel Ski. Plus, don’t miss a look back at all the twists and turns of the past year’s Formula 1 action in F1: A Record Breaking Year.

For a full list and times of sport coverage on the Red Button see the BBC Sport website. 

A CBeebies Christmas carol
Hi I’m Anya Saunders, lead producer on the interactive ebook pilot project

Today the BBC is on the threshold of something new as we publish our second ever BBC interactive ebook – A CBeebies Christmas Carol, a magical digital storybook with pictures that come to life at the touch of your finger.

An interactive ebook is a completely new format with great potential for the BBC, combining video, audio, text and images in a touch-screen tablet experience. We think we are one of the first broadcasters to be exploring this new format. I love it for the following reasons:

• The format opens up new creative possibilities by combining text, pictures, audio and video in the same space.

• The software tool used to create the ebooks is free and very easy to use. This means that ebooks can be created by existing production teams, taking advantage of the editorial knowledge and storytelling expertise of production staff rather than outsourcing to digital experts.

• The touch screen format lets the viewer take control of the subject matter in a way that differs to the traditional lean back experience of TV.

CBeebies Christmas Carol on an iPad

We’re currently using the Apple software tool iBooks Author to create interactive ebooks. This is a GUI based authoring tool with embedded HTML widgets allowing for a drag and drop capability that makes iBooks Author very easy to use and generates a slick final product. The downside of this software is that it only publishes to Apple devices, to iPads and to desktop computers running Mac OS X Mavericks. We are very keen to support interactive ebooks on Android devices and so are also exploring alternative ways of publishing to that platform.

Our first interactive ebook, D-Day’s Last Heroes: In Their Own Words, was published in June and included extra unseen and uncut footage from the BBC 1 series with Dan Snow. It won an inaugural BBC Production Award for Innovation in Multiplatform and Social Media.

Over the next few months we are going to publish another 5 interactive ebook pilots from across the BBC including Operation Grand Canyon from BBC History, Treasures of Ancient Egypt from BBC Arts, The Bone Detective from BBC Natural History and 50 Years of Horizon from BBC Science.

To download A CBeebies Christmas Carol go to the following link - for iPads with iBooks 3.2 installed, or desktop computers running Mac OS X (Mavericks)

Anya Saunders is lead producer on the interactive ebooks pilot

One of the themes that James Harding outlined in his vision for BBC News two weeks ago was digital transformation. We’re delivering on a roadmap of new consumer products, new tools for journalists and completely new ways of using data in our work. We want to extend the weekly global reach of BBC News to 500M users worldwide, across radio, TV and Online.

Online, we’re globally reaching more people than ever before – we now see 145 million visitors a month, and in the last month we’ve also seen our highest ever weekly reach of 57 million visitors.

Our new consumer products are going to better surface the full coverage of News that the BBC produces across TV, Radio and Online, and we’ll surface much more third party and social content alongside our own journalism. In order to provide a universal service to all, a critical element of our product strategy is to ensure that BBC News is available responsively across as many devices as we can achieve, as cost effectively as possible.

A priority project is to complete the roll out of this new responsive web version of BBC News, both in the UK and for the World Service in our supported languages. It’s not a simple undertaking as we publish original news in 27 different languages for the World Service, as well as English, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic in the UK. We're one of only a handful of organisations world wide who do this. You can see a full list of the languages here.

BBC News content in different languages on mobile screens

I'm delighted to have reached the half-way point of the project – we are now live with responsive mobile solutions in 15 of the 30 languages that we support. Momentum is building fast in the team and the aim is to complete the roll out in the first half of 2014.

At the same time as rolling out new Language versions of the sites, we’re adding new features to the responsive solution. At present we’ve deployed enough functionality that supports a great experience on mobile devices, but we have more functionality, improved navigation, localisation and promotional modules to complete before the solution can become the default experience for all users on desktop computers.

So at the moment a user arriving on BBC News on a PC, Mac or Tablet will default to the existing static News website. You can switch to the responsive solution by clicking on the “mobile version” link at the bottom of the page. This week you can see for the first time that we have released a responsive navigation bar to the site. Once this is live we will start routing all users on tablet to the responsive solution.

As with all our functionality we release iteratively and regularly, so you will see the responsive site design evolve gradually over time rather than in a single big release.

What have we learnt?

Two of our development leads, John Clevely and Tom Maslen have written at length about the details of our responsive development approach here which is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to understand how we’ve approached this.

Mobile first and agile approaches are a great way to promote quick releases and to get a mobile version out quickly. However we learnt that our initial speed came at a cost, and the initial code base struggle to support different sites and page configuration is a maintainable way. We've now made good progress on refractoring the code, but more open discussions withing development teams in retrospectives could have caght the issue sooner.

Overall, we’ve learnt that users like the the design and functionality of the responsive mobile solutions we’re deploying, and that’s driving very rapid growth in the countries where we have deployed it. On average, in just the first three months after the responsive solution has gone live we’ve seen a 20% uplift in visitors to the sites.

I'll update you on the progress of this work next year.

Robin Pembrooke is Head of Product, BBC News 

Hello

This month’s BBC Online Briefing was a great way to share our digital priorities and get instant feedback from our partners and suppliers. Fiona Bruce hosted the Q&A session at the end of the afternoon with me and Ralph talking questions from the floor. The only brief for these moments is to “expect the unexpected”!

Amongst other issues we discussed the digital legacy of London 2012; how the culture of the BBC might change as a result of Connected Studio; and ideas around the digital public space.

Please take a moment to watch the video and add any questions of your own in the comments below.

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Jane Weedon and Ralph Rivera take questions from delegates.

Jane Weedon is Director, Business Development, BBC Future Media

I’m Jennifer Lyons, product manager for Connected Red Button in the TV and Mobile Platforms team in BBC Future Media.

Twelve months ago the BBC launched the new Connected Red Button service on Virgin Media’s TiVo platform. Today I am very happy to announce that we have now extended this service to more platforms by launching a beta version of Connected Red Button on a number of Sony Freeview Smart TVs. This new service will run alongside the existing Red Button service during its ‘beta period’, giving viewers a chance to try the new service whilst it is tested and refined.

Connected Red Button brings the best of the Red Button and the BBC online to your TV by simply pressing red. The service offers a lot more content including BBC TV programmes via BBC iPlayer as well as live events and the latest news, sport and weather, yet is powerfully simple for anyone to use.

The Connected Red Button is being launched as a beta service on supported Sony Smart TVs, with Samsung and LG Smart TVs launching later in December. Viewers will be able to try the new service, gain familiarity and provide feedback that we can potentially incorporate into the product as we continue development. They can do this while continuing to use the existing Red Button service as usual. More devices and platforms will be added in 2014.

Viewers can access the new Connected Red Button via the featured section.

To access the new service, viewers with supported Smart TVs that are connected to the Internet can press red on a BBC TV channel such as BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four or BBC News and BBC Parliament to access the Connected Red Button beta via the ‘featured’ menu.

Viewers of the new beta service can enjoy the following: 

• TV – including up to 10 featured BBC iPlayer programmes from the channel you are watching or explore more catch-up TV via the BBC iPlayer button

• News – keep up to date with the latest UK news and select headlines to read or news videos to watch along with a link to ‘News home’ for more news coverage

• Sport – watch live sport and highlights and read the latest sport headlines, with a link to ‘Sport home’ to access the dedicated BBC Sport application

• Weather – check the latest 5 day forecast for your location

• CBBC and CBeebies – easily get to up to 10 featured BBC iPlayer highlights from CBBC and CBeebies

The TV section in Connected Red Button

Right now Connected Red Button beta is available on selected Sony Smart TVs, with more makes and models coming soon. However, if you bought a Smart TV in the last 2-3 years, you may still be able to access BBC iPlayer, BBC News or BBC Sport when pressing red or via the TV app store. For older TVs or those that are not connected to the Internet, don’t forget you can still get the existing Red Button service for great digital text and video content from the BBC.

The Connected Red Button is built using HTML and JavaScript and supports standards-based browsers and streaming technologies. It uses a modular, scalable, shared (with Connected Red Button on Virgin TiVo) architecture that enables us to easily add features, modify sections or bring new TV platforms on board. We continue to work closely with the industry to bring Connected Red Button to a broad range of TVs, devices and platforms. Connected Red Button is built using the TV Application Layer which simplifies development, porting and certification. For more on the development of Connected Red Button visit Duncan’s blog post "Building Connected Red Button."

Sport section in Connected Red Button

As Matt mentioned in his previous blog post with up to 13 million people pressing red each week, the existing Red Button service remains very popular and we continue to support the service.

Connected Red Button represents the next step, bringing together the best of Red Button and BBC online content and services with the advantage of modern design and making the best use of the connected services that internet enabled devices have to offer.

We hope you enjoy this new service and I would like to hear your feedback in comments. There are also details on our BBC FAQ page. As the name suggests, we’re still at the ‘beta’ stage and I hope to have more updates in 2014 on the progress of Connected Red Button.

Jennifer Lyons is the Product Manager for Connected Red Button.

The Connected Studio session at the December Briefing was a follow up to the previous one in the Spring.

I was joined by our Project manager Robin Cramp to talk about the transition of 7 Connected Studio Pilots onto the Products production pipeline and our plans to re-launch the Connected Studio online presence.

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A summary of Connected Studio activity in 2013

I also discussed some of the things we learned over the last year. We were then joined by John Davision from Kanoti, Matt Shearer from our partner News Labs and Matthew Clark from BBC Sport.

Adrian Woolard is Head of Connected Studio and BBC R&D North Lab