IMS_Blog

The BBC seem to have taken to issuing a weekly email newsletter about their archive. That’s good, because it reminds me the thing exists ;-) This weeks gives some insight into the sort of thing the BBC are doing with their archive.

The next phase of programmes has a different aim; to drill down into the archive to find as many programmes on one subject as we can. We’re tying in with the BBC season ‘India & Pakistan at 60’ and have trawled the archives to find a huge variety of great programmes that we are confident you’ll enjoy.

BBC Archive Trial Newsletter, Issue 3

Which is all very well if you have a deeply held interest in India and Pakistan. Even if it were something that particularly interested me though surely the historical context is going to be better represented by that entire current season than by watching some programmes of the time, however well chosen. Again we reach the point that a second, sub-archive would be useful. Interesting the Archive FAQ [you may need to be logged into the trial to see that] itself addresses the question of why there more factual programmes than drama and entertainment. It unsurprisingly points out that there are many more factual programmes within the archive, but it seems they’ve completely missed the clue inherent in the final line of their answer We all tend to think that more drama and entertainment programmes are broadcast than actually are because most of these are broadcast at prime time - which is, of course, when most of us are watching!. There’s a reason they are broadcast at prime time—it’s what people want to watch. It’s difficult to see that the BBC can really imagine that the case would be different with their archive, so they seem to be simply ducking the difficult issues again.

Whilst producing big season tie-ins (which incidently I can find no obvious trace of—perhaps it’s not actually added yet) they continue to add random episodes of things. There are the first parts of two Dennis Potter dramas. Why is it they can take the time to produce “themes” to link in which current programming but can’t manage to get the second parts of those up? Indeed, why not just put the entirety of one up, rather than the start of two? [Of course, the hopelessly cynical part of me keeps thinking that they’ll put up the starts of lots of things to drum up interest for releasing the DVD box sets, but I’m really trying to believe they’re being more altruistic than that]. On a related note to that the archive could really do with an easy way to find what’s new—having trawled through most of the archive once I really don’t want to do it again just to find out what’s been added.

Anyway, it’s interesting to watch it develop, even if it isn’t so interesting to watch the actual content. On the theme of the development of the BBC’s internet offerings, come news that the BBC Trust might meet with the Open Source Consortium” to discuss the BBC’s iPlayer. The interesting point in that is mention of “major players” within the open source community (the springs to mind close fit would be something like Democracy but it’d be interesting to know who these players are). It also says the Open Source Consortium said DRM could be involved—that would be something, open source DRM (I’m not aware of any cross-platform, open source DRM solutions at present…)