Radio 4 programme maps its listeners’ locations
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 2 January 2008 at 16:38
Tags: BBC, Google Maps
BBC Radio 4’s iPM has published its Google Map showing the locations of its listeners.
More than 22,000 listeners e-mailed their postcodes to the programme, and a backlog soon developed, forcing presenter Eddie Mair to publish a blog post explaining why individual listeners’ locations had not yet appeared on the map.
As BBC blogging expert Robin Hamman points out on his personal blog, Cybersoc.com, the resulting map highlights the problem of what he calls the “’send it to us’ approach to audience engagement” — it’s not very scalable. The enormous volume of emails were overwhelming.
But Hamman also points out that the the map — with its pushpins spread across Europe and other parts of the world — also shows how the Internet is expanding the BBC radio station’s reach globally.
Tags: BBC, Google Maps
