Posted by
Patrick Smith
on 29 August 2008 at 08:06
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Magazines, New Media, Newspapers, Online, Photography
A whole host of publishers have employed the services of sports video provider Perform, a company specialising in “monetising sports and entertainment rights in digital media”.
Posted by Martin Stabe on 27 August 2008 at 13:03
Tags: Agencies, BBC, Journalism, Online
The Press Association’s events listings database is to be made available for non-commercial use by web developers and will be released through the BBC’s web developer network.
PA is releasing an API (application programming interface) of its events listings through the BBC Backstage programme, a developer network that provides access to BBC and some third-party content to a community of web developers.
The plan was first revealed by BBC Backstage producer Ian Forrester at the Mashed08 conference in June, and is set to go live this week.
Forrester said publishing APIs through BBC Backstage gives third-party data providers like PA access to the projects’s existing community of developers, which he has been actively fostering for several years.
“They saw the Backstage as being not just about releasing APIs but also the engagement with the community,” Forrester told Press Gazette.
“That’s why they - rather than set up their own Backstage-ish project - wanted to work with us.”
The news agency hopes that users of the data will provide new ideas about how to use it and how listings are stored.
The PA database contains listings of events in cinema, art, theatre, literature and includes includes web links, venue details, times and prices. It is the same data that PA also supplies to newspapers, magazines and websites.
PA head of digital development Chris McCormack said the launch of a public, non-commercial version of its listings came about after the service was developed for use by some of its commerical clients. PA has long delivered its material to media clients using XML feeds, but these require the clients to recreate PA’s database on their own servers. By providing APIs, the agency can instead give customers structured access to its existing content databases.
The version available to developers through BBC Backstage will be strictly for non-commercial use by the BBC Backstage developer community, McCormack said.
“We have to safeguard our existing customers, so we won’t be allowing anyone to do anything commercial with them,” he said.
McCormack said PA has no immediate plans for launching further public APIs.
“We’re going to wait and see how this goes first,” he said. “There’s no strategy or plan to release our news or TV listings or anything after this.”
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Posted by
Rachael Gallagher
on 26 August 2008 at 11:18
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Free Newspapers, Journalism, National Newspapers, Radio
Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone will be presenting a new current affairs-based weekly radio show on London commercial station LBC, in which he plans to answer back at his critics.
In an interview in The Independent, Livingstone said: “I’m going to invite on the programme everyone who hates me.”
Top on Livingstone’s list is Evening Standard reporter Andrew Gilligan, who won Journalist of the year at Press Gazette’s British Press Awards earlier this year for his investigations into Livingstone. Livingstone said that Gilligan, whose name is now synonymous with The Hutton Report which found failings in his report on Radio 4’s Today Programme, was responsible for the death of Government weapons expert Dr David Kelly, who was revealed as the source in his report.
Talking about Gilligan doorstepping him, Livingstone said: “If Gilligan hadn’t distorted what Kelly had said, grossly exaggerated it, Kelly would be alive today. I told him to his face, ‘You’ve been responsible for one person’s death, stay away from my family. Get off my doorstep’.”
Livingstone, who writes a monthly column for News International’s thelondonpaper, also attacked the Evening Standard for painting a negative picture of London. “I particularly like thelondonpaper because they set out to have a paper that’s positive about London, whereas if the only thing you knew about London was from the Evening Standard you wouldn’t come here for fear of being mugged, raped or ripped off. It’s all doom, like the Daily Mail.”
Posted by
Meabh Ritchie
on 12 August 2008 at 11:39
Tags: BBC, Broadcast
Veteran sports broadcaster Bob Crampsey died aged 78 after a long illness. He became a part of the BBC Radio Scotland Sportsound team in 1987 and remained a popular fixture there until his retirement in 2001.
Crampsey was noted for his encyclopaedic knowledge of football and also won the BBC’s Brain of Britain competition in 1965. He preceded his career in journalism with work as a history teacher.
He had contributed to a range of sports programmes on BBC Scotland, Scottish Television and Radio Clyde. Over the past 40 years, he also wrote a column for Glasgow’s evening times entitled Now You Know, answering readers’ sports history questions.
Crampsey is survived by his wife of 50 years, and four daughters.
Posted by
Julie Tomlin
on 4 June 2008 at 11:27
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Journalism, Media Business, National Newspapers, Radio, Television
Tim Walker sent flattering emails to BBC presenters telling them they were more deserving than Jonathan Ross of his reported £18 million salary… Read the responses here and here.
Posted by
Dominic Ponsford
on 21 May 2008 at 15:05
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Journalism, Magazines, National Newspapers, New Media, Regional Newspapers
In this week’s magazine:
The BBC has given Press Gazette a preview of new plans for a network of 60 local news websites involving up to 300 video journalists. The BBC’s “ultra local” news plans have previously prompted huge opposition from the regional press amid fears that it will be unfair competition for commercial sites.
We reveal the news weekly which has decided to sack its last reporters.
After the Guardian’s admission that it did libel Tesco - editor Alan Rusbridger accuses the supermarket giant of making “unfounded smears” against his newspaper and urges it to take The Guardian’s “Offer of Amends” and drop its libel action.
Rusbridger also reveals more details of plans to largely merge the editorial teams of The Guardian, Observer and Guardian.co.uk. Describing Guardian News and Media as a “matrix organisation” he explains the new structure and reveals why journalists have to do away with 600-year-old ideas about how stories should be structured.
Journalist Shiv Malik - currently fighting in the High Court to stop police forcing him to hand his notes under the Terrorism Act- writes exclusively for Press Gazette about the “spectre” hanging over the heads of all journalists.
Exclusive interview with Emap chief executive David Gilbertson.
And columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown explains why after ten years at the Independent she is “fed up with being told I should be grateful”.
Press Gazette is mailed to subscribers this afternoon and will be in newsagents on Friday.
Click here to take up our latest subscription offer.
Click here to find your nearest Press Gazette stockist.
Posted by
Colin Crummy
on 15 April 2008 at 09:13
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Radio
A trio of BBC News veterans are among the contenders tipped to replace Jenny Abramsky as the head of audio and music at the BBC following her departure from the corporation next September, reports MediaGuardian.
Current director of news Helen Boaden is the early favourite for the job, with former deputy director of news and current Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer also tipped for the post. BBC director of sport and former editor of Radio 4’s Today programme Roger Mosey is also a leading contender for the role.
Posted by
Colin Crummy
on 15 April 2008 at 08:58
Tags: BBC, Broadcast
A BBC Home Service broadcast later described as the most ill-natured interview ever has been released by the British Library, reports the Guardian.
The 1953 radio encounter between novelist Evelyn Waugh and three BBC questioners was later fictionalised by Waugh in his 1957 novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold in which Pinfold says: “They tried to make an ass of me. I don’t believe they succeeded.”
Posted by
Colin Crummy
on 14 April 2008 at 09:58
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Online
The BBC’s director of future media and technology, Ashley Highfield, is to leave the corporation to launch the joint online video platform between ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC, the FT has revealed.
Highfield is expected to be announced as chief executive of the online service, codenamed Kangaroo, later today.
His departure will leave vacant the top job in the UK’s digital media industry, according to the FT.
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 9 April 2008 at 10:22
Tags: BBC, Online
Under a new agreement, video content from Guardian.co.uk will soon become available on Blinkx.com alongside contextual advertising.
The Guardian and Blinkx will share the resulting revenue, according to a press release from the video search engine.
Blinkx has also announced a similar partnership the multi-lingual European news channel EuroNews. Clips from Five News and the BBC iPlayer are also available on the service.
Posted by
Colin Crummy
on 2 April 2008 at 10:16
Tags: BBC
Staff on BBC Radio 4’s Today have been told to work harder after an internal audit of their output, according to the Telegraph.
Staff were called to a meeting with editor Ceri Thomas, who produced charts showing how many times the journalists had been on air in recent weeks.
The main presenters like James Naughtie and John Humphreys were not invited to the meeting, which one unnamed staff member called a warning to reporters on the programme.
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 1 April 2008 at 06:41
Tags: BBC
Readers would be well-advised to read their papers with even greater scepticism than usual today
The BBC — apparently unperturbed by hand-wringing about trust and accuracy in television — has set the April Fools bar particularly high this year with a multimedia gag. It has released a video of a recently-discovered colony of flying penguins, purportedly a promo for a forthcoming nature programme, “Miracles of Evolution”.
Both the Mirror and the Telegraph are in on the joke. We think.
Brand Republic reports the video is part of a BBC iPlayer advertising campaign by agency RKCR/Y&R.
Under the headline “A fool and his money”, the Mail has an extraordinary picture of Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling playing a lottery scratchcard. Anagram hunters will also have noticed that the snapper credited with the picture is “Rolf Loipa”.
Under the byline Avril de Poisson, the Guardian claimed that Gordon Brown has appointed Carla Bruni-Sarkozy “to spearhead a government initiative aimed at injecting more style and glamour into British national life“.
The Sun also had a Sarkozy gag, reporting that the small-statured French President would be undergoing pioneering surgery to stretch his height to that of his wife. The operation, the Sun warned, would be carried out at the Poisson d’Avril hospital in Geneva. The story included a quote from “Israeli academic Professor Ura Schmuck” and “French government spokesman Luc Biggér”.
More, no doubt, follows…
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 31 March 2008 at 14:06
Tags: BBC, Online
The BBC has this morning unveiled the redesigned versions of its News and Sport websites.
As editor Steve Herrman writes on the BBC blog The Editors, has been designed to 1024-pixels width, reflecting the higher resolutions that most users’ screens now have. The larger avaialble space allows the new design to also features a new masthead, more whitespace and larger images.
More importantly, the new design incorporates advertisements for international users and allows the site to embed audio and video files directly within story pages.
head of BBC Sport Interactive Ben Gallop says the redesign is only the first phase of a work-in-progress.
Posted by
Colin Crummy
on 31 March 2008 at 07:55
Tags: BBC, Broadcast
The Conservatives have backed a plan to “top-slice” the television licence fee, reports the Guardian.
Jeremy Hunt, shadow culture secretary, called for a new public service broadcasting commission to take charge of distributing the annual licence fee.
The plan would mean some of the funds the BBC currently receives would be divided between other broadcasters to protect key genres like childrens and current affairs.
Posted by
Paul McNally
on 30 March 2008 at 10:16
Tags: BBC, Broadcast, Journalism
Stephanie Flanders – who starts her new job as the BBC’s economics editor on Tuesday – is due to give birth to her second child in June.
“It would have been much better for me if Evan Davis had stepped down in another two years,” she tells the Daily Mail. “But what do you do? Rule yourself out of a job you know you will be good at?
“I rather think that if things really hot up in economic terms, it will be difficult to stay away.”
Posted by
Dominic Ponsford
on 28 March 2008 at 09:49
Tags: BBC, PR
Some interesting snippets from PR week’s Power Book: “The most definitive guide to the most influential people in PR”.
It claims that the FT is the most popular newspaper among PR types followed by The Guardian, The Times and then jointly The Sun and Sunday Times.
Their favourite mag is The Economist and their favourite non-print news medium is bbc.co.uk/ Their most respected journalists are, in this order: Andrew Marr, John Simpson, Jeff Randall, Jeremy Clarkson(!) and John Humpries/Matthew Parris.
PR Week’s most powerful PRs in various fields are: City and Corporate: Brunswick founder Alan Parker; politics and public affairs: Downing Street chief of strategy Stephen Carter; consumer and celebrity: Freud Communications chairman Matthew Freud and healthcare:Department of Health director of communications Sian Jarvis.
Posted by
Patrick Smith
on 28 March 2008 at 08:55
Tags: BBC
Journalists from across the world have been refused entry to Zimbabwe to cover the country’s presidential elections tomorrow.
The Foreign Correspondents’ Association of Southern Africa, which represented 193 journalists from 122 organisations, The BBC, which has been banned by President Robert Mugabe for seven years, joins CNN, New York Times, Reuters and AFP on the list.
The FCA-SA says that accreditation, where it is issued, is based on a payment of $1,500 and according to race and nationality.
Posted by
Dominic Ponsford
on 28 March 2008 at 08:55
Tags: BBC, Broadcast
The BBC is sending 100 more staff to cover the Beijing Olympics than are in the British Olympic team, the Daily Mail reports today.
The Mail says in its report: “Sending such an enormous contingent flies in the face of the BBC’s pleas of poverty after a lower than expected license fee settlement.”
Posted by
Rachael Gallagher
on 17 March 2008 at 10:22
Tags: BBC
The former director-general of the BBC, Greg Dyke, has criticised ITV for bringing back News at Ten and going head to head with the BBC.
In an interview in The Independent, Dyke said: “Anyone who has ever studied the history knows that when the BBC and ITV go head to head on news the BBC wins easily.”
Posted by
Dominic Ponsford
on 17 March 2008 at 09:17
Tags: BBC, Broadcast
The Conservative Party reportedly threatened to gag the BBC because it wanted to broadcast a recording of party leader David Cameron rehearsing his speech to the spring conference in Gateshead on Friday.
According to the Mail on Sunday, the Today programme had planned to broadcast the recording on Saturday morning - five hours before Cameron was due to make the speech. But apparently the Conservatives threatened to pull Cameron out of all interviews with the BBC and ban BBC staff from going backstage at future Tory rallies if the tape was used.
A BBC spokesman told the MoS: “The reason we didn’t use it was because it was inaudible.”
