Gavin Bell has posted the slides from his recent talk at TOC08. Some good stuff here on nurturing the online community around content that can equally apply to broadcasters such as the BBC as much as publishing houses. (Gaving used to work at the BBC, he is now at Nature).
I am obviously very interested in the perception of the BBC and its content, what it does, what it could do and what it should do (as well as all the negatives to those questions). So out of curiosity, I have a few questions below, if you would not mind answering them on your blogs (put a link back to here so we can find it) we can see if we can learn anything.
The BBC does run surveys on bbc.co.uk on occassion, and it has a whole department whose job it is is to understand the audience. I just want to see what the picture might be if we took a more grass roots approach.
If you do not want to blog the answers then you can email them to me, let me know if you mind me blogging your answers, anonymously of course.
Right, questions (and my answers). Oh yes, you always reserve the right to change your mind :), these are just a snapshot of perception today.
1. What BBC content do you watch / listen to / interact with which you feel strongly about. In fact what content do you just enjoy, passively 'consume' etc.
I watch a fair bit of TV and listen to the Radio, though mostly Radio 4 and XFM. BBC4 is my favourite idea of a channel, though how much do I get around to watching? What is interesting I guess is that of an evening I will watch stuff as it is on, its usually nothing that I am passionate about though.
Last thursday we sat down to watch 'Ashes to Ashes' as we had enjoyed 'Life On Mars' so much. Of course these things rarely live up to their expectations.
2. How much of this do you get from traditional routes (i.e. broadcast to your television, radio or recorded off air via a video / pvr) vesus other routes (BBC Listen Again, iPlayer, DVD or download via the likes of Bittorrent)? How much of this material is BBC and how much from other sources?
Well I do watch a fair bit as it is broadcast but that is more of an evening 'what is on'. BBC content wise, well I do download from an internal experimental service which means I do not use iPlayer. I use Macs at home anyway so to play back full screen I would have to run windows, streaming to a window is not really that good an experience. Even with a large pipe internet connection from Be* the streams still stop. This was a problem with Joost as well.
We have made use of Listen Again a bit, but not that much. I am more passive about radio content. If it is on then I can listen in and get into it but if I miss it then it rarely matters. On the odd occasion I have bought the CD from the BBC Shop, for say the recent Dirk Gently dramatisation.
I do by a few DVDs as well, though these have mostly been for documentary content. Coast and Planet Earth. I also bought the Planets and Space when I was doing an Open University short course on Planets.
Bittorrent I do, ahem, use but that is mostly for those shows that premiere in the States, I had watched all of Heroes before BBC2 started showing it (and therefor knew how slow the show got).
iTunes, well it has supplied me with the odd episode of South Park and I may get some Babylon 5 from it but again these are not BBC shows and here it is a trade off between waiting for the DVD's to be in a sale at the likes of HMV (in the case of Babylon 5) or not be that bothered (in the case of South Park).
As to the website, I look at the news and check schedules. I rarely go to a site to find out more about the show becuase I feel that I can get a better discussion elsewhere, which leads us onto ...
3. Where do you talk about BBC content? Online, on your blog, forums, amongst your online friends? or do you just chat about it at work, at the pub. Do you have 'water cooler moments' or do you in fact not really talk about it much?
My blog a bit a guess, with friends and at work. The old 'did you see' (we spoke a bit about 'Life On Mars'). In fact I have not had the urge to really talk about much television at all recently. Which is a pity as there is a lot out there that is worthy of discussion.
I think back to what excited me about television. I enjoyed Dr. Who, Blakes 7, in fact a whole load of TV scifi. Now I enjoy Dr. Who (the new ones) but it is not brilliant (a few episodes have been worthy of the alieness that the doctor should embody). Torchwood is just shouting and swearing and rather predictable polymorphous perversity. (Now Cronenberg on TV...). In fact Battlestar Galactica is the best scifi on TV right now.
Edge of Darkness is still a level to be attained by much TV drama. It worked on so many levels but again maybe I was just at that impressionable age at school, just reading Crisis comic, listening to The The's Infected albumn.
Adam Curtis is the most interesting person on television at the moment, and all you do is hear his voice. It is a visual radio programme.The playful nature of the mash-ups of archive footage, the thesis being conveyed all make for compelling television and something that I would want to talk about. The BBC's support for discussion on 'The Power of Nightmares' was awful though.
Oh, and my favourite TV series of all time, damn, well it is between Edge of Darkness and The Prisoner. I guess you can tell a lot about me from that.
4. If you wanted to get in touch with the people who made the content how would you go about it?
Slight unfair advantage, I could try the internal email system. Otherwise though I would try the BBC website, the contact us links do work eventually. Would I leave a comment on a page though? Depends on what I want to say I guess.
Ok my answers are fairly weak actually, humm, but what do you think?
If you can think of any other questions that should be here, that might make for useful learning on perception and thinking about what the BBC should / could do then please feel free to add them, I'll update the questions list.
Just so that I don't loose it, Philip Trippenbach hads been blogging about games and Journalism for a while now. Lots of interesting posts here.
