Working at the BBC

Sorry for the severe lack of updates recently, but it is for a fairly good reason.

You see this week I was fortunate enough to return to the BBC for some work experience. This time it was with the BBC Stoke and Staffordshire website.

But what have I been doing? I hear you all ask! Well I could explain about, the photo-gallery I made, band I interviewed and Staffordshire Hoard speech I filmed… but instead I’ll simply show you! Here’s some of the work I did:

‘Mercians’ claim the Staffordshire Hoard

Polish community weblinks in Stoke and Staffordshire

In Pictures: Staffordshire Day-to-day life in February

Pegasus Bridge interview < This appears to not be working right now… should be back online later

BBC search for Rugeley Power station workers

There will be more coming online in the next few days after a few BBC tweaks, but these are the articles currently on the site that are entirely my own work.

I really feel I learnt a lot in my weeks W/E for he Beeb and especially how to write for the web. You never know, it may improve the quality of this site!

Staffordshire Hoard Comes Home

Very exciting day for me today! As part of my work for StaffsLive, I got to go and see The Staffordshire Hoard this morning ahead of it’s public opening tomorrow.

The Hoard was discovered seven months ago and has been touring the country for museum-goers to see. It’s valued at almost 3.3 million pounds. There’s currently plans to raise money to keep the find in Staffordshire.

The selection of the treasure in Stoke will remain there until 7th March.

I went along this morning to find out why the Hoard is so important.

Warner To Deny Spotify-ers?!

It’s being reported that Warner have decided to pull their music from free providers such as Spotify.

The music label have decided to discontinue music from their acts (which include Muse, R.E.M. and The Red Hot Chilli Peppers). Sites affected include We7, Spotify and Last.FM

Personally I think this is absolutely ridiculous. These services have been invaluable in re-launching the music industry in a difficult time. Although no large profit has been made from the services yet, it certainly beats illegal downloading and is a great way of tackling it (for those who don’t know, these services provide free streaming music which is funded by adverts.)

Spotify premium is also growing at a string rate (especially with the iPhone integration).

I really think this is a mistake by Warner, like it or not, the old music model is changing and the record labels need to evolve and embrace technology like Spotify or risk losing the whole industry to pirates.

Endless Friends… It’s OVER!!

I for one have never been a fan of the show ‘Friends’, but even if I was, I think I might have got  little bit sick of Channel 4’s obsession with airing them over and over.

Well today it seems those days are numbered as Channel 4 have decided not to continue their contract with Warner Bros. to show the programme. It means that no longer will E4 be maxed out with the ‘comedy’ at several points throughout the day. It could also mean new and original programming as part of C4’s new refresh of it’s shows.

For all you mourning ‘Friends’ fans, there’s no need to get too upset. The shows will continue to air on C4 and E4 until the end of 2011 (when the contract runs out) and even then it wont be the end. Comedy Central have chosen to continue the contract meaning you can still get your ‘Friends’ fix.

For me, the last year and a half have bee landmark for C4. First they axed their most profitable programme, ‘Big Brother’ (as well as other successful formats such as ‘Wife Swap’ and ‘How Clean Is Your House?’) and now they’ve finally parted ways with one of their longest running imports. It marks an exciting time for the network as they rush to fill those empty slots with brand new shows, hopefully good ones!

Locals Outrage Over Filthy Streets

Here’s a piece I made for StaffsLive recently about litter on the streets of Stoke-On-Trent… enjoy!

People from Stoke-On-Trent have been complaining about littering in the street and some believe that the council don’t do enough about it.

In 2006 the City Council first started a campaign to tackle the issue saying there would be zero tolerance on those found littering in the streets. This campaign was re-launched in 2009 with £50 fines introduced.

But people say this isn’t working.

One local told StaffsLive: “The council don’t spend enough money tidying [Stoke] up.” “Newcastle [is] a lot cleaner”

Others suggested that the scheme doesn’t work because there aren’t enough people to enforce it.

SeeSaw – What’s The Point?

Recently I was invited to the beta testing of SeeSaw.

Just in case you don’t know, SeeSaw is an online Video-On-Demand service. It was born out of the remnants of Kangaroo (a service the BBC, ITV, C4 and Five were looking to launch jointly a few years ago). It will launch fully in a few weeks, but I have to be honest, I don’t get the point of it.

The service has lots of content from BBC, C4 and Five, all online and ready to watch with no limits. And the play quality is good also. It loads very quickly and after a few ads, you’re in to one of your favourite shows.

But it’s the actual content, surprisingly, which lets SeeSaw down. It’s not that the programmes aren’t good, it’s that you can already get them (legally I might add) elsewhere on the web.

SeeSaw does not show up-to-date/recent shows, making it pointless for catchup. Instead it has archive shows from all the channels. Now this would be great, but it’s already been done.

4od from Channel 4 has nearly every Channel 4 show ever ready to play whenever you want, including whatever was on yesterday. The BBC is also starting to extend it’s iPlayer service to keep content for much longer. And if these, more popular, services are already doing it, then where exactly does SeeSaw fit in?

SeeSaw have said that the service is still in it’s infancy and there’ll be much more to come including a subscription service later this year. But I just feel everything on the site has been done before and to be honest, it’s been done better.

SeeSaw has no unique selling point and for that I feel it will fail. I hope I’m wrong as I never like to see new, creative ventures like this one go under,  but I’ll watch with interest when it’s released to the public in a couple of weeks time.