When I was a producer, in pre-internet days we produced written ‘factsheets’ with information about organisations we’d liaised with and checked according to our criteria. We’d end the programme by inviting you to send us a stamped addressed envelope for more information.

Every week, the wonderful Alice in our team devoted a whole day to despatching hundreds of them to those who didn’t just need more information, but wanted desperately to know how to get more help and support. It worked, but took time and in truth was a bit ramshackle – but it was all we could do.

By 1995 the developing call centre industry had reached a stage where BBC Radio stations could launch their new Radio Helplines. You could suddenly get such information far more quickly, still confidentially. But it was an expensive investment for the licence fee to support.

Besides, if hundreds of people called at once, you might have to call again later. And if it was a particularly sensitive subject, you might need to use the callbox round the corner. For example if you suffered from domestic violence you didn’t want your partner overhearing or scrutinising the phone bill.

Twenty years on, everything is transformed by the internet and other changes in technology. You can watch or hear our programmes for 30 days if you missed the details, or look it up on our Action Line programme information pages and hide your browsing history. If you don’t have internet access you can call free anytime 24/7 to hear our recorded information – now even when hundreds of others are calling at the same time. And do so anonymously using your own mobile phone.

All this means that for far less money we now regularly help thousands more people more quickly and safely than we ever could in the days of Alice and her stuffed envelopes or the helplines. In 2014-15, over 385,000 people used us to get information or find out about organisations which could help further.

Twenty years on this is a very significant public service for us, reaching many thousands of people. But there’s more to it. It’s also a partnership between the BBC, its audiences and the voluntary and public sector.

We are not a helpline, but BBC Action Line. We provide details of charities and other organisations which meet our criteria and are willing to offer specialist support, information or guidance – quite confidentially. By doing so we also help organisations reach the very people they exist to help.

Those people may later also volunteer if they want, using their experience to help others. In effect it’s a three-way partnership which can help bring organisations and people together.

Whatever the topic may be, today the off-air BBC Action Line supports hundreds of thousands of people, as the figures on this page demonstrate.

I hope you’ll be informed and sometimes moved by the topics we raise in our programmes, but not experience some of the issues we uncover. Although if you ever do need support, the Action Line information is there online or to listen to - 24 hours a day. 

Keith Jones is Head of Communications & Complaints, BBC Audience Services.

• Visit BBC Action Line for more information

What we love most about the Middle Ages is their glorious (and gory) distance from the modern world. Not for nothing is Game of Thrones held up as the ‘best drama about the Wars of the Roses’ even with its dragons, ‘gods old and new’, and 1,000 mile ice wall. It’s us, but not us. The castles, and the suits of armour, may be satisfyingly tangible, but they really come to life in the wildest fantasy – and have done so for centuries.

So it’s something of a surprise to be told our entire way of life – everything we hold dearest about freedom, liberty and justice – derives from a single sheep’s skin manuscript, covered in arcane medieval Latin, which is celebrating its 800th anniversary this year. Magna Carta – ‘The Great Charter’. Cue, a small island on the river Thames, and a group of angry, well-armed knights forcing a recalcitrant, and very bad King John to sign a document curbing his own arbitrary powers. Actually, he didn’t sign it, of course, he set his seal to it; and in fact, there was no document, per se, that day in June 1215, only the promise of one. But once that royal seal was attached, a vital principle entered into national political life – global political life in due course – and that was, simply, nobody was above the law, least of all the King. All those tyrants, emperors, and ancient kings who wielded cruel and non-negotiable power, free to dispose of their subjects as they chose – suddenly, it was they who were history, at least in theory. And from Magna Carta’s core idea would be built (after centuries of dispute, it has to be said, including revolutions and civil war) many of the pillars of the modern world. The fact our leaders cannot imprison us on a whim, for example. Long after King John – and his rebellious barons – were dead and buried, that principle would motivate the parliamentary opposition to Charles I; it would provide the central idea embodied by the Founding Fathers of the new United States of America; and it would offer justification to the protest movements of Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela – among many, many others.

That is why we feel this is no ordinary anniversary. The story of how the Magna Carta came to be conceived in the first place, never mind sealed and implemented, is fascinating enough in its own right, and one we shall be addressing directly, on radio, television, and online. But it’s the story of its impact on the following 800 years which really astonishes. That is why our coverage will range far and wide – touching on everything from an exploration of the institution that most directly claims direct lineage from the Magna Carta – our Houses of Commons – to examples from around the globe of just how tendentious these principles remain in the contemporary world, from China, to Zimbabwe, and beyond.

Working closely with our partners – Magna Carta 800 and the British Library – we’ve made the season relevant to people of all ages. From David Starkey and Melvyn Bragg looking back at its history; to Horrible Histories, BBC Three comedy and Radio 1 supporting the British Library's Magna Carta: My Digital Rights project, to our news and current affairs offerings in Democracy Day on the 20th January - the season will promote understanding and debate around today’s democratic process.

Magna Carta’s legacy is as profound in its spirit, as it is in its letter. Ordinary people talk to power, we have the right to criticise those who claim to represent us, we are even allowed to ridicule them, and all without fear of imprisonment or torture. This too must stand as one of the most important consequences of that fateful encounter between king and magnates 800 years ago, though not one any of the original participants would remotely have anticipated, or, arguably, approved of. But still it stands. A tribute to the power of an idea, which once unleashed, can change the world out of all recognition.

Martin Davidson is BBC Commissioning Editor, History

Programmes in the season include David Starkey's Why so Revolutionary on BBC Two, and Melvyn Bragg's The Legacy of Magna Carta for BBC Radio 4.

• See the Taking Liberties Media Pack for more details
• Read the Taking Liberties press release

Ahead of The Doctor and The Dalek game going live later this week, Future Media Director, Ralph Rivera and Director of TV, Danny Cohen shared their thoughts on how the BBC is inspiring a new generation to get creative with coding and digital technology in its new initiative Make it Digital.

The interview that follows was conducted on Tuesday 14 October 2014.

Q: Tell us about the Doctor Who game The Doctor and The Dalek

Ralph: There are a number of things which are important about this exciting new game. For me the first thing is how we’re using a great brand like Doctor Who to help engage audiences into coding and computational thinking and digital creativity: the ‘doing’ of coding is really important – actually getting people to get a taste of it. Additionally, the key characters in Doctor Who are about technology - there’s science and technology woven into the very fabric of Doctor Who. Using that to showcase coding and the use of technology in a game, I think, is phenomenal.

Q: Is this about making coding more interesting?

Danny: I don’t think it’s about making it more interesting to people. Rather it’s about introducing it to people who don’t know anything about it. If you go to parts of the UK where coding and engineering are driving the economy – it’s really exciting. So I think it’s about introducing it to new audiences and new young people so they understand the opportunities around it. And the way its transforming the way people work and the way people enjoy themselves. The better we get at that, the better the country is going to be and the more young people we’re going to have who are successful.

Doctor Who is something our audiences love. It’s going to be a fantastic game voiced by the wonderful Peter Capaldi. It has its own story. Between each level there will be puzzles which introduce people to basic programming principles and computational thinking. Of course, the game is focussed on young people, but we’re hoping that older audiences will get something out of it too.

Q: The Doctor Who game is part of the BBC’s Make it Digital campaign, a wider commitment to promoting digital creativity and getting more people interested in coding. How important is Make it Digital?

Ralph: When I first arrived at the BBC, one of the things I learned about was the BBC Micro. 30 years ago the BBC Micro inspired a generation of people, many of whom went on to become world class video game developers. We know there’s a technology skills gap and so we want to capture the spirit of that initiative for the digital age. We pick up language to learn how to communicate with other people but now computers are pervasive, they’re everywhere – communication, entertainment. Being able to acquire the language to communicate with computers is going to be as fundamental as writing. What I hope is that Make it Digital has a similar impact: that it inspires the next generation to engage with coding, to help them to learn a new language. 

Danny: Increasingly people use a range of different devices to enjoy different kinds of content and other experiences. So it’s absolutely right the BBC uses a variety of different platforms to inform, educate and entertain people. This is a good example when you can bring together a huge TV show with a huge audience and introduce people to something they haven’t tried before. The BBC is going to be at its best when it can do this across a range of different platforms and services and harness the power of the BBC and its brands to do bigger and bigger things.

Ralph: For me, media has a simple definition which is the intersection of storytelling with technology. That’s been true throughout history: Papyrus; the Guttenburg Press; radio; television or online. When you look at storytelling online you have to look at the characteristics of online as a medium. It’s social; it’s interactive; and, it’s not linear. So, how do we learn to tell stories in that way? I don’t mean just using online as a platform for distributing what we’ve already broadcast on TV or radio, but using online natively as a form unto itself. So for me, with an initiative like Make it Digital, we need to be digitally creative with how we tell stories and the Doctor and the Dalek is great example of that.

Q.What else can we expect to see from the Make it Digital initiative?

Danny: Make it Digital is a really big initiative for the BBC in 2015. The ambition is to celebrate this country’s digital heritage. But additionally it’s there to inspire young people – people of all ages. It’s there to get involved in digital creativity, to learn about coding and to understand how coding can help the future of the UK. And because we’re a creative organisation we want to do that through a range of creative different ways. We’ve started a little early this autumn with a range of content from BBC Learning, the Doctor Who game, Appsolute Genius on CBBC with Dick and Dom, Technobabble and Nina and the Neurons: Go Digital for younger audiences.

Ralph: And in support of the new computing curriciulum, we’ve delivered over 100 Bitesize guides on the topic. Take a look at the Keystage 3 Computing introduction to computational thinking, which breaks it up into deconstruction and algorithims. Look at that and you’ll see how I think.

We’re also launching two pieces of iWonder content: one is a timeline from Piers Linney telling the story of how code has come to run our world - from the invention of binary just 330 years ago, to the first computers in the 40s and 50s, and the transformation of music, architecture and business. And a guide from Lauren Laverne coming soon. It asks Is Code the language which rules the world? Just for the record, I think it is. The guide takes us on a trip to a record shop, to her car, and looking for ingredients for a recipe, all the while showing us how code underpins our daily lives.

There will be more to come over the next few months and throughout next year. We’re looking at Make it Digital as a catalyst around digital creativity and coding, but also looking at establishing an ecosystem of partners who are already doing a lot of great work here. It’s not just us doing this by ourselves, it’s actually bringing in the various parts together, whether it be the schools focussing on coding (of which there are several), or other big organisations.

Ralph Rivera and Danny Cohen were speaking to About the BBC Blog editor Jon Jacob in an interview conducted on Tuesday 14 October 2014.

Jon Jacob is Editor, About the BBC Website and Blog..

• The Doctor and the Dalek will be available freely at bbc.co.uk/cbbc from Wednesday 22nd October.
  
• Read a press release about The Doctor and the Dalek on the Media Centre website. 
• Read Jessica Cecil's blog 'Coding and digital creativity - planning for 2015'
  

 

Earlier this week Professor Lucy Hooberman introduced her work with the BBC History Unit compiling the oral histories of those who helped establish what would become BBC's first online presence. 

In this post, Lucy discusses some of the questions raised in this early phase of her work and points to some early blogs which help document BBC Online's history. 

The Harvard Business Review tells us that anniversaries should not be wasted and organisations, including the BBC, do seem to love them. But do they get the most out of them and what does that even mean?

Today, Friday 11th April an event in Broadcasting House will mark the 20th anniversary of the BBC on the world wide web - an anniversary stemming from the early work of the BBC's Networking Club in 1994. I first took the idea of a "big" anniversary to Roly Keating in the summer of 2011 when he was the BBC’s first Director of Archive content. One conversation lead to another and I was introduced to the BBC History Unit and the Oral History Archive. Eventually we agreed the first steps of this oral history and memory project. With a small start (ten oral history interviews), we committed to starting a research stream for the future. But why bother?

Anniversaries are good times to connect to what an organisation is all about in terms of values and mission statement but also to look back at the trends and experiences that bring it to the present. But crucially for organisations that see themselves as innovators these are great occasions to think about the future, to look forward to what is next. I worked at the BBC between 1993 and 2008 during a time of huge change which was social, political and of course technological and whilst many digital types do focus on the technology alone these forces are never standalone.

I had a panic attack last week when the BBC’s Internet Blog archives went down. Anyone who blogs will understand the feeling of panic if your posts (and your history) disappear. When we started the BBC Blog Network in 2006 part of the reason was to start talking to our audiences directly and more importantly engaging differently. But we were also keen to make visible some of the inner workings and thought processes of the BBC. Not just for the sake of accountability (a good thing), but also being able to talk about what was happening inside the BBC was a big part of it, and by changing the way we talked we also changed some of the culture.

All the posts will be invaluable for media History and other researchers of the present and future.

Take Brandon Butterworth’s history post for example. Or, Nick Reynolds round up of posts from the first ten years (though this date stems from the launch of News Online in 1997). And Martin Belam’s piece on the BBC’s website archives. 

There are also the memories and experiences of former staff members blogging externally that will go down in history. Tom Loosemore’s The BBC’s Fifteen Web Principles 

Robin Hamman who was blogging himself long before the BBC started blogging showed many of us what was possible.

And Nick Robinson and Paul Mason literally burst out of the BBC blogging just before we were ready to launch – it really helped actually (thanks to Jem Stone for this archive capture!)

Apart form these public sources what else is there for this “modern period" rom 1994 to 2014? The BBC has an oral history archive started in the 1970s by Frank Gillard and continued to this day. These oral history interviews are subject to a thirty year rule and have interviewed “the great and the good” of the organisation favouring the "great man" view of history which though very popular in the 19th century still seems to hold sway more than you might imagine today.

I personally prefer a Peoples history approach both to my former filmmaking days, and focus on participatory media. Two of my historic guiding lights would be Professor Theodore Zeldin and Peter Pagnamanta and his epic Television series the People’s Century.

So when it comes to organisational memory whose memories get heard? In starting this new research project between Warwick and the BBC I’m lucky enough to be able to build on what we started with the Blog Platform in 2006 and by interviewing people who just worked inside various departments about their work from 1994 onwards. I’m laying down some foundations for researchers of the future, including myself of course.

I thought the ten interviews we have conducted would be the project. But far from it , they are only the beginning as we can now research the rest in detail from the skeletal timeline that has been reconstructed by us real people. My thanks and the BBC’s thanks to Tony Ageh, George Auckland, Lord John Birt, Brandon Butterworth, Bob Eggington, Professor Lizzie Jackson, Matthew Karas, Tom Loosemore, Euan Semple, Chris Westcott and John Birt’s strategy team of 1996 who remarkably came back together for a Witness session. More of that in another blog post. Thank you all for leading the way.

Lucy Hoobeman is Professor of Digital Media & Innovation, WMG, University of Warwick.

• Read Lucy's introductory post 20 years and Stronger than Ever
• Follow @LucyH on Twitter. 
  

 

The old homepages for the About the BBC and BBC Press Office websites.

Earlier this year, we outlined the BBC's plans to reshape and rationalise BBC Online to create one cohesive service.

The task we set ourselves here was to improve the quality and coherence of the BBC's corporate online presence, and at the same time to make it much more cost effective.

Our solution: the new About the BBC Homepage, and Inside the BBC site

When we analysed the sites we found they fitted within five broad categories. The new About the BBC, therefore, has five sections. They share a single design and navigation pattern:

Inside the BBC - for licence fee payers and anyone interested in the BBC, covering our history, programmes and services, how we are structured and the principles to which we work.

Media Centre - the latest announcements, programme information, media packs and statements from the BBC's press office.

Partners and Suppliers - providing information for people and companies who want to work with the BBC, become a supplier, or have a programme commissioned.

Careers - for people who want to get a job or work experience with the BBC, or find out about the training we offer.

Help and Feedback - bringing together advice on how to access and use our services, or how to give feedback on them.

In addition to bringing a number of sites into this framework, we have moved them into a single content management system, using common templates. This will radically reduce the editorial and technical costs of maintaining them.

We have also tried to make the site more compelling, accessible and understandable. Here, the main changes are:

• A new homepage, linking the five sections, featuring the latest BBC news and directing visitors to areas of current interest
  
  
• New unified navigation, with a roll over feature in the page header providing links to the full range of corporate sites
• A focus on simplicity and clarity, with short explanations of the different sites and the use of images to aid navigation
  
  
• Multimedia embedded across the site to bring variety and interest
  
  
• Social media integration to enable our visitors to engage in conversation with and about the BBC should they choose to, links to some of our blogs and embedded Twitter feeds such as @bbcpress and @aboutthebbc
  
  

Creating a new corporate presence for the BBC is a gradual process. We are working with colleagues to migrate their sites into the new framework as they become due for a refresh. Many have moved today but this is not a "big bang". Others, like BBC Shows and Tours and BBC Supplying will move into the new look and feel over the coming months.

We hope you that the new corporate face of the BBC will help you find the information you need more easily, and provide a better account of how a complex organisation works and what it does. We would very much value your feedback, either here on this blog, or on Twitter to @aboutthebbc.

Ian Hunter is the Managing Editor, BBC Online

Related Links:

Erik Huggers: Reshaping BBC Online

Ralph Rivera: Connected storytelling - one service, ten products, four screens

We're also changing the name to Commercial Availability: we think this describes more clearly what the feature is there to do. The look and feel has evolved too, to fit with the new overall design of BBC Online.

In Delivering Quality First we re-stated the BBC's determination to improve audiences' access to and engagement with our programmes - past, present and future - whether they're available on the BBC website or elsewhere, and today's changes represent another step in that direction. We hope you find them useful.

Roly Keating is Director of Archive Content and Executive Editor of BBC Online

• Frequently Asked Questions about Commercial Availability

In my role as General Manager for News & Knowledge at BBC Future Media, I oversee eight of the 10 major areas (we call these 'products') of BBC Online working with my editorial counterparts - including the BBC homepage. Today, we relaunched the homepage in a test ('beta') version for public use and feedback. The new page is accessible from a link at the top of the current homepage, or directly at beta.bbc.co.uk. I hope that users who give the new homepage a go find it much improved. My colleague James Thornett has written about the relaunch in more detail over on the BBC Internet Blog and would like to know what audiences think. Please leave your feedback comments on his blog post.

As users start to use the new homepage, I wanted to explain why we've introduced changes.

In last year's Strategy Review ('Putting Quality First') we proposed a BBC Online which:

• Had half the number of top-level directories, down from the 400 we had then (i.e. /sitename)
• Cost 25% less to run (i.e. the BBC Online Service Licence for 2010/11 is £135m - we intend to cut spend to £100m)
• Sent double the traffic we did then to external websites, helping the broader UK digital economy
• Made more Nations & Regions content available
• And, critically, did 'fewer things, better'.

We're making progress in all of these areas and in January of this year, we outlined how we would address the challenge of doing more with less - importantly a move away from building websites via separate new media budgets, towards one cohesive online service with clear lines of accountability.

But this is more than just sound governance - the changes will create a more distinctive, joined-up service for licence fee-payers which is recognizably 'BBC', and greater clarity for the industry in terms of how much we'll do on the web, setting boundaries for what we will and won't do online.

We've arrived at a BBC Online service comprising ten distinct areas or 'products'. Each product is at a different stage of its life: BBC News and BBC iPlayer are both concrete propositions; others, like the fledgling BBC Knowledge & Learning product are approaching the final stages of definition. All will be built on the same shared infrastructure to allow a more seamless transition between them.

The third dimension to our strategy is to provide greater value for money for licence fee-payers, by broadening access to our products across four screens - beyond the web to mobile, tablet, and connected TV. Our BBC News product demonstrates this commitment: it's available on the web, as a mobile and tablet application, and more recently has been optimized for connected TV, launching on the Samsung Smart TV platform in June.

One service, ten products, four screens

So we summarise this strategy as: 'one service, ten products, four screens'.

The homepage occupies a unique position within BBC Online: though BBC Online is a distinct service, and the homepage a single product within it, editorially the page can show off the breadth of content we make available on the web. But showing this breadth has been our perennial challenge. To date we've made tweaks to a relatively static page to better fulfil this purpose; with the move to a new technical platform, we've had the opportunity to rebuild the page from first for the 9 million-plus average weekly unique browsers.

The new BBC homepage launched in beta today marks a departure from the way we've approached this challenge until now and introduces a new, more visual approach to showing off our content on the web, and eventually on mobile, tablet, and connected TV devices too. Other features include:

• Simple filters enabling users to tailor the page based on their interests.
• Sliding 'drawers' to reveal more or less detail from showcases of the most popular content from all of BBC Online at any time and real-time listings for BBC TV and Radio.
• At-a-glance aspects - news and sport headlines, weather forecasts with lottery and travel news updates to follow, plus traditional index-based navigation for quick look-up.
• In time, nations' homepages united into a single product to provide relevant local and national information based on a user's choice of location - a key 'Putting Quality First' commitment.

We believe the redesigned page makes it easier for visitors to find the content they're looking for, whilst discovering something new - I hope you agree.

Phil Fearnley is General Manager for News & Knowledge, BBC Future Media

• More about the beta release of the new BBC homepage in the press release on the BBC Press Office web site.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/01_maximising_distinctivene.jpg

In order to decide where to focus, we looked at every website we have and applied three tests to each. First, do we really need this website to meet our public purposes? Second, to what degree does it help meet our five editorial priorities? And third, how does it differ from what else is out there in the market; is it distinctive?, and if not - should we be doing it all? Working these tests through iteratively, merging some websites, and looking objectively at how much each costs and how much it's used and valued by the public - we ended up with ten products.

Fewer, Better Products

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/02_doing_fewer_things_bette.jpg

News, Sport and Weather remain broadly the same technically, but with significant editorial changes (outlined below).News already combines technology, design and editorial to great effect and we'll aim to replicate its success across the service. These three products continue to be the backbone of BBC Online.

CBeebies will consolidate its position as the best-loved and most trusted site for pre-school children and their parents.

Games will feature prominently; complementing the digital channel's focus on learning through play. CBBC too is a place children, parents and schools can trust to provide a safe online experience.

BBC Knowledge has produced great factual programming for many years and websies like Bitesize have pioneered BBC online learning. But the current online knowledge websites are hard to navigate. The same is true of learning websites; fragmented and in parts lacking distinctiveness. Both can use the power of the web better to satisfy the curiosity of audiences wanting to discover and engage in new ways. Our plan is to merge all these sites into one cohesive product.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/03_fewer_better_products.jpg

But perhaps the most significant changes are in how we approach TV and Radio online. We will continue to innovate and create great content built for the medium. But we are going to significantly consolidate the standalone, bespoke websites we have that surround our linear output to create just two new products; TV & iPlayer, and Radio & Music.

The BBC iPlayer has been through three major evolutions since its launch in 2007. The next will bring together the current drama, entertainment, comedy, TV, /programmes, /archive and /iPlayer websites in one product. This centres on the audiences' primary needs of TV on the web: quick access to the programmes and programme information, but building more on the editorial power of our TV brands so it feels even more simple, intuitive and engaging for the audience.

While BBC iPlayer has been a good home for online radio, the way audiences want to interact with radio and music online is different to TV. Radio and music will come out of BBC iPlayer, and we'll develop a new stand-alone product. All radio station sites, music events, podcasts and programme pages will be integrated to focus on highly interactive live radio, quick and seamless access to programming, support for new music and personalisation - on whatever internet-connected device you happen to have.

Homepage and Search bind all the products together. Both have an important functional role, guiding audiences around the service; but they perform important editorial roles as well. As the discovery engine for the BBC, the homepage is one of our most-used products and will be re-designed to reflect the new products, deliver nations "editions" and make all the products simple to use. Search has evolved from being a bolt-on technology to a BBC-built product delivering greatly improved targeted search results. As the service evolves, this too will become even more important in helping people find what they are looking for.

Editorial Focus
These plans outline a BBC Online that will get better, not just smaller. Within that, there are key things we want to focus upon:

• High quality news focused on up-to-the-minute news updates backed up by rich multimedia content from correspondents across the UK and the world
• BBC News Entertainment and Arts section will have more culture and arts coverage
• Dynamic 'editions' of BBC Online for each Nation
• Clearer focus of local sites on news, sport, weather and travel
• Sport will focus on fast, reliable and in-depth news and dynamic coverage of the best live events that bring the nation together
• Safe, creative spaces for children
• A single merged offer in Knowledge & Learning, making the most of BBC content, from science to literacy, arts to maths - for adults pursuing a passion or brushing up a basic skill, and for children learning at home and school
• Radio will focus on live output, and the discovery of new music as played and recommended by BBC DJs and iconic musicians
• BBC iPlayer will be re-shaped into a unified television offer, bringing together TV channels, programme information and live and on-demand content
• Selected archive content will be featured in TV & iPlayer and Radio & Music

Closures and Reductions
As a result there are some editorial areas we'll be pulling back from, and some websites we'll be closing completely.

• The closure of half of the 400 Top Level Domains (with 180 closing ahead of schedule later this year)
• The replacement of the majority of programme websites with automated content
• The automation of bespoke digital radio sites 1Xtra, 5 live sports extra, 6 Music and Radio 7
• The closure of RAW, Blast, Switch, Video Nation and the disposal of h2g2
• The removal of non-News features content from Local sites
• A substantial reduction in showbusiness news on the News website
• Fewer News blogs, with more focus on the updates from leading editors and correspondents
• A reduction in the overall amount of Sports news and live sport
• Standalone forums, communities, message-boards and blogs to be reduced and replaced with integrated social tools
• The closure of the 606 community site and the closure of the BBC iPlayer message board

Where BBC Online will not go
Equally, there are areas which we will not cover, and have no intention of going into. BBC Online will not:

• Launch its own social network
• Offer specialist news content for specialist audiences
• Publish local listings
• Develop encyclopaedic propositions in Knowledge
• Provide continuing professional development materials for teachers or a managed learning environment for schools
• Become a video-on-demand aggregator in BBC iPlayer, although it will link to other on-demand providers
• Produce online-only music sessions Offer track-by-track music streaming
• Invest in exclusive online sports rights

Common Functionality
As I outlined in the summer, common technical functionality means that products are supported by the same infrastructure, delivering operational efficiencies and a consistent experience throughout the service. It creates the means to login and personalise the site and links your login to social networks. It also allows the site to be repurposed for different devices, provides the templates for programme automation and hosts the BBC's archive material.

Changes for Staff
This is a big change for the BBC and the staff working on BBC Online. In addition to the operational change of working to a product management culture, there will be a substantial number of post closures.

Subject to consultation with the Unions, we are proposing the closure of up to 360 posts, phased over the next two years.

They won't fall equally across each BBC division. We estimate that 120 posts will close in Future Media & Technology, 70 posts in Journalism (News and Nations non-News), 85-90 in Vision, 35-39 in Audio & Music, 17 in Children's and 24 in Sport. Though we aim to mitigate the redundancies by redeploying staff, this will be a difficult time for the staff affected - these cuts will be painful, but we believe they are necessary.

Looking Ahead
This is the first time that BBC Online - as a whole - will have a single, unified strategy and I am confident that the new focus it will give will deliver much more for much less and enable the BBC to become as highly regarded in the internet age as it became in the broadcasting age - with six of the ten products to be based in Salford, which will become a digital hub for the BBC.

As in the early days of TV, when we simply filmed radio programmes, we are only just beginning to understand the huge potential of the internet, not just as a platform, but its creative potential. If any digital media organisation has the talent in its ranks and the imagination to harness that potential, it's the BBC.

While the BBC's first-class editorial output is what makes it so appreciated by the public, its innovation culture and engineering expertise has allowed it to keep pace with their changing expectations, a legacy that can be traced right back to Lord Reith himself. Putting online at the heart of the BBC's future means this legacy continues in the connected digital age.

Erik Huggers is the Director of Future Media & Technology

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/1.jpg

BBC Online started with text-based journalism on the web - similar to the service on Ceefax. Then, as the web began to mature, new media budgets were given to the BBC's divisions to go and build websites that aimed to meet our public purposes online - but with no central strategy.

Our first major change will be a shift from "building websites" to "managing products".

First I want to explain what we consider to be a "product". It's a self-contained entity within BBC Online, which unites technology and editorial to meet a clearly defined audience need. Each product has a simple and concise proposition that's easily understood by the audience, is kept up to date, fits the overall strategy for BBC Online and has clear editorial leadership.

It's a strategic approach for the service as a whole - framed by what our audiences need from the web, rather than what we produce today for TV and radio - a change in culture for BBC Online.

Audiences will see products organised into five content areas (portfolios) supported by a common technical platform.

Powerful functionality to help audiences find great content and services

Before I talk about the proposed portfolios, a word on what's going to be common across the site.

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Under the current structure, people come to BBC Online from a range of different places, get what they are looking for and leave. By making other content elsewhere in the site easier to search for (or navigate to) we offer better value for money as audiences uncover interesting content and services that they may not have been looking for.

While the homepage provides an overview of what the BBC does, most people don't come through our front door. In addition to search, navigation, and consistent design, social functionality through BBC iD can harness the power of recommendation on networks outside the BBC.

Underpinning all of this, we'll have a common technology platform powering the whole service delivering economies of scale and cost-saving technologies such as programme-page automation.

The platform allows the service to be location-aware, providing the right content in the right language to users across the UK and globally. Dynamic content publishing makes it simple and cost-effective to repurpose content for use in mobile or TV applications and world-class accessibility features aim to build on the pioneering work the team has done to bring subtitles to BBC iPlayer.

Finally, the platform houses the BBC's rich archive content: video and radio programmes, the written archive, programme information and more can be stored and in time be made available through all the product portfolios. This is a major project that will take years to complete, but we are putting the building blocks in place now.

A commitment to deliver the best online journalism in the world

The first proposed product portfolio is News, Sport and Weather. BBC journalism stands for quality, impartiality, accuracy and distinctiveness - a major reason why the BBC as a whole is one of the most trusted and respected organisations in the world.

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News, Sport and Weather will remain a cornerstone of the BBC's web offer, partly because the immediacy of the web lends itself well to journalism. Each will remain pillars of BBC Online, delivering the best journalism in the world for the UK and in national and global editions.

As video on the web comes of age, we intend to further enrich our web journalism with audio-visual content - drawing on our strengths in broadcasting. Already we're making progress here with the recently redesigned BBC News site and the BBC News smartphone application.

But our News, Sport & Weather products need to do a better job of sending traffic elsewhere, both internally (e.g. sending sports journalism to BBC Radio 5 Live or weather forecasts to science & nature) and beyond. Already the BBC is the second biggest referrer of traffic to online newspapers, something we want to do even better.

And sport will make a major contribution to our fifth editorial priority - major events that bring the nation and communities together. We're committed to creating compelling editorial partnerships for London 2012, and beyond.


Outstanding children's content in a safe online environment

Providing outstanding children's content is another of the BBC's five editorial priorities and we will continue to deliver this in a safe, social environment.

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As we recently announced, our FM&T product team will be joining BBC Children's in a new digital hub in Salford. The CBeebies and CBBC brands have been a huge success, and our online proposition will build stronger bridges between the two. BBC Children's will use their unique knowledge of this audience to provide links to other BBC content such as news and learning.

As children enter BBC Online through an environment familiar to them, they can quickly access a broader range of content to expand their horizons.

Knowledge & Learning to become a cornerstone of a new-look service

Despite the internet's roots as an information tool, the BBC has been a pioneer in online knowledge and learning. We have developed compelling online content for learners and teachers, and created some well-known online learning brands (such as Bitesize) in the process.

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This new portfolio aims to replicate the success of News, Sport & Weather. We intend to enhance informal learning by creating a mix of original and archive knowledge content, focused on key areas of BBC expertise - and create distinctive formal learning propositions for two age groups: under and over 19s.

By bringing these two important areas together, presenting them clearly and coherently, and making the content easier to find and navigate to from elsewhere in the site, we intend to make knowledge and learning another cornerstone of the reshaped BBC Online.

Bringing radio & music together in one portfolio

Our Audio & Music division has been incredibly innovative in embracing emerging digital technologies, such as podcasts, live online listening, and creating an in-depth music offer, many music events websites and rich radio network websites.

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But BBC radio and music online remains highly fragmented and the audience doesn't move between websites as much as we'd like, or to elsewhere in BBC Online.

We intend to bring together all BBC radio and music - including network, local and nations, news, events and archive - in one coherent online package. And true to the live and interactive principles of radio, we'll focus on social media to interact with our audience in real-time.

Harnessing the passion and knowledge of BBC experts, our aim is to continue as a music tastemaker and become a hub for online music discovery - but with strong integration with Radioplayer, internal linking, and links to external music sites to broaden horizons.

A coherent TV proposition, to build on the success of BBC iPlayer

The BBC iPlayer has been a great success for the BBC, making online video consumption a mainstream activity for millions of people. At first a TV catch-up service, it's evolved into an online product for live and on-demand BBC radio and TV content.

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But as in radio and music, the journeys for audiences looking for video content can be confusing, with multiple entry points through automated programme pages, the archive site, bespoke channel and programme sites, drama and comedy and the BBC iPlayer itself.

We intend to create a coherent TV & BBC iPlayer proposition, pulling all these TV propositions together, optimised to help audiences find, watch, share, and interact around our TV-related output.

Not only will this new-look portfolio be richly interconnected with BBC Online's other four product portfolios, but we'll be sending traffic to services outside the BBC through the metadata partnerships announced at the launch of the new BBC iPlayer beta in May.

Broadening audiences' horizons - aiding content discovery beyond the BBC

One of the wonders of the web is its ability to inform, educate and entertain every person in the world, right down to the exact specific interests they have. It truly is a platform that can be customised for anyone.

But the BBC cannot and should not do everything.

In news, rival media outlets will take a different editorial position on the news agenda. There's an inherent public service in highlighting these other points of view.

Other cultural institutions, such as the British Museum and British Library have rich and different web content than we are able to provide, and equally, there's little value in the BBC duplicating the public service information on offer elsewhere. We can work together to create compelling public service partnerships.

Collectively, these new portfolios would combine to create a far more focussed, smaller, higher-quality BBC Online that will serve our audiences well, leave plenty of room for others and double the traffic we send externally by 2013.

Today, I've updated the BBC staff on our intentions for the service. By properly harnessing the incredible talent we have in this organisation, I believe we can make BBC Online an even better service for our audiences, and spend less in the process.


Erik Huggers is Director of BBC Future Media & Technology

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You may have already heard the news that today at a keynote speech at Mobile World Congress, BBC Director of Future Media & Technology Erik Huggers has announced that the BBC is to offer a new range of applications that will deliver BBC Online services to a range of mobile devices. Licence fee payers have already been able to access the BBC website on mobile phones for eight years and today's announcement means that public service content can be better enjoyed on the move.

Erik's own blog post concerning the evolution and thinking behind the initiative is here on the Internet blog, as is David Madden's post demonstrating the News, Sport and iPlayer apps in more detail. And for even more detail we have Pete Clifton getting to grips with the implications of the BBC News app on the BBC Editors blog.

The BBC press release detailing the new mobile apps can be read here
To read the full posts and to comment click on the links above.