currybetdotnet DCMS archive

The Sun's Dream Team debut nightmare
One of the most exciting weekends of the year has just passed - the start of the football season. And it all went pretty well for my teams. Well, if the best you can hope for is to finish the weekend on -12 like Leeds did, that is as good as it gets anyway. This year I've been dragged into doing The Sun's Dream Team Fantasy Football and joining one of the mini-leagues with a few friends back in the...

Read the full post - Published August 14, 2007 in DCMS, Football, Newspapers, The Sun

BBC Jam closes today - how far will the repercussions be felt?
Today sees the suspension, pending review, of BBC Jam, the BBC's digital curriculum service, which was announced last week by the BBC Trust. Last week I littered my initial reaction liberally around various comment boxes on the web, but having had a bit of time to gather my thoughts on the subject, four points stand out for me 1) The loss of business to the independent web sector The complaints portray the BBC as a massive well-funded elephant that...

Read the full post - Published March 20, 2007 in BBC, Children and Teenagers, DCMS, Politics

More reboot:bbc.co.uk designs - part three
I've been having a look through the late flurry of entries to the BBC's reboot:bbc.co.uk homepage redesign competition. BBC Active Home by Paul includes a very neat tiny embedded radio player at the top of the page, although he concedes that unless it uses AJAX or iFrames or some other magic-widget-tech, it isn't going to work very well for people who immediately browse away from the homepage and lose the stream. Buried in Paul's very long explanatory notes is this...

Read the full post - Published June 7, 2006 in BBC, DCMS

Olympic Round-Up
The BBC wasn't the only site to suffer from the volume of Olympic related internet traffic just after decision time this afternoon - whilst we had to switch to our frankly ugly mini-me version of the homepage to help the servers cool off, london2012.org died completely. Elsewhere on the web the DCMS opted for a massive splash graphic to announce the news, whilst london.gov.uk went for a more restrained approach.    Meanwhile the official Olympics site used the iconic image...

Read the full post - Published July 6, 2005 in DCMS, Football, London Olympics, Olympics, Walthamstow

DCMS Review of the BBC's Digital Radio services
Over the last couple of weeks or so I have taken the time to read the whole of Tim Gardam's review into the BBC's digital radio services. Unexpectedly it has been an entertaining read, not least because of its lack of formality in his turn of phrase: I was appointed to lead this review, and on April 30th the Secretary of State announced the start of this process, along with Professor Patrick Barwise's parallel review of the BBC's digital television...

Read the full post - Published November 3, 2004 in BBC, DCMS, Radio

A fortnight after Graf - and what it might mean for the homepage and for external spend
So some of the dust has settled internally after the Graf report, and we start to look forward - today we had a departmental meeting in White City, in the building that will be our new home from January. One of the areas I have a responsibility for in my new job is the delivery of the bbc.co.uk homepage - so the criticism of it in the DCMS review is naturally of keen interest. It was though written before the...

Read the full post - Published July 16, 2004 in BBC, DCMS

DCMS and Digital Radio
According to this story in yesterday's Independent, the DCMS is shortly to publish a report in which Tessa Jowell says "Later this year, I will be reviewing the take-up of digital radio and considering how long it would be appropriate for...broadcasting services to be provided in analogue form" The article goes on to quote Chris Kimber, Head of Interactive at BBC Radio & Music, extolling the virtues of interactivity based around radio output: "Only 10 years ago, radio was a...

Read the full post - Published July 8, 2004 in DCMS, Radio

DCMS Assessment of BBC Online's use of RealMedia and Search
So the Graf report was finally published today, and like many BBC Online employees I have spent much of the day scurrying through it to assimilate as much information as I can. However, I suspect that unlike the majority of the media - who naturally leapt on the obvious headline of site closures (as already heralded by Mark Thompson last week) - I headed straight for the chunky "BBC Online review - module 1: Assessment of BBC Online's use of...

Read the full post - Published July 5, 2004 in BBC, DCMS, Search

BBC Charter Review responses about BBC.co.uk
I've had a bit of time this evening to look more closely at the published responses so far to the BBC Charter Review Public Consultation exercise. I was particularly looking out for references to the BBC's internet operation. My initial idea was to skim through and try to put together a balanced selection of pull-quotes about bbc.co.uk. I quickly found that this was going to be more work than I had imagined. The consultation specifically asked 'How should the...

Read the full post - Published February 16, 2004 in BBC, DCMS, Web

DCMS publishes BBC Charter Review responses
As a member of BBC staff I didn't think it appropriate to submit my thoughts to the DCMS Charter Review consultation - although I suppose as a Licence Fee payer and a voter I probably should of. The DCMS has had over 1,300 responses, and on its website has now published a selection. I've only looked through some of them on one page so far - 'H' - but it is fascinating stuff. Already I've come across such diverse...

Read the full post - Published February 16, 2004 in BBC, DCMS