Anytime. Anyplace. Anywhere

I know a lot of people critise BBC Director General Mark Thompson, the commercial TV & Radio networks say his visions for the BBC impact on their market, newspapers and magazines do the same and some staff aren’t happy about job cuts.

Personally I think he’s doing more for the BBC, the public and the British Media than anyone before him.

He has both the balls and vision to steer the BBC into what is without a doubt one of the most revolutionary times in media.

Everything is going on demand, when you want it, where you want it, how you want it - that’s the future of entertainment and Mark Thompson really does get it.

Greg Dyke was going down that route and had started steering the BBC in the on demand direction but Mark Thompson is really moving it forward.

Under the Dyke era we saw the launch of the Radio Player, a few shows/clips being made available through the website and the announcement of the BBC iMP (I think) - all revolutionary for their time.

Under Mark Thompson we’ve seen the BBC iPlayer move forward in a big way, whole shows made available on demand and a complete change in direction for the BBC creating a culture of mutli-platform commissioning and creation.

We’ve seen the BBC try out podcasting, flash streaming and the Doctor Who Tardisodes.

OK so hardly any of that can be directly credited to Mark Thompson, in fact pretty much all of it is down to the incredible people working in the various new media departments within the BBC - but MT has opened the doors to let that creativity flow.

Now Mark Thompson has announced a new MyBBCRadio service that will (I’m assuming work with the iPlayer) let people download BBC Radio Shows and create their own station.

This is a similar concept to the Channel4Radio service that recently launched but instead of a few shows specially commissioned it will feature EVERYTHING the BBC puts out.

The BBC DG said that the Radio Player would use peer to peer internet technology to “provide thousands, ultimately millions, of individual radio services created by the audience themselves, all of them based on the extraordinary wealth of existing BBC content, but as relevant to individual users as the playlists they assemble for their iPods”.

He said the above and announced the MyBBCRadio service at the Cambridge Radio Festival - full story Guardian Unlimited.

I’ve already mentioned before how impressed I am with the potential of the Channel 4 Radio service - at the moment it isn’t really living up to expectation and doesn’t allow me to easily subscribe to all their shows but it will get there.

This new MyBBCRadio service sounds fantastic, exactly what I want from a radio service - as long as I can put the shows or clips (however its done) on my iPod.

Update

Based on the BBC Press Release it looks like in the first phase it will be a merger of the BBC Radio Player and an extended podcasting experiment and then re-named MyBBCRadio.

However what I get from the Press Release (read it for yourself) is that eventually it will be expanded to use Peer2Peer technology (in the same way iPlayer will) and give users much more control over how the content is used.

Also

Interesting post by Ben Metcalfe on the BBC putting adverts on its international facing news websites to potentially generate an income for the Beeb - as I’m working for the corporation right now I’m not going to express an opinion but head over the Ben’s blog and have a read.

Related Links

> BBC to launch myBBCradio
> Mark Thompson Speech
> Guardian Unlimited article
> BBC iPlayer
> Mark Thompson Profile
> Ben Metcalfe Blog
> Digg Story

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