A new branding for BBC Jersey

The new BBC Local branding is slowly being released and we had somebody over here in Jersey talking about it very recently.

At the same time BBC Local Radio will soon be making its way onto the iPlayer proper - which means new photos needed to be taken of all our presenters (unfortunately that included me!)

Under the old radio player we only needed a 70×70 image of a presenter - so I just pulled out a random photo of them and cropped it.

For the iPlayer I had to send over a high-resolution photo of every presenter with a consistent - simple background and with the presenter slightly off to one side - to fit within the iPlayer window.

So having taken all the photos and having all the eps and psd files for the new BBC Radio Jersey branding in front of me - I decided to combine the two.

This is the result - me first. I present BBC Jersey Introducing Saturdays 2.15pm.

Christie Tucker presents Sunday Talkback (politics show) Sundays at 10pm.

Daniel Corden presents Sportscene Sundays at 9.30pm.

Chris Stone presents Jersey at 4 (aka Jersey PM) Weekdays at 4pm.

Carrie Cooper and Sara Palmer present The Morning Show Weekdays at 9am

And one more (the rest are on Flickr). Roger Bara presents Jersey Today (aka Breakfast) and the Phone-In Weekdays at 6am and 12pm.

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New look for Radio 2

The home of Terry Wogan, Steve Wright, Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross, Bob Dylan, Chris Evans, Claudia Winkleman, Courtney Pine and many more is set to get a new look online - and the team aren’t taking any risks.

Well I say they aren’t taking any risks - they are changing the design and navigation of a heavily visited website aimed at an audience not particularly open to the idea of regular and rapid change - but at least they’ll cope better than the Radio 4 audience will.

I am of course talking about Radio 2 who will very soon see their site move into the new wide format that already encases Radio 1, 6music, 5 Live, Radio 3 and BBC 7 (the later very slightly controversially).

The station that includes Dale Winton, Jeremy Vine, Jools Holland, Mark Lemar and Richard Hammond among its presentation fraternity will move to put /programmes at the centre of the site (much like all the other radio sites).

The show pages will stay pretty much the same to start with (much like Radio 1 and 6music did with their re-launch) but will eventually change.

A quote for you “We’ll be redesigning the network’s show pages next but we wanted to bring listeners some of the benefits of features we are able to deliver now.”

That comes from the page that drew the inspiration for my ‘not taking any risks’ comment at the start of this blog post.

Speaking of the show pages - the page also explains what will be in the gap (although if you already follow this sort of thing you’ll know it is the network branding).

“If you are a regular visitor to Radio 2 then you will notice that the actual content area on many pages hasn’t changed but the page layout has.

“This results in a lot of space on the left-hand side of those pages. We have used the network’s branding to fill the space whilst we continue to work on redesigning the existing site.”

You see what’s different about the BBC Radio 2 re-launch is that they’ve taken on board the lessons learnt from the massive negative response to the BBC 7 re-launch and are telling their users/listener well in advance of the changes set to come.

The Some Changes page takes the form and template of a show page but is basically full of information and screen grabs on the changes people can expect from Monday 27 October at bbc.co.uk/radio2.

Some of the changes include clearer and cleaner navigation - across the top instead of down the site, big promotional boxes, bolder colours etc…

Content has also been better organised into fewer more distinct sections that before. Again to the page: “The Radio 2 Homepage had been redesigned and reorganised into distinct sections with bigger promotional spaces to allow us to tell you more about what’s available on the site and the station.”

(all images on this page from the BBC Radio 2 Some Changes page)

I already mentioned it will make use of the /programmes page - well this will come in through the schedule and by providing an archive of specific episodes of shows.

Basically this means you can go to the Russell Brand page and then go back through every show to get an overview of what was said - this is already directly available through /programmes but will now be available under the radio 2 format as well.

The other area they seem to have got it right is in asking for feedback.

They say: “We’d really like to hear your comments and feedback on the changes that are taking place. Please use the contact form on this page to let us know your thoughts.”

Now feedback is regularly asked for - and given - on new BBC website changes but it normally comes AFTER the site has been changed and on the BBC Internet Blog (which really speaks to the converted/initiated).

What’s different about this approach is that the feedback is being asked for BEFORE the launch and on the same site that the people using it stay/hang out.

Although a public beta would be more useful than a few screenshots.

James Cridland - BBC Audio & Music interactive big brain talks about this issue on his blog - seemingly after a geek crush conversation with Digg’s Kevin Rose.

Apparently Kevin told James (in response to a question about the negative response to BBC 7 et al): “Tell your audience what you’re doing. Show them your new designs, talk them through them, listen to them.”

Which is very good advice and advice the BBC seem to be taking on a more consistent basis - although it will be interesting to see how people react to the new BBC Local pages when they launch - I’ve seen them and although they look good - they’re also VERY different.

It’s great to see new designs, new look pages and these wider templates are bringing the BBC into a more consistent visual and navigation language - but people don’t like change and when they clearly tell us things they don’t like - we should take it on board.

Kevin Rose also told James: “People don’t like change, so you’ll get a few days of pain, but if you still have problems after a few weeks, it’s time to look at what they’re saying and taking them seriously”.

Can an organisation like the BBC actually do that? Are we open enough yet to listen and where there are lots of consistent complaints about something specific - do something about it?

You can do that HERE.

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BBC Embedding

This will eventually become a full post about embedding video and audio files (on the BBC and off), what’s available to embedd and what … well isn’t.

But while I work on that - here’s a bit of Metalica from Later with Jools Holland.

Oh and a side note - Jools has now gone wide as well. In fact, looking at it - it feels like the Jools side is one of the first new music sites that draws from a mix of /programmes and the new /music (bbc.co.uk/music/beta/) although I could be wrong.

It looks good though - but maybe we could have a bit more artist info on the artist page.

Anyway - that’s a post all of its own (that I’ll try and write later today).

Here’s Metallica:

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Wide BBC Pages

As more of the BBC website moves into the shiny wide format (it looks so much better than the old style) I thought I’d try and pull a fairly comprehensive list together.

If there is anything missing from the list below - leave a message and I’ll add it in. I’m also planning on expanding the list so that it includes information and tags about each site to make it easier to search and find.

New launches since this article was written
Update (21 October 2008)

BBC Lifestyle
BBC Ouch!
Watchdog
Bloom
The One Show
Eurovision
Celebrity Scissor Hands
Spooks
Songs of Praise
Autumnwatch
The Real Hustle
Silent Witness
Blue Peter
Timewatch
History
Big Cat Diaries
British Style Genius
Weather Beta

Also:

BBC One
BBC Two
BBC Three
BBC Four
BBC TV
BBC Alba

And:
BBC 7
Electric Proms

The new BBC Local sites should be launching late this year early next - with Bristol moving first.

More links

Arts & Culture (website)

CBBC (website)

Entertainment (website)

Food (website)

Gardening (website)

Health (website)

BBC News (website)

BBC Sport (website)

Switch (website)

Archive (website)

Parenting (website)

Religion (website)

Ethics (website)

Help (website)

Drama (website)

Music Beta (website)

The Culture Show (website)

Topics (website)

Liverpool 08 (website)

Strictly Come Dancing (website)

Comedy (website)

Britain’s Missing Top Model (website)

Bonekickers (website)

The Wrong Door (website)

The Restaurant (website)

Be On a Show (website)

History (website)

Family History (website)

BBC Cymru (website)

BBC Wales (website)

BBC iPlayer (website)

Programmes (website)

1Xtra (website)

5Live Sports Extra (website)

6music (website)

Asian Network (website)

5Live (website)

Radio 3 (website)

Radio 1 (website)

Today (website)

Science and Nature (website)

BBC Bloom (website)

Oceans (website)

Newsbeat (website)

BBC Tickets (website)

BBC Three (website)

Massive (website)

Mischief (website)

Beauty Season (website)

Thread (website)

Lilly Allen (website)

Last Man Standing (website)

Heroes (website)

Spooks Code-9 (website)

Texx and Flipside (website)

The Wall (website)

A-Z (website)

Eurovision (website)

Who Do You Think You Are? (website)

Tess of the D’Urbervilles (website)

Merlin (website)

Last Choir Standing (website)

Doctor Who (website)

Casualty (website)

Britain from Above (website)

Big Cat Live (website)

The One Show (website)

Cambridge Folk Festival (website)

Genius (website)

Maestro (website)

Out of the Blue (website)

Gardeners’ World (website)

Dragons’ Den (website)

Chinese Food Made Easy (website)

Proms (website)

Glastonbury (website)

Reading and Leeds (website)

Radio 1 Big Weekend (website)

T In the Park (website)

Zombie Movie (website)

Annual Report (website)

Lab Rats (website)

Hampton Court Flower Show (website)

Radio Scotland (website)

BBC NI: Milk Cup (website)

Scotland Learning (website)

GCSE Bitesize (website)

Curse of Comedy (website)

The Passion (website)

Sunday Life (website)

Graham Norton Show (website)

Made in England (website)

BBC HD (website)

White Season (website)

Young Musician of the Year (website)

I’d Do Anything (website)

The Speaker (website)

Have I Got News for You (website)

Springwatch (website)

Chelsea Flower Show (website)

Languages (website)

Headroom (website)

Radio Foyle (website)

BBC Homepage (website)

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Popping the radio

Please repeat after me ‘data data data data data data data’ and repeat it until you die. I did toy with just filling the whole post with that one word - but maybe I should explain a little bit first. [Read more]

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Doctor Who and Clifford

If someone asked me to come up with three shows broadcast on the BBC that are most like Doctor Who the first thing I’d ask would be ‘most like in what way?’ [Read more]

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Top Gear back on Sunday

I’m sure by now everybody knows that the worlds greatest car related entertainment show is back on BBC Two this Sunday - but here’s a bit of info for those that don’t.

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Tune in to me

When I joined the BBC in Jersey nearly six years ago one of the first things I pushed for was a radio show all about the Jersey music scene.

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