Chapters within programmes: finding the bit you want
Post categories: ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Online,ÌýRadio & Music
| 11:01 UK time, Friday, 25 September 2009
A couple of weeks ago we took a first tentative step on what will hopefully be a significant journey. We started to identify 'chapters' within programmes. Chapters is the term we're using to describe sections of a programme, rather like the chapters of a DVD. In some cases a programme might have back to back chapters, like a book, but in other cases producers might just identify key moments in the programme e.g. the big interviews.
We're excited about chapters for several reasons.
Firstly, they allow listeners or viewers to navigate back and forth through programmes e.g. jumping to the start of an interview, or replaying an item you found interesting. We think this will be useful for existing fans of programmes.
Secondly, chapters will help people to find items of interest from across the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ - including items from programmes they might never have watched or listened to before.
For example a listener might notice an interview with the manager of their football club promoted on the 5live website, and they could follow a link to listen to that chapter. Or they might do a search for a subject or person (perhaps climate change, or Andy Warhol) and find not just full programmes that relate to that, but also links to specific chapters about or featuring that subject. (Actually, chapters aren't appearing in ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Search results yet, but they will be later in the year).
In the future you might be able to download those chapters, or embed them in a blog, or sign up to get a podcast of all items on a particular subject... but we're only just starting to think about these possibilities.
Right now it's still early days, and we're interested in experimenting and learning. We're not even sure whether 'chapters' is the right way to describe this (if you've got a better suggestion, post it as a comment!) and we plan to keep working on improving how chapters look and work, based on user testing and audience research.
5live were the first to experiment, and they're adding chapters to several of their programmes. You can find links to them on the 5live homepage (look out for pink links) and the Simon Mayo show is a great example (visit any episode, or click on the Chapters link).
Digital Planet from World Service are also involved, and you should start to see chapters on a few select TV programmes over the coming weeks, hopefully followed by a wider range of radio programmes later in the year.
We're starting slowly, with a limited selection of programmes, as we learn about what does and doesn't work. A couple of factors that may influence the selection are whether there are people available to do the extra work, whether we are able to add chapters from a rights perspective, and whether we think it's editorially appropriate and valuable to add chapters. The intention is to grow the number of programmes over time, but in a controlled and measured way.
We also need to do some work behind the scenes to make it as easy and efficient as possible for producers to add chapters. At the moment they're having to type the info in by hand, but we are aiming to tap into existing data from around the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ like running orders and subtitles. This work is really vital if we want to make chapters an everyday feature of bbc.co.uk.
Sarah Prag is Executive Producer, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Audio & Music Interactive
Comment number 1.
At 25th Sep 2009, Tiggs wrote:Radio programming could greatly benefit from this... as long as rights issues don't interfere.
Being able to quickly locate, and jump to, specific interviews, quizes and "random banter" segments would be really useful. As would the music segments and live performances.
Sometimes I've spent a good 15 minutes or more trying to find a specific section of a show I've heard before, and this sounds like it would be the idea answer.
Similarly, if I've missed a radio show with an interview in it, it would be really useful to be able to jump straight to that section. As well as skim-read the contents of a show and, potentially, listen to things I would have otherwise overlooked.
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Comment number 2.
At 28th Sep 2009, cping500 wrote:Could I suggest that you experiment also with Radio 3 music sequences like Afternoon on Three to link to specific 'works' (as listed in the schedule)and dare I say ask actually linked from the schedule (play list in R1 language.). Ideally clicking of the work in the schedule should bring up a window which asks "play in the player?"
The window might ask ask other works by this composer, conductor, artist? This is comparatively simple compared with finding all the rants of Man United's Manager in the last seven days (essential for Man City fans!) :-)
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Comment number 3.
At 28th Sep 2009, JamesStGeorge wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 4.
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Comment number 5.
At 29th Sep 2009, Briantist wrote:I know I go on about this every damn time.
The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ spends our money on doing those subtitles for almost 100% of the output.
Putting the subtitle text online for Google indexing, linked to the exact point like these "chapter markers" would be real progress.
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Comment number 6.
At 29th Sep 2009, TV Licence fee payer against ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ censorship wrote:#5. At 07:15am on 29 Sep 2009, Briantist wrote:
"Putting the subtitle text online for Google indexing, linked to the exact point like these "chapter markers" would be real progress"
Why not just put the (tran)script online, after all many music programmes put the play-list online now?
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Comment number 7.
At 30th Sep 2009, Sarah_Prag wrote:Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to comment on this so far.
#2 cping500: I agree that it would be exciting to be able to link to the start of musical works, but there are some rights sensitivites that we need to be aware of. We're certainly exploring the possibilities.
#5 Briantist and #6 Boilerplated: You're right that subtitle and transcript files would be a really useful source of info about what's contained in a programme. One of the things we're looking into right now is how we might use both of these to generate chapter points, and it's possible that this work may lead to more of this data being available publically.
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Comment number 8.
At 30th Sep 2009, The Phazer wrote:"Why not just put the (tran)script online, after all many music programmes put the play-list online now?"
Because a list of works isn't the same thing as the works. Plenty of TV programmes sell books of their scripts.
Phazer
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Comment number 9.
At 1st Oct 2009, Tiggs wrote:@7 (#2)
Here's hoping that, one day, the issues surround rights allow (and embrace) the fact that listeners going back to a show sometimes specifically want to jump to an exact point without seeking.
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Comment number 10.
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