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With so much being made of the importance of digital media it's a crying shame that the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sport website, once the leading sports website on the 'net, has become such an albatross.

Many would agree that reporters still have a role to play, but it appears that the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ has decided not to offer them a usable forum for their work. Since it's relaunch a month ago the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sport website has attracted a stream of criticism for its look, feel and usability. The response from the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ was silence apart from one blog by the man in charge of the relaunch promising a raft of fantasies including, most notably, regular communication about the website.

In a year where the olympics are being held in Britain, isn't it a major concern that the host broadcaster doesn't have a working sport website?

Very interesting article Roger and thanks for posting. The Social Media Week debate you attended was, from what I gather, fascinating and very fruitful.

Platforms like Twitter have proved invaluable. As well as breaking news and direct communication with athletes such as Zac Purchase ( and Dai Green (, Twitter has proved invaluable for those searching for #olympictickets. In fact, it's been utterly remarkable, a joy and many friendships have been made.

London2012? Bring it on! #2012Tweeps

JohnW

The important thing with all media (as mentioned at the end of the blog) is that people want to watch the event, uninterrupted, and then have lots of ways to discuss the event afterwards.

This is why F1 worked really well on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ in the last couple of years. High quality broadcast of the event with no interruptions, then a wide variety of ways to discuss the event afterwards, starting with the live forum through to blogs in the following days with the ability to reply.

The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ needs to replicate that programme format for the Olympics.

As for the comment on the website I couldn't agree more! Why the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ would attempt a major overhaul in the year of a Euros and a home Olympics is beyond me. it HAS gone terribly wrong and produced a by far inferior product than what it replaced.

@anthonyjnoble

yet again the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ go on about the importance of the digital media.
why then did it alienate so many people when it closed the online 606 last year?

and as the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ continues to cut actual sports coverage is that what will eventually be left - tweets from sportspeople about sports coverage shown on other channels?

obviously copying and pasting tweets from twitter and putting them on tv is a bad idea. it doesn't surprise me that a tech savvy audience thought the same.

however i think the bcc will really miss a trick if they dont reflect conversations which are taking place online. this could take any number of forms from engaging visualisations to reporter based comment.

programmes like jools holland have also promoted hashtags onscreen for a long time

rather than the first hd games the opportunity is for the first truly digital olympics ...

For all the use of social media the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ seems to provide fewer and fewer opportunities for the public to comment or have a dialogue.

Yes I use Facebook and occasionally Twitter but the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ used to be a real forum. The authors of key pages get little or no feedback from their audience now.

Maybe once the Olympics is over the staff could be re-allocated to establishing a sports forum or maybe the whole thing will continue to be downsized and scope of sports covered in any depth will continue to shrink?

Bottom line is we miss 606 a forum that would've thrived during the Olympics and kept Non-Olympic sport alive as well.

I am not interested in the minutiae in the life of a sportsman (or woman) - I really don't care what films Chris Hoy (or anyone else) watches or who they watched them with. Nor do I want top sit and watch video reports of things. I want a good text based report that lets me skim for the information that I am interested in - rather than what a reporter thinks I should see or hear. Support that with clips of the sport and you will have a good sports news site.

The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is obsessed with social media, personally I am sick of hearing about tweets and facebook, especially on radio 5 live. I won't be using it ever.

The irony is, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ only want your opinion if it agrees with ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's think. Just look at the HYS forum, as soon as popular opinion is suddenly not liberal enough, the forum is closed.

BTW, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ have plenty of money, so there was no need to sell off F1 and close 606. The problem is they have far too many high paid staff, and are trying to do far too much.

Alan Hansen £40,000 per MOTD episode is total insanity and an insult to the licence payer.

Now that reply to the comments is just staggering.

'I think the key linking most of them is that we need to be smart about our use of social media, and make sure it genuinely adds something.'

'Most' means at least 50%. Rereading the 8 comments I see 2 that touch on this theme, and 1 that refers to it obliquely. In fact most of the comments, 4 of 8, refer to the lack of opportunities that we, the paying customers, now have to access sports news and comment about it.

'there are forums all over the Internet these days, so the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ has to focus on where we can offer something distinctive.'

Until recently the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ used to have a superb sports website and a lively and diverse sports forum. Now the website has been butchered and the forum axed completely. With that in mind, just where do you feel that the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ does offer something distinctive? Or should the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ just provide the pictures and the audience can go and use external sites to chat about sport?

Have to agree with the no vote on using tweets from stars within the coverage - you can be rounding up other events rather than going through the motions of reading peoples twitter accounts out on air. Hopefully in most cases your reporters will get to them before they get to their iPhones and Blackberrys anyway.

And call me old fashioned but I'll be getting my Olympics through the TV as much as possible - and if I go online for info it'll be through news sites rather than Twitter. I'm not one of those folks who can do two screen viewing and chat on Twitter as I watch TV - I just end up missing the action.

Social media is really a game changer, plays very important role in our life to get connect with the world, as recently Pinterest emerges as a fast social network.

Roger,

You can have as smart a strategy as the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ likes chasing your preferred social media generations. But I guess the younger generation will by pass the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and go direct to their sportsmen & women for news.

For a certain category of readers 606 would've been perfect for the games instead we lost a genuine centralised sports forum, there are now TOO many 'other' forums and I for one will not be looking for external Olympic forums.

I'm of that generation preferring forums and messageboards to Twitter - where to my mind you only ever get to listen in to parts of conversations, rather than join the discussion as you could on 606.

The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and any broadcaster - especially the commercial broadcasters actually - are short sighted IMO to point people in the direction of Twitter/Facebook rather than their own website. Yes, have a presence elsewhere but it should never be a substitute for an official website.

And although I'm still getting used to the assault of yellow, I'm hoping the main Olympic news site will be in the style of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sport pages rather than the bbc.co.uk/2012 site.