6 ms·
Really interesting article, but terrible clickbaity title. I wouldn't have read it if there weren't so many positive comments on HN already. It could work if t
by acheron 11y ago
Really interesting article, but terrible clickbaity title. I wouldn't have read it if there weren't so many positive comments on HN already.
It could work if there were a subtitle. "35 million people didn’t notice a thing: BBC Radio's NICAM Codec replacement project". I dunno. But it is (or should be) very important that the title actually informs you as to what the article is about. "35M people didn't notice a thing" doesn't tell you anything at all.
Edit: Upon further consideration I may have been a little harsh. This is really a blog entry more than an "article" per se, and I suppose that's fine for a blog post title. The problem comes when we link to it from somewhere else, e.g. HN; we need the additional context.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoThe BBC seem to have moved to this sort of title with the recent updates to their web properties. They do these things seemingly confusing themselves with a commercial enterprise rather than a publicly funded provider.
- jerf 11y agoBeing government funded does not mean you don't have to sell yourself. It just means the target audience for the sales job is different.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoBecause if they don't have clickbaity headlines the UK government will scrap the license fee?
- Joeri 11y agoIt could reduce it, arguing there is a lot of waste at the bbc. As long as the public perceives the value in the bbc's offerings the odds of that happening are reduced.
- jerf 11y agohttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2477726/BBC-face-cut-licence-fee-unless-rebuilds-public-trust-warns-Tory-Minister.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2477726/BBC-face-cut... That's a small example of what I mean, not the full totality of the threat space. Building more readership makes them that much more difficult to cut funding to, in a variety of ways (more people to get outraged if the government tries, more evidence to show the government that they are worth the money, etc.). Clickbait headlines create more readership. We may prefer that to be false, but it's obviously not. From there the logic is simple, almost inexorable. Being government funded does not mean you get to ignore funding issues, it just changes how you play the game. There is no source of unconditional funding in the world.
- SapphireSun 11y agoAlso, one might argue, funding aside, that increasing readership (without sacrificing quality below some threshold) is the whole point of the enterprise. Click-bait headlines are annoying, but they aren't the actual body of the report themselves.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoThe BBC serves a charter which is managed by the BBC Trust. The Trust effectively interprets the charter. Their interpretation of the goals of the enterprise are (http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/): "Make the most creative and distinctive output; Innovate online to create a more personal BBC; Serve all audiences; and Improve value for money through a simpler, more efficient, and more open BBC. " Increasing readership by reducing quality of headlines to match junk media clickbait doesn't appear to fit in there. The actual Royal Charter, http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/how_we_govern/charter.pdf http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/h..., at Section 4 puts quite succinctly what the aims are: "The Public Purposes of the BBC are as follows— (a) sustaining citizenship and civil society; (b) promoting education and learning; (c) stimulating creativity and cultural excellence; (d) representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities; (e) bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK; (f) in promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television." I'd argue that this sort of change goes against the stimulation of cultural excellence, the tail is wagging the dog.
- bitwize 11y agoBut this is the Beeb, mate, no need to try and trick people into reading like a contemptible American news service.
- mydpy 11y agoThe name of the url is even click-baity: http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2016-01-35-million-people-didnt-notice-a-thing-dot-dot-dot http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2016-01-35-million-people-didnt...
- mydpy 11y agoSorry this should be: http:// http:// www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2016-01-35-million-people-didnt-notice-a-thing-dot-dot-dot
- jmtd 11y agoPerhaps the title-writer has been infected by the BBC news editorial policy. They seem to be turning clickbait titles into a fine art, combined with renaming articles so you think it's a new piece on the same story, but turns out you've already read it. (If you read BBC News at all that is: my wife still does, I gave it up years ago and haven't looked back.) I love many aspects of the BBC but sadly not their news output anymore. (Sorry I realise this has very little to do with the R&D article.)
- SixSigma 11y agoAgreed. The science section has a fine selection of rehashed press releases.
- thorin 11y agoI used to think the BBC news was definitive 5-10 years ago. I'm not sure what has changed? Have the recent governments and their pressure on the license fee really made the difference or is it just my perception? When I was young the BBC was always seen as pretty left wing (it certainly wasn't at it's inception though) it seems pretty conservative (and sensationalist) right now.
- a_humean 11y agoThe Iraq war and David Kelly's suicide is what happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton_Inquiry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton_Inquiry Add things like the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal, and the ongoing threat from the conservative government to turn the BBC into the equivalent of America's PBS (irrelevant on the political landscape, lacking financial heft, and in close to nonexistent viewership) and you have a recipe for a neutered public news broadcaster too afraid to do anything meaningful.
- vidarh 11y agoBoth sides of the political spectrum regularly complains about the BBC being biased towards the other side. It's the best evidence that whatever bias there is either is minor or short-lived. In my eyes, the biggest problem with the BBC isn't bias, but that they're terrified of seeming too biased, and as a result they're wishy-washy in ways that ironically makes them seem biased. E.g. the left will accuse them of being right wing because they don't write in more critical terms about the governments willingness to deal with the Saudis, while the right will accuse them of a left wing bias for not writing in more critical terms about Chavez, and so on. Similarly they're often accused of bias for not reporting something, or very carefully reporting something, that either side believe to be fact, but where there's not (yet) actual firm evidence. Of course, if done "against" just one side, this too would be actual bias, but the BBC appears to be pretty consistent about it. So we're left with reporting that is rarely very biased, but often exceedingly unsatisfying for everyone. I'm not saying there's no bias - I don't believe that would be possible. But I do think that the allegations of bias against the BBC tend to be wildly exaggerated.
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoMaybe people did notice but didn't care enough to complain? Or we're all used to various sound quality depending on what we're doing (cell, skype, voip, etc) that we've just internalized quality changes as not a big deal. It reminds me how satellite radio was supposed to be "mp3 quality" whatever that meant. Everytime I rent a car with SiriusXM, my god, the sound quality is horrible. Its like they're using those early postage-stamp sized quicktime videos from the dial-ups days. Yet people still subscribe in vast numbers.
- frogpelt 11y agoThe truth is that 7 billion people didn't notice. Why didn't they use that title? BTW, I agree with your edit. An R&D blog shouldn't be held to the same standard of journalistic excellence as a reputable news source, even if it's the BBC's blog.
- kordless 11y agoIt's interesting you classified it as click bait. Too many attempts to raise interest quickly, in a large number of people with low quality content, results in a small segment of those people "hitting" on the fact it's raising interest quickly and should be flagged. In your case, you "unflagged" it because we started talking about it, which implies some of us shouldn't (or won't) filter long term.
- SilasX 11y agoYeah, the HN title should be more like "Changing the NICAM radio transmission protocol without 35 million people noticing."
- inanutshellus 11y agoI came here (directly to the comments section) to see what the clickbait-title actually meant. Thanks for fulfilling! ;-)
- SilasX 11y agoYep. For me, at least half of the value of an article comes from the (external) internet discussions about it, which summarize key points and weaknesses much better than the author is able to.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoI don't think the protocol was actually changed. The article just describes an equipment swap.
- SilasX 11y agoI think you're right; when skimming, I read the following section, which made it sound like they were updating it to send additional metadata, based on their mentions of the "codecs" and how they "will" allow radios to do useful things with the metadata. Also, I'm used to codec meaning "software program", not "machine". >>The NICAM distribution system also carries the RDS data. This will enable the radio in your car to automatically retune when you can get a better signal from a different transmitter. It will also display the station name (for example “Radio 1”) and the current song name (for example “Now Playing: Coming With You by Ne-Yo”). RDS will also indicate when a travel announcement is being made on BBC local radio so that a radio can switch to the travel announcement at the right time.
- dtf 11y agoApologies for that, I submitted this and did actually go looking for the HN title guidelines, which seemed to say use the original title. I'll try to be a little braver with title editing in future.
- lnanek2 11y agoEven if you post a more informative title, the mods of HN will change it back to the original site title. It has happened countless times and is pretty much the site policy. The claim is that is prevents posters from making click-bait titles to gain karma, although in this case the original is the click bait. So anyway, no, you did the only thing you could do. Anything else would have been degraded to the current information value by mods anyway.
- dang 11y agoThe guidelines say to use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait. In this case it was linkbait, so a change was in order. We've changed it to what the article says it is about in the second sentence.
- rs999gti 11y ago> but terrible clickbaity title. I don't know about that. The clickbait title did its job well and we all clicked on the link and read the article.