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BBC Programme Index: 9M listings and 221k playable programmes
- tpmx 5y agoWell, it does somewhat illustrate the vast number of historic recordings that national broadcasting companies like the BBC have decided not to make available to the public who paid for them to be produced in the first place. It's the same, but much worse in Sweden - the national radio service here has imitated the BBC since its inception in the 1920s. It's much the same across Europe, I think. Edit: Talking about radio/audio below.
- timthorn 5y agoWhat's perhaps sadder is the number of programmes the BBC broadcast and recorded, but erased.
- slg 5y agoJust because a company produced a piece of media doesn't mean they have the right to stream that media.
- tpmx 5y agoThat's somewhat of an excuse until like 1996 or so.
- slg 5y agoThat is a super aggressive timeframe for when media companies started caring about online streaming. And even after streaming became a consideration, it is not a consideration for absolutely every project. Some media is produced without the intent to ever stream it and preemptively securing the streaming rights is therefore an added and unnecessary cost.
- tpmx 5y agoNot really. Pretty much every single national broadcaster of note used Realnetworks streaming in 1995-1996. They just didn't care for archiving, just like they don't care about that today.
- slg 5y agoI'm American so I can't say I'm too familiar with how the BBC was streaming content in the 90s, but RealNetworks didn't have video streaming technology until 1997[1] so the BBC surely wasn't using them for anything but maybe radio in 1995-1996. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealNetworks#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealNetworks#History
- tpmx 5y agoI'm talking about radio/audio. Sorry if that wasn't obvious.
- slg 5y agoOh, that certainly changes the timeline. The linked BBC Programme Index includes both television and radio so there was no reason for anyone here to assume you were only talking about radio.
- tpmx 5y agoNP. I talked about radio in the top level comment and then loads of people commented and the comment tree grew very large quickly.
- dbbk 5y agoThe BBC's charter limits how long they can put content on iPlayer.
- tpmx 5y agoYeah, why would anyone want an historic record of e.g. newscasts etc to be publicly accessible. That could only cause trouble!
- slg 5y agoCoincidentally I just commented[1] earlier today about someone who is going exactly what you are looking for with American newscasts. It is likely a time consuming project and can get expensive depending on how public the "publicly accessible" requirement is, but it is doable for a single person or small group. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27551712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27551712
- gerdesj 5y agoWhere? This is the current Charter: https://web.archive.org/web/20170806225843if_/http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/how_we_govern/2016/charter.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170806225843if_/http://downloa... I've only skim read it but then it's only 40 odd pages long.
- arp242 5y agoDutch public broadcast, paid from taxes, even added Widevine DRM to the online player a few years back. It's a massive PITA because the player is kinda bad and constantly buffering. I wouldn't even mind so much if it actually worked well :-/ When they added it they even trolled people for a day or so by having all the non-DRM requests download a clip from Office Space (the "mine!" stapler guy), so that's what all the downloader scripts ended up downloading.
- chrisseaton 5y agoWhen rights agreements were set up nobody could conceive of the idea of streaming. Unfortunately the BBC do not always own all the rights to broadcast something, and I can imagine it's basically impossible to retroactively untangle that. You're painting them as fools, while you're really playing Captain Hindsight.
- tpmx 5y agoAfter 1996 streaming became obvious because of Realnetworks. Are BBC news brodcasts playable from back then?
- afavour 5y agoHow many Realnetworks streams from 1996 are playable today? I’d wager not many. By 1996 it was obvious that streaming video was technically possible. I don’t think it was anywhere near as obvious that it would become a cultural force to the extent that it has, nor that archiving such streams was particularly important. Not to mention the monetary angle: such deals would have cost the BBC more money and I’m not sure the majority of the population would have seen it as a worthy use of money at the time.
- tpmx 5y agoAudio, not video. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealAudio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealAudio
- chrisseaton 5y agoWhere can I find these streams now? You're talking about people finding out that streaming was technically possible, not that society would adopt it as the way to distribute content in the future.
- tpmx 5y ago> Where can I find these streams now? I'm asking the exact same thing. For some reason at least the European national tax/license-paid broadcasters that I have direct knowledge of only serve a very small portion of their back catalog. Even when there are no third parties to worry about.
- antiterra 5y agoWasn’t it standard practice to just record shows over old tapes for a while, leading to the loss of a number of episodes of Doctor Who? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_missing_episodes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_missing_episodes
- iso1210 5y agoBack before things like home video was a dot on the horizon, shows were shown once, and tapes cost a fortune
- yardstick 5y agoStreaming rights side (since you’ve already mentioned it in other replies), and playing devils advocate here: does the current financial model of the BBC permit the digitisation of all this old material? Could it be a logistical and capacity issue? Did they consider the cost to the public and determine the additional effort/cost outweighs the benefits? Costs being both financial and political.
- RantyDave 5y agoBlake's 7? Nope. The Young Ones? Nope. Oh well.
- gerdesj 5y agoThis is a pretty good reason: https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/faqs#why-are-there-missing-listings-and-what-are-you-doing-about-it https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/faqs#why-are-there-missing-listi... Much of the input is scraped via scanning and OCR from physical copies of a magazine that is decades old. I did find one episode of Blakes 7 listed: https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/98edb93a0b8d4797a7b6892c25c30e00 https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/98edb93a0b8d4797a7b6892c25c30e00
- verytrivial 5y agoThe Young Ones inveigled its way into my psyche growing up and I'm sure I'd be a different person if I hadn't watched and rewatched it. Incredibly of-its-time-UK 80s now, but wild nonetheless. There's a low-quality VHS rip on the 'net somewhere of the frantic production process of the show which is both slightly enchantment-breaking and fascinating. They did so many takes of the circular-saw-through-the-bed gag due to technical issues! Without the laugh track production all sounds rather stressful for everyone, but also shows how much in-house BBC known-how was involved in the production.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tudorw 5y agoIf you're a BBC fan have a listen to Alexi Sayle reminisce about the 'good old days', it's sadly not what it used to be... https://audioboom.com/channels/5038428 https://audioboom.com/channels/5038428
- II2II 5y agoIs any of the material indexed by the site available to international viewers on the site (legally)? The BBC is a treasure-trove of historical and culturally significant content. Unfortunately, accessing BBS programs from outside of the UK is a painstaking process of tracking it down from other sources and there is no guarantee of success.
- chrisseaton 5y ago> Unfortunately, accessing BB[C] programs from outside of the UK is a painstaking process Is that true? I think all radio content (which to be honest is by far the best bit) is available without any account or geolocation. Maybe that's changed in the last year but I used to stream Radio 4 without problem when in the US and Canada. If people outside the UK are curious of what the BBC is capable of I'd suggest starting with the In Our Time archive https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2Dw1c7rxs6DmyK0pMRwpMq1/archive https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2Dw1c7rxs6DmyK0pMR.... I think it's constantly extraordinarily good.
- jahnu 5y agoThe Life Scientific with Jim Al-Khalili is also great Worth starting from the very first episode
- McGlockenshire 5y agoSo according to Wikipedia, the British TV license is currently about 220 USD a year, which works out to a bit over $18 a month. They'd probably get away with charging exactly the same amount for overseas streaming. I wonder if they realize that. I expect exclusive licensing and distribution deals are the biggest hiccup as usual.
- Marazan 5y agoExactly, the BBC gets shows cheap by only accquiring the UK rights. The production companies then get the prestige of "shown on the BBC" when doing foreign sales.
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- rajangdavis 5y agoThis is really neat! I could find a limited subset of Radio 1's Essential Mix, it looks like searching for specific DJ's yields better results. There are a few sets that I've found on Youtube from the 90's and I think it would be awesome if I could find the same ones on BBC. Will return and see if there's more that I can scour for, thanks for sharing.
- timthorn 5y agoHistoric tracklistings for the Essentials Selection are still online: https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/petetong/tracklistings2002.shtml https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/petetong/tracklistings2002.shtm...
- rajangdavis 5y agoThanks for sharing this link!
- globular-toast 5y agoCool. The Essential Mixes are, well, essential for people into electronic music. Some of the more famous ones are available in high quality, like the Goa Mix, but most I've had to find in YouTube and are of dubious quality. A high quality archive of all Essential Mixes, preferably without the radio compression, would be great.
- alexhjones 5y agoThe mixing bowl is an above-board torrent community with HQ packs of essential mixes
- mro_name 5y agoyears ago the BBC had all programs as machine readable RDF – they were leading the semantic web. All vanished like the dinos – can anybody tell what happened?
- timthorn 5y agoUnfortunately the project that hosted the feeds (BBC Backstage) was shut down in 2010: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcbackstage/2010/10/bbc-backstage-to-close.shtml https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcbackstage/2010/10/bbc-backsta...
- dotBen 5y agoI was one of the two founders of BBC Backstage, sadly the BBC shut it down a few years after I left as it didn't have the support internally and the BBC became under even greater pressure to save money.
- mro_name 5y agothat's a shame. It shone so bright https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art20130724121658626 https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art201307241216586... and inspired my radio recorder to publish raw meta data.
- timthorn 5y agoThanks for that, Ben. I fondly remember your emails... I organised a talk for the RTS from Simon Parnall about TV Anytime some years prior to Backstage launching and was really excited to see feeds become available from the BBC - and similarly saddened when they died. Ironically, it would have probably been a politically astute thing to keep alive with the push in Government for Open Data at that point.
- dotBen 5y agoA number of people loosely connected with BBC Backstage (from inside the BBC at the time and outside of it) went to work for the UK Gov Digital Service under then-minister Francis Maude, which is where a lot of the Open Data stuff came from. So from that point of view, the work at the BBC did lead to a greater opening from within the government. I miss the BBC days fondly, very different to what I'm doing now but it was a great era.