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BBC offers talk radio for the iPod generation |
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Saturday, 16 April 2005 |
BBC offers
talk radio for the iPod generation
Independent - UK
The iPod has already won over a generation of music and gadget lovers.
Now the BBC is targeting a new army of the device's devotees who are more
familiar with the tones of John Humphrys and Kate Adie.
From this week, radio shows ranging from Today to From Our Own Correspondent can
be obtained from the corporation's website and stored in the machine's memory.
The practice, podcasting, is part of a trial by the BBC to gauge the appetite
for listening to radio programmes on demand via an iPod or other MP3 player.
Podcasting allows people to download broadcasts from websites onto MP3 players
and listen at their own convenience. It began at grassroots level in August last
year as an audio version of internet "blogging", with enthusiasts recording and
distributing their own shows.
The BBC has just concluded a trial offering MP3 downloads of Melvyn Bragg's
Radio4 programme In Our Time, Radio Five Live's discussion show Fighting Talk
and selected documentaries from the digital urban music station 1Xtra. The
broadcasts were downloaded to MP3 players a total of 270,000 times in four
months.
The success of the experiment has prompted the BBC to extend the trial to
include extracts from 20 radio programmes, including the Today 8.10am interview,
this year's Reith Lectures, Radio4's In Business, Five Live's Sportsweek, World
Service documentaries and the weekly Gaelic Letter from BBC Radio Nan Gaidheal.
These programmes will be available for download in an MP3 format until the end
of the year, when the BBC will judge how widely used the service is and how much
it costs, to help determine its future strategy.
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