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So reactions to the BBC Creative Future

So the (BBC) have released their (Creative Futures) report yesterday looking at the future of the Beeb. While it will take some time to digest and come to comprehend what this means to our viewing and reading habits, take a minute to think about how this impacts our industry??

1. All content made '''FREELY''' available on a website starting today going back to 1937

and other recommendations include:

• Relaunching the BBC's website to include more '''personalisation''', richer audio-visual and user generated content
• '''Create a new teen brand''' delivered via existing broadband, TV and radio services, including a new long-running drama and comedy, factual and music content
• Create easy '''access points for audiences via broadband portals''' around key content areas like Sport, Music, Knowledge Building, Health and Science
• Start commissioning more 360 degree cross-platform content
• Shift energy and resource into '''continuous news on TV, radio, broadband and mobile''', making News 24 the centre of the TV offering, moving talent to it and breaking stories on it
• Improve the quality of Sports and Entertainment journalism and appoint a specialist Sports Editor
• Create one single, pan-platform BBC Music Strategy and develop big events like this Autumn's first BBC Electric Proms as well as '''more personalisation enabling people to create the equivalent of their own radio station'''
• Take entertainment seriously, learn from the world of video games and experiment with commissioning for new platforms
• In Drama – create fewer titles with longer runs, find creative space for outstanding writers and cherish the programmes audience love best like EastEnders, Casualty and Holby City
• In Comedy – improve the creative pipeline across all platforms, pilot more shows, find new talent and build the big hits for BBC ONE
• Give sharper age targets to the CBeebies and CBBC brands and integrate all children's content – including online and radio - under these brands
• Pilot a Knowledge Building online project called Eyewitness – History enabling people to record and share their memories and experiences of any day over the last 100 years



Press Release: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2006/04_april/25/creative.shtml

Take Note of your Customer Care

Opinion: There are many online services that customers will turn to for support when your customer service goes bad - be on top of what is going on. It may even save you money.

More than 40 percent of online chat about UK mobile operators is related to customer service issues. Not only is customer care the most common topic of discussion, it also attracts the most negative sentiment, with only one UK operator, Orange, scoring positively, reports WaveMetrix.

Discussion relating to customer care accounted for 41 percent of all operator-centric discussion. Network quality and value for money were also important, attracting 23 percent and 20 percent of discussion respectively, whereas new services such as data portals received much less interest.

Portals such ashttp://3g.co.uk become central discussion points for many customers to vent frustration at poor service, poor products or just plain poor phones. A good strategy to get to know your customer better is to skim read the conversation threads and look at what is getting the most attention (you never know it might be the latest way to get free calls for prepaid customers).

Source:Wavematrix

Del.icio.us links:

• mobile+customer+care
• online+support

Gmail for your mobile

Google has created a special version of its Gmail e-mail service that provides mobile phone users with quick access to their e-mail. Check it out at http://m.gmail.com.

The service allows you to view attached files such as images or download documents if supported by your handset.

What's the problem with depth of catalogue?

It's like trying to sell ice creams to eskimos - do you go for depth and variety of your content catalogue or stick to the sickly seasonal or monthly favourites ... you can be damned either way.

What I'm thinking is that most mobile content sales via WAP are dominated by the operator portals, but you invariably find that top downloads page will have the Star Wars March, Axel F and something from Guns n Roses (AC/DC). It's a nightmare ... we focus on getting customers access to the best stuff, we focus on improving search and still all they want is Wham - Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart.

I think there is a way around this, the back catalogue is needed to give depth and presence (oh and to make us feel proud that we can select from a possible catalogue of 500,000+ FTMD or Realtones, Videotones, etc), but do we need the Top Download chart to be only 1 click away? Keep the top charts list (like all good record stores), keep the new entries list, but please kill the downloads chart.

But if you want to keep that top download page then you don’t need a deep catalogue, stop and focus on What’s Hot and What’s New. Let other content providers bring their catalogue to market (via your portal or offnet) … what’s it going to be ???

All Operators are looking at their off portal strategy - H3GUK tries to bring focus on one with their Mobile Sites and other operators are looking at how to enable micro payments (other than reverse / premium SMS).

Think about it … kill the download chart or keep the content?

RSS to SMS for your mobile

Think about this carefully - any RSS stream sent free to your mobile by SMS ... you've got your blackberry, you've got your live news alerts and weekly MMS updates - but who tells you about that other stuff you're really really interested in? Talk about giving away the baby and the bath water - but maybe this is just a crazy idea with some sense behind it.

As part of an update to its alerts feature, Yahoo added a feature that allows users to get RSS results via SMS. The free service will send a message to your phone with every new item posted to an RSS feed.

The feature works with any RSS feed, but is likely most useful for feeds used to connect small groups of people (group projects, clubs, etc) where volume will be lower than on a news site. Since normal text messaging fees apply (though there is no fee from Yahoo) make sure to use this feature wisely.

Source Russell Beattie

Mobile Blogging Reduces Churn

MocoNews.net: mobile content news: "Mobile Blogging generates an immediate reduction of up to 70% in the propensity of a user to churn."

Results of a 12-month survey of two million subscribers on four operators which were using NewBay's Software FoneBlog mobile blogging and multimedia album solution have been released.

According to NewBay the result comes from increased loyalty - based on personal content on the moblog. What is obvious here is if you have personal content and you can't move/download it simply, then there is a barrier to change.

Services such as flickr and myspaces will in the long term prove more popular due to the many and varied options (not just mobloging) for managing personal content.

US findings from Content Survey

interesting global research on mobile phones from a US university.

57% of all users say they're willing to spend no more than $5 per month on mobile data services -- including text messages, and the most important factor in choosing a mobile service is cheap voice calls. That's backed up by another piece of research this week that says it's cheap voice plans, not fast data driving 3G.

More than a third of users worldwide have cameraphones, up from 21% last year, and 59% have color screens, up from 44%. The cameraphone figures aren't surprising -- there was a research report out last Friday that said two-thirds of all phones sold this year would have cameras.