

Designing a URL structure for BBC programmes - edward
http://smethur.st/posts/176135860

======
th0ma5
The BBC is flat out a pioneer in media management and distribution. I had the
opportunity to use the iPlayer some during the London Olympics, and the level
of automation, and the completeness of coverage, really opened my eyes to how
media technology in the US is solely at the mercy of licensing and
advertising. PBS is somewhat interesting, but only in a "look we know what the
internet playing a video is" sort of way. It was a better experience than
YouTube, Netflix, Prime, Roku, etc. BBC's model is the future, today.

~~~
dc2447
The BBC is in a unique position where not only does it get a massive amount of
funding from it's commercial arm [0] it also receives a massive amount on
'tax' in the form of a TV licence [1].

And whilst I am personally proud of some of the technical advances made by the
broadcaster I am continually troubled by the commercial advantage the BBC has
over it's competitors and the massive waste internally. The later I have
personal experience of as I spent some time working for the BBC.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Worldwide#BBC_Worldwide_pro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Worldwide#BBC_Worldwide_profit_and_sales_1995.E2.80.932012)
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Uni...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom)

~~~
sdrothrock
> The BBC is in a unique position where not only does it get a massive amount
> of funding from it's commercial arm [0] it also receives a massive amount on
> 'tax' in the form of a TV licence [1].

It's not entirely unique. The NHK is in a similar position and look what
they've done: broadcast satellite research, digital terrestrial broadcasting,
a bunch of different kinds of HD resolutions and codecs, infrastructure, and I
think they've even funded research on high-definition TVs.

It's pretty cool and makes me wish PBS in the US were more respected and had
better funding.

~~~
rurounijones
Worth pointing out that Japan's NHK is actually modelled after the BBC. So
that is two "wins" for that funding model to my mind.

~~~
ersii
Might be interesting to know that Swedens SVT (Sveriges Television, Swedish
Television) is also modeled after the BBC and the UK television license. I'm
sure there's plenty more country broadcasters, like above comments have
mentioned - the UK and the BBC are quite the pioneers in this field.

~~~
icebraining
I'm pretty sure it's standard across most of the EU. Portugal also has its own
(RTP - Portuguese Radio and Television). Personally, I don't find it any
better than the private channels. Even the more cultural/alternative channel
has plenty of crap (e.g. Two and a Half Men).

~~~
josteink
While the _content_ may not be better, I find the non-commercial, state-funded
stations to have better online solutions.

Their content is after all licensed for everyone to use as they see fit (it
belongs to the people), and thus their main limitation is what technology can
do, and not what the license permits them to.

We have the same situation in Norway with NRK, which has a fantastic web-
offering, not to mention native apps for Android and iOS. It's at the point
where you don't need a TV to watch (their) TV-content.

None of the commercial counterparts are ready to offer that, at least not with
an experience at the same level of quality.

~~~
icebraining
Oh, yeah, they have mobile apps as well, but frankly, the content they produce
is rarely good enough to bother to even install it.

Besides, nowadays you can get a DVB-T stick the size of a flash drive for less
than 10€, so watching without a TV isn't exactly hard even without mobile
apps.

------
buro9
To anyone who remembers the original post made by Tom Coates over here:
[http://plasticbag.org/archives/2004/06/developing_a_url_stru...](http://plasticbag.org/archives/2004/06/developing_a_url_structure_for_broadcast_radio_sites)

This new post is a substantial expansion on the reasoning, the implementation,
and the depth of the thinking reflected in the URL structure that the BBC
uses.

I was contracting at Red Bee Media for a portion of this time, and the project
work to support a lot of this moved at an incredible pace (once the BBC had
fed the requirements over), worth noting that RBM (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bee_Media](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bee_Media)
) themselves were spun out of the BBC around this time. So you had substantial
organisation change at the same time as these fast moving technical changes.

------
moberemk
Probably the most interesting part of this article (and the linked article on
developing a URL structure for broadcast radio) is the argument in favor of
not making human-readable URLs. A part of me really likes the idea of URLs
which can be read and understood by a layman without deep understanding of the
system. But technically that's challenging to maintain, and as the article
points out, challenging to keep consistent automatically. And arguably it's
better to offer users something which you know won't ever break than something
more convenient which quite likely will.

------
will_critchlow
This is a fascinating read - and an adventure down the rabbit-hole.

I think they missed an opportunity to make the IDs map 1-1 with human-readable
titles though. They use the argument that they have many versions of "pride
and prejudice" and don't know which they may have in the future, but that
sounds to me like a cop-out. There must be _something_ differentiating those
different shows to viewers (else, why make them?) so refer to that, surely?
That doesn't mean /prideandprejudice2, but whatever differentiates that series
from the first one.

I'm not particularly addressing this from a search perspective (they address
that in the post) but more from a UX / readability / shareability perspective.

There's a few other pieces of weirdness to my mind e.g. "And hacking back to
/episodes would have returned what? A list of all episodes ever?"

Yes. That's similar to what /programmes is isn't it? Obviously you can segment
/ add hierarchy.

------
benbristow
Interesting read. Amazing how much thought goes into something as simple as a
URL. I'll never look at the beeb's website in the same way now!

~~~
gabemart
> Amazing how much thought goes into something as simple as a URL.

As a rule, a great deal of thought should go into any website's URL structure.
It's one of the most painful and costly things to change later, especially if
search traffic is significant for the site.

------
abrowne
I've only just started reading it, but does anyone know what they mean by "In
the circumstances it might be more of a eulogy than a birth announcement"?

~~~
vertex-four
There's the fact that a lot of the structure (.xml/.json "data views", things
that aren't linked from anywhere, etc) are likely to disappear as the BBC
switches from their old programme database to the new "Nitro".

------
hendry
I like URLs with year YYYY . Don't like how they hemmed it on
"freethinking2006".

------
revelation
Linking the structure of your site to the organization of your URLs is a
terrible idea. Nobody particularly cares what the URL looks like, but for one
key feature: do not fucking break links.

So design your URL such that you won't ever break them. Everything else is
rather secondary.

------
prithvitheprime
does that matter in seo

