Margaret Hanley gave a presentation on her work leading the development of Programme Information Pages (PIPs) at the BBC. PIPs aims to create a consistent page of information for every BBC television and radio programme. This was challenging due to the BBC's traditional divisions and lack of standardized program metadata. Hanley worked to change cultures and systems at the BBC to better share and structure content across divisions for re-use on the BBC's digital platforms. Over time, she hopes this will lead to more granular and standardized program information being captured from the start of the production process.

1. 1Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Change, influence and IA at
the BBC
Margaret Hanley
Executive Producer - Core Products
Bbc.co.uk

2. 2Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Introduction
• Margaret Hanley
• Executive Producer – Core Products BBC
• Worked on three continents – Australia, USA
and UK
• Been both a consultant and internal staff to
companies like Sensis (Yellow Pages in
Australia), Argus Associates (US), Ingenta (UK
and BBC (UK)

3. 3Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Agenda
• BBC Background
• Influence and culture within the BBC
• What is PIPs?
• What was the IA challenge?
• Systems, people and content
• Lessons Learnt
• Questions

4. 4Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
BBC Background
• Divisions or “petals” with New Media
groups
• Central New Media division that develops
applications
• Programme information traditionally
created with or after the programme
finished – very incomplete information
• One credible/complete source based on
TV/Radio listings

5. 5Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Influence and culture at the BBC
• Emphasis is on established traditional
media
– TV; then Radio; then New Media
• Changing culture; new DG, change of
audience consumption of media
– Reduction in traditional media use for younger
audiences
• Networking is important

6. 6Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
PIPs
• Programme information pages – a page
for every programme episode, broadcast
on BBC
• Cross-divisional project
– Radio and Music interactive and New Media
Central

7. 7Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004

8. 8Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004

9. 9Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
IA Challenge
• Use of content from one source – complete but
very badly structured – unable to distinguish a
brand title from an episode title in the free-text
long description field
• In the short term, to make small editorial
changes within the feed to allow that separation;
in the long term, identify how to change the
source to give us the content in the right format

10. 10Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
IA Challenge
• Content limited
– Some programmes had lots of information;
some had very little
– So hard to create a page layout that didn’t
look empty
– No consistent metadata attached to a
programme information

11. 11Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004

12. 12Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Systems, people and content
• Systems
– Using industry and business standards – the BBC
does have a corporate data standard SMEF ™– that
our product uses it; but very few other systems do
– Digital TV and Radio production at the BBC is just
starting to happen
– So now there is leverage from the “business” to
actually use it in upstream system like digital
production or capture of information by Information
and Archive

13. 13Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Systems, people and content
• People/ Cultural change
– Changing working practices so that content could be
re-used and highlighting that metadata about a
programme can be as important as the programme
itself
– See Radio 3 staff work better with the EPG Unit
– Start creating content earlier in the process
• making use of broadcast assistants
• I & A staff
• working together rather than always doing it downstream
once the content has been created

14. 14Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Systems, people and content
• Content
– Quality of content becoming better once the content is
“seen in perpetuity”, rather than deleted after 7 days
– More information collated together and built upon by
the people who know about it – the production staff
and the users
– Moving from metadata standards that are used to find
a tape again or create an Electronic Programme
Guide to one with more granularity and depth

15. 15Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Incremental change
• Change in systems in such a large
organisation like the BBC takes time and
is mostly bottom-up – it infiltrates the
organisation; imposition in “the most
creative organisation in the world” doesn’t
work
• Radical and revolutionary change takes
time and is top-down – both are
happening at the BBC

16. 16Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Influence
• Networking is a more powerful influencer
than pure business value
• But…New Media people don’t consider
themselves inferior or as “only support” to
the main business as many in HR or
Finance have; and this has been re-
enforced in the org structure

17. 17Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Influence
• New Media is using existing frameworks to
help generate change; and it’s leading the
BBC in this
• Using SMEF™ and then asking the
upstream for the information to be
provided in the same format

18. 18Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Lessons learnt
• Once the product is released it is easier
(and harder) to go forward
– Easier with an application that you can
actually see
– Harder everyone wants a piece and the ability
to interface with other
– Gets pretty weird when the DG talks about
context and findability – the core of your work


19. 19Margaret Hanley
© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Thank you
Questions or comments?
Margaret Hanley
margaret.hanley@bbc.co.uk