British Broadcasting Corporation
From reading recent media news you might think the the BBC’s passion for blogging was cooling. First off, we learnt (via the Times initially, and then confirmed by the BBC) that the corporation is to significantly cut back its web content and reduce the number of online staff. Then on Tuesday evening, BBC political editor Nick Robinson said he no longer read the comments on his own Newslog. Rather than widening the political debate, commenters were "people who have already made their minds up, to abuse me, to abuse each other or abuse a politician", he said at an Election 2.0 debate at City University London.viglink.com Finally, as academic and blogger Alfred Hermida flagged up, the BBC Strategic Review labelled the blogosphere as "vast and unruly".
Above the vast and unruly world of the blogosphere, professional media power may actually concentrate in fewer hands. Individual plurality may increase but collective, effective plurality decrease - with societies around the world left with fewer reliable sources of professionally validated news. But before we get carried away with the BBC’s blogging / web apathy, let’s take a step back. Malcolm Coles’ easy-read guide to the Strategic Review comes in handy here. For one, as Coles notes on Econsultancy, halving the number of sections on the site is not quite the same as halving the size of the site. "The overall quality will be improved by closing lower-performing sites and consolidating the rest," he reports.
And proactive web interaction will be developed. The BBC also plans to open up its programme library (outside the areas with high commercial value) "over time" within BBC Online as a publicly accessible ‘permanent collection’. The review says it will make programmes available on demand "alongside the component parts of those programmes (segmentation), programme information (full catalogue) and additional, complementary content (programme support". And the site will look to deliver audiences through propositions like the BBC’s Wildlife Finder "which maximise the public value of archive programming". Anyway, read the report - or Coles’ summary - for yourself. PDF at this link.
The "Third" programme became Radio 3 offering classical music and cultural programming. The Home Service became Radio 4 offering news, and non-musical content such as quiz shows, readings, dramas and plays. As well as the four national channels, a series of local BBC radio stations were established in 1967, including Radio London. In 1969, the BBC Enterprises department was formed to exploit BBC brands and programmes for commercial spin-off products. In 1979, it became a wholly owned limited company, BBC Enterprises Ltd. In 1974, the BBC's teletext service, Ceefax, was introduced, created initially to provide subtitling, but developed into a news and information service. In 1990 Radio 5 was launched as a sports and educational station, but was replaced in 1994, with Radio 5 Live.
In 1997, BBC News 24, a rolling news channel, launched on digital television services and the following year, BBC Choice launched as the third general entertainment channel from the BBC. The BBC also purchased The Parliamentary Channel, which was renamed BBC Parliament. In 1999, BBC Knowledge launched as a multi media channel, with services available on the newly launched BBC Text digital teletext service, and on BBC Online. In 2002, several television and radio channels were reorganised. BBC Knowledge was replaced by BBC Four and became the BBC's arts and documentaries channel. CBBC, which had been a programming strand as Children's BBC since 1985, was split into CBBC and CBeebies, for younger children, with both new services getting a digital channel: the CBBC Channel and CBeebies Channel. In addition to the television channels, new digital radio stations were created: 1Xtra, 6 Music and BBC7. BBC 1Xtra was a sister station to Radio 1 and specialised in modern black music, BBC 6 Music specialised in alternative music genres and BBC7 specialised in archive, speech and children's programming.
The show is a spin-off of the original series Big Brother. There are a number of differences between Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother. For example, Celebrity Big Brother lasts for a much shorter time than Big Brother and the celebrities - so long as they are not ejected or quit the programme - are paid for their participation. From its inception in 2001, Celebrity Big Brother was broadcast on Channel 4 and its sister channel E4, until Big Brother was cancelled by Channel 4 in 2010 due to falling ratings.guide.com Channel 5 acquired the rights in 2011. During its run on Channel 4, Celebrity Big Brother was presented by Davina McCall, who also presented the original show.
Facebook page referred to recruitment opportunities at Solasta Finance. It also included links to articles about women in the workplace, alongside posts containing aspirational images and motivational messages associated with the business world. It included a link to the website. Twitter feed @solastafinance contained similar content to ad (b). Instagram feed contained similar content to ad (b). The complainant challenged whether the ads were obviously identifiable as a marketing communication. The British Broadcasting Corporation t/a BBC (BBC) stated Clique was a BBC3 drama which focused on two female university students getting involved with the mysterious company Solasta Finance and examined issues such as sexism, feminism and capitalism.
The advertising materials were not initially explicitly branded as being BBC Three, and were intended to spark intrigue and maximise discussion about Solasta Finance and its ‘Women’s Initiative’, to engender discussion about some of the issues in the series.gizmos.com The BBC said the unbranded phase of the campaign, when the connection to BBC Three was not made explicit, began on 19 February and lasted for five days. There was then a full ‘reveal’ with overt BBC Three branding and attribution. Before then the website featured a countdown clock (to the reveal date). Once the reveal was made, some posts resurfaced and new ones were created to clarify that Solasta Finance was linked to a TV show.
". They said the online content complained of was a very small part of a much bigger on-air and off-air marketing campaign for Clique. The campaign included TV trailers and press activity and lasted for six weeks. They added that the BBC received no complaints about any aspect of the Clique marketing campaign via the BBC’s formal complaints system which received, on average, in excess of 200,000 complaints per year. The ASA acknowledged that the ads in social media released at the start of the campaign did not expressly refer to BBC3 or expressly indicate that the ads related to a TV drama.
We understood, however, that the social media accounts linked to the Solasta Finance website (ad a), which in turn linked to the Clique programme page on the BBC website. We considered that ads for Solasta Finance placed after the 'reveal' on 24 February, and which contained BBC branding, would be understood to relate to a BBC TV show. We considered that the ads which appeared before the reveal were likely to be, at first glance, understood to be for a business called Solasta Finance. We also considered that many readers, particularly in the context of social media, were generally familiar with the concept of a 'reveal', where initial posts might be mysterious or deliberately ambiguous.
We noted that some of the content referred in general terms to employment at Solasta Finance, and considered whether they might initially be interpreted by some readers to be offering genuine employment. However, we noted that those posts would also be seen as mysterious and peculiar; for example, the claim "new internship position available now" was immediately followed by the claim "due to unforeseen circumstances". We considered readers would therefore understand that the ads were not traditional or conventional job ads and that that contributed to the overall impression that the ads were not what they might at first seem. We investigated the ads under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 2.1 2.1 Marketing communications must be obviously identifiable as such.
] EWCA Civ 152 the matter came before the Court of Appeal. The car manufacturer had appealed against a refusal to amend its particulars of claim so as to reinstate a claim for libel and malicious falsehood against the BBC and add a claim for special damages. The court found that the judge below had been correct to strike out the libel claim because the statement was incapable of bearing the meaning intended by Tesla. The court then considered whether or not the judge was wrong to refuse Tesla permission to amend the particulars. Further consideration was the fact that the programme had been originally broadcast in December 2008 and then broadcast on numerous further occasions. There have been numerous broadcasts of the statements which, because of the length of time, now had become statue barred. It was therefore very difficult for the court to distinguish the effect of the statue barred broadcast and any new ones. This would lead to considerable causation problems which the court felt had not been properly addressed in the particulars.
