If I could pay the BBC license fee of £142.50 annually, I'd do so gladly. What? you gasp. Nearly C$300 for radio?! Yes. First because of the excellent content, and second because, out of the major English-speaking countries' public broadcasters, the BBC's media player is the best.Have you ever tried to find a podcast or live radio stream on the CBC's website? Maddening. You bounce around from page to page until you hit a dead end or, all too often, a dead link. Then you get to click "back" a bunch of times and start your quest again. Program and podcast pages are separate (why?) and often not even linked (huh?). It's like the Mother Corp doesn't want you to find something to listen to.
The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) site has fewer dead links, but it's difficult to find programming of interest due to poor layout. That said, the program pages, once you find them, archive past shows nicely. Once you find a program you like and its corresponding page bookmark it! You may not be able to find it from the main page a second time.
NPR's player is better, but a lot of their old material is up in .ram format, requiring you forego the player and use RealPlayer, if you have it installed... Does anyone use RealPlayer any more? I haven't seen it for years. Also, the site's navigation is far from intuitive: new content could be posted at any time on one of hundreds of pages, and with no index page or all-encompassing guide, you'd miss it quite easily.
The BBC iPlayer (despite some marketing dork's stupid recommendation for its name) is uncluttered, well-organised, and well-maintained. Everything from the stations' last seven days of airplay is there, listed by station then chronologically.
You want listeners? Build it simply and they will come.
And finally because I'm talking about finding content there are two excellent sites to help with that: PublicRadioFan.com and Radio-Locator.
P.S. BBC? I wasn't kidding about £142.50.
BBC radio is superb. I've been getting into it lately, and with so many services within, it is easy (or not!) to find something to listen to at any one time.
ReplyDeleteYes, the player and overall interfacing is outstanding... getting better all the time.
By the way, you bring up a good point about paying for licence fees. As I have researched the British model for some time now, I think it has many advantages. Here in Canada we have to make the CRTC make the cable operators and broadcasters pay for original programming... and we know how well that works. Divvy up!