Blog posts by year and monthSeptember 2011
Posts (12)
Songs of Praise at fifty - and the use of BC and AD
This Sunday at 5.30pm on BBC One the 50th anniversary programme of Songs Of Praise, Songs Of Praise: 50th Birthday Celebration transmits. Fifty years in broadcasting is an incredible achievement. From humble beginnings broadcast from the Tabernacle Welsh Baptist Church in Cardiff on October 1 ...
A season of BBC2 programmes about mixed-race Britain
When my parents Bianca (Sicilian/Maltese) and Ade (Sierra Leonean/Gambian) got married there was still a lot of disapproval towards mixed-race marriages. White woman who partnered black men in the late 50s and 60s were often seen as 'loose' or 'immoral.' Certainly my brothers and I grew up in the...
Meals on Wheels - respect, independence and community
I remember very vividly the smell that used to greet me on entering my Grandma's house, the smell of traditional home cooking. A piece of meat roasting in the oven, potatoes dug up from the garden. When my Grandma got too old to cook for herself (she steadfastedly refused to go into a home until...
Eastenders: E20 - Changing opinions and lives through drama
Drama in the curriculum About a year ago my Controller Saul Nassé invited me to meet with him and Deborah Sathe, the Producer of EastEnders' teen spin-off - E20, with a view to having BBC Learning commission the next series...The approach really fitted with our new Learning strategy which is to...
Getting beyond the statistics - unemployment on BBC Three
Unemployment from the BBC Three audience's perspective Today, as unemployment figures for young people top the million mark, it's important to ask - how can television respond to this crisis? How can it link with radio and social media to create a debate that gets to the heart of the underlying...
BarCamp? What's a BarCamp?
Last weekend we did something a bit different at the BBC. On Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th September we hosted the BBC's first ever BarCamp, in our northern home at MediaCityUK. 'What's a BarCamp?' I hear you cry. Well, it's been described as many things from an 'un-conference' to a 'catered c...
A 'beta' version of the BBC's new homepage
In my role as General Manager for News & Knowledge at BBC Future Media, I oversee eight of the 10 major areas (we call these 'products') of BBC Online working with my editorial counterparts - including the BBC homepage. Today, we relaunched the homepage in a test ('beta') version for public u...
Archiving the Army with BBC Four
It seems like only last week that I was writing here about what a busy year this is proving to be for archives. Well, here we are again - this time to celebrate the launch of BBC Four's first online Collection of classic television programmes from the archive. It's the beginning for us of a whole...
BBC Radio 1's Big Conversation
What do you get if you take 70 young people and put them in a room for 3 hours? The answer to this is not a protest, a civil uprising or even a hint of trouble. In fact what we got was a diverse range of views, thoughts and opinions and perhaps even a small step towards a rebranding of the much-...
The BBC Symphony Orchestra rehearsing for the Last Night of the Proms
Tomorrow night sees the climax of this year's BBC Proms. It's been a record-breaking season - with 94% attendance for evenings at the Royal Albert Hall. Over 300,000 will have attended a Prom by the time the season finishes. In July, on the day of the First Night, we spoke to Proms Director Roger...