The BBC is working on a prototype application that will feed links to relevant web content into live TV news reports available on BBC News Online, according to a post on the backstage.bbc.co.uk blog.
The prototype shows how hypertext which links to online articles relating to the topic of discussion can appear on screen as the news develops, signposting users to further reports on the web.
Andrew Littledale, who has been working on the prototype, explains that the idea has evolved from plans to develop an interface which will suit a future in which TV and the web become bedfellows.
The most useful application we could think of was something that would provide web content that was relevant to what was being talked about on TV. So we created a Flash application that pulls in live subtitles from an IRC channel and places them underneath a live feed of News 24 (…) As the subtitles appear on the screen they are sent off to a natural language processing API and relevant concepts are extracted from the text (and in our case returned as DBpedia terms).
When the concepts come back from the API they are placed over the EMP on the left of the picture. We’ve mapped these terms to BBC News content and clicking on them reveals links on the right. Clicking on these opens up the web page in a new tab.
While he admits it needs a bit of work yet, the concept is also being considered as a more tailored product for specific platforms on the site.