Tag Archives: today

BBC: PD James wins Nick Clarke award

Crime writer PD James has won the BBC’s Nick Clarke award, the BBC College of Journalism reports.

She was given the award following her interview as a Radio 4 Today programme guest editor with the broadcaster’s director general Mark Thompson in December 2009.

The award is given in memory of Nick Clarke, former presenter of The World at One, who died in 2006.

In the interview, James told Thompson that the BBC seemed to have become a: “large and unwieldy ship…taking on more and more and more cargo, building more decks to accomodate it, recruiting more officers all very comfortably cabined usually at salaries far greater than their predecessors enjoyed, with a crew that was somewhat discontented and some a little mutinous, the ship rather sinking close to the Plimsoll line and the customers feeling they have paid too much for their journey and not quite sure where they are going or indeed who is the captain”.

Sarah Hartley: BBC offers experimental programming format – too soon?

Sarah Hartley takes a look at R&D TV a new offering from the BBC that allows viewers to watch and ‘mash iup’ BBC footage.

“Trouble is, only one such mashup has so far taken place despite worldwide access and awareness of the initiative is very limited,” writes Hartley.

“Is this just early days for something ahead of the curve , or is the mighty institution smothering its fledgling participatory offering before it can get out of the nursery?”

Full post at this link…

Meanwhile, over on the BBC Editors Blog, Jon Zilkha discuss Radio 4’s recent experiments with ‘visualising’ the Today programme by introducing cameras and live video streaming to the studio.

“Experimenting with what is grandly called ‘visualisation’ is hardly new. For us, the idea was to see whether the cameras could capture something of the intensity of interviews, as well as to give an insight into the working of the programme,” writes Zilkha.