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A comment on BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decentralised social media. Parent comment

Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by noneeeed on Monday July 31, 2023 @01:20PM (#36945858)
I feel like BBC Sounds is some senior manager's vanity project that they have staked their career on.

Their obsession with trying to get me to use it instead of normal RSS feeds or third party radio services like TuneIn is incredibly frustrating. They have intentionally broken the experience for smart speaker users and podcast listeners because they are incapable of enticing them over with a better experience. The obsession with control has soured my feelings towards BBC radio.

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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by hadrien01 on Monday July 31, 2023 @01:29PM (#36946005)
I feel the same about Radio France (the radio public broadcaster here in France, equivalent to BBC Radio + BBC Sounds). They've been pushing their app more and more, and now RSS feeds correctly list the episodes, but if you try to download one from a few months ago you just get an ad to download the app. No thanks.
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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by zerkten on Monday July 31, 2023 @02:34PM (#36946890)
Does Radio France generate revenues in other French-speaking countries with the same content? It feels like the BBC is trying to maximise revenue but expectations for consumers locally and overseas are going to be very different. Blocking loopholes hurts the local users more.
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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by hadrien01 on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @01:00AM (#36952509)
French public broadcasters are ad-supported, they don't have to separate local and overseas websites/apps/revenue logic. I've seen another comment about the BBC having ads for other BBC content; I already get ads in my Radio France podcasts (just the one before the proper content), and they're dynamic, so they surely change them depending on where you listening to maximize revenue. Probably the same type of dynamic advertising I get when listening to US podcasts with inverted French-speaking ads.
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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by squarefoot on Monday July 31, 2023 @06:53PM (#36949966)
The Rock feed by Radio France is among my favorites online music radios. I don't use smartphones and don't like to keep a browser running just to listen to music, so I extracted the URL and use it into whichever player I have available.

https://stream.radiofrance.fr/fiprock/fiprock_hifi.m3u8

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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by zerkten on Monday July 31, 2023 @02:32PM (#36946871)
I don't follow the BBC's approaches to revenue generation that closely, but is part of this due to larger overseas audiences? I'm now living outside the UK, so I expect that I'm viewed differently as a user by the Beeb, as well as by TV licence payers. If access to content isn't controlled then it's harder to maximise the revenue.

BBC Sounds feels like it's part of that efforts, but I'd be interested to know more given how much family members complain about the costs of licencing and services relative to the quality.

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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by akira2501 on Monday July 31, 2023 @02:55PM (#36947207)
It's about as self-conscious as you can get, too. You already have an audience for the entertainment products you produce. Out of all the places where you can sneak in a "value add," this is not one of them. As if you're going to out-produce your own creators.

It's audio only entertainment. Just.. go with _that_.

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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by ta1243 on Monday July 31, 2023 @02:59PM (#36947265)
The BBC has to prove it's serving the entire UK. An anonymous RSS doesn't allow that.

It's frustrating, but it's also inevitable from such a hostile environment.

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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by alexsereno on Monday July 31, 2023 @03:07PM (#36947340)
“Inevitable” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this comment
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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by ta1243 on Monday July 31, 2023 @04:06PM (#36948044)
Inevitable in that people in charge of the BBC want to prove that people (specifically an appropriate cross-section of the British public) use the BBC to keep the funding secure
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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by robertlagrant on Monday July 31, 2023 @04:09PM (#36948080)
They could do that by entering the 21st century and having an IP-locked subscription system.
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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by Evidlo on Monday July 31, 2023 @04:22PM (#36948244)
How does that get them subscription estimates?
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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by robertlagrant on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @04:52AM (#36953868)
Then they can make sure people in the UK have a subscription account.
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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by toyg on Monday July 31, 2023 @07:33PM (#36950339)
Because every house has a single, unchangeable IP...?

You clearly never worked in an ISP.

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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by robertlagrant on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @04:51AM (#36953864)
I definitely did not work at an ISP. But what I said doesn't require a static IP per house. Just GeoIP so non-UK residents are treated differently (unless they VPN).
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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by toyg on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @08:25AM (#36955110)
The target is not to determine whether the client is in the UK, but whether the client is a specific license-payer or at a specific address. GeoIP doesn't help to get either of those datapoints.
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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by ta1243 on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @03:32AM (#36953382)
Enforced by a proprietary app?
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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by robertlagrant on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @04:55AM (#36953881)
Yes, called iPlayer[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_iPlayer

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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by ta1243 on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @06:03AM (#36954256)
Or Sounds which is basically the audio version of iplayer
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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by robertlagrant on Monday July 31, 2023 @04:08PM (#36948066)
No; inevitable is a claim, not a support.
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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by toyg on Monday July 31, 2023 @07:32PM (#36950332)
I don't think it's that.

The real problem is that the BBC must be in a position whereby, should the government decide to link TV license and BBC access in a hard way, or (god forbid) fully privatise the service, they can flip a switch and make it so. So everything has to be behind a registration wall.

They have been under 13 years of pressure from Tory governments, run by friends of Murdoch, who don't believe in free knowledge and public broadcasting; the BBC had to be seen to go in the general direction of preparing for de-facto privatisation. This is the result.

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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by ta1243 on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @03:38AM (#36953420)
The BBC has a history of fighting that -- when ITV Digital collapsed, the BBC was quickly out of the gates to get DTT decoders with no CAM modules as the norm.

I think they missed a trick by not getting into the open HDMI dongle market, letting companies like Amazon take the initiative. We now see the result of those non-open platforms (amazon taking 30% of income as a platform provider etc), but with government interference as it is (remember it was Labour that stopped the BBC building an international streaming service back in 2009) I can see why.

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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by toyg on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @08:28AM (#36955124)
> remember it was Labour that stopped the BBC

Yes, a Labour government run by friends of Murdoch. You can guess the constant there.

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Re:BBC on Mastodon: experimenting with distributed and decen... by didntcheck on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @08:13AM (#36955005)
They really jumped the shark when they made you have to sign in to the BBC News app. I uninstalled it and just decided to use my browser, and guess what, I now read the BBC less, so well done. But then I know I'm not the typical person on the street, so unfortunately this probably did yield a lot of new sign ups, under duress
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