Consuming BBC content…

BBC blogger nodalpoints has posted up 4 questions he’d like people to answer. The questions concern how people consume BBC content. Seeing as I watch BBC TV, listen to BBC radio stations, and read the various BBC websites, I thought I should respond.

The questions seem a little unrelated to each other to me, but I’m going to run with this on the presumption that there’s some underlying purpose.

Question 1: ‘What BBC content do you watch / listen to / interact with which you feel strongly about. In fact what content do you just enjoy, passively ‘consume’ etc.’

I tend to go for the high-value dramas, like Spooks, Hotel Babylon, Torchwood, Doctor Who and so on. I’ll also watch BBC News bulletins, but not on a strictly regular basis. Comedy-wise, I’ll make a point of tuning in to watch Have I Got News For You and more recently Never Mind the Buzzcocks. I’ll watch a bit of QI if it happens to be on too. I used to watch Neighbours, and have followed it over to Five, for now.

My radio is permanently tuned to 6Music. I keep trying to get myself to listen to other stations for a bit of variety, but that never really happens. I listen passively to 6Music in the morning, and some evenings. Weekends though I’ll nearly always listen to Russell Howard, Stephen Merchant and the Adam & Joe show.

Question 2: ‘How much of this do you get from traditional routes (i.e. broadcast to your television, radio or recorded off air via a video / pvr) vesus other routes (BBC Listen Again, iPlayer, DVD or download via the likes of Bittorrent)? How much of this material is BBC and how much from other sources?’

Most of the TV comes through our Freeview PVR, either live or recorded and watched later (using some timers set up to regularly record favorite programmes). Until recently, poor reception meant we could pretty much only receive BBC channels, but we’ve started to get decent ITV and Channel4 reception now too. We’ve also started to use the excellent iPlayer streaming service on the Macbook - usually for when we’ve missed and forgotten to record a programme, or for when we want to watch it from bed. The full-screen streaming resolution is perfectly watchable, and never has to rebuffer over our Be* connection.

I also subscribe to a few BBC podcasts, such as the 6Music shows mentioned above, plus a few newsy ones and iPM, to listen to on the tube and train in to work.

I have a few BBC DVDs, mostly for the TV series that are worth rewatching a fair few times - like Spooks and Hustle.

To my geek shame, I’ve never tried using Bittorrent. This is through sheer can’t-be-botheredness though, rather than much of a moral purpose.

Question 3: ‘Where do you talk about BBC content? Online, on your blog, forums, amongst your online friends? or do you just chat about it at work, at the pub. Do you have ‘water cooler moments’ or do you in fact not really talk about it much?’

Well, I don’t have ‘water cooler moments’, as our water cooler was cruelly taken away from us at work. However, we do sometimes talk about TV shows at work - usually after something big was on that at least a few people actually watched.

Online, I’ve using Twitter quite a bit, and will sometimes twit a brief comment on a TV show. Having just looked through my archive, it seems my TV-related twits are either to announce I’m about to watch something (eg Messiah, Skins, Mighty Boosh or Horizon), which I guess is partly to remind friends to watch it too, or a brief reaction after it’s finished (eg Doctor Who, Skins, Neighbours). I’ll usually include the channel name, so I guess you could probably pull these comments automatically by cross-matching the time with the channel name and programme name, and possibly the phrase ‘watching’.

I’ll also blog TV shows now and then, but more rarely.

Question 4: ‘If you wanted to get in touch with the people who made the content how would you go about it?’

This doesn’t exactly come up a lot, except for radio shows, which are always desperate for you to make contact. Especially on 6Music, where the DJs are often desperate for you to get in touch. I’ve e-mailed and texted shows a fair bit - nearly always getting my comment read out.

For TV shows, I guess I’d use the ‘contact’ button on the relevant BBC minisite, if there was one, although that often leads to a generic form. I might try and guess their BBC e-mail address (firstname.lastname@bbc.co.uk). Or if it was a complaint, which I’ve only done once, I’d go to BBC Complaints.

If you’re reading this and think it’s relevant and also want to answer the questions, you can copy them from here, or from Nodalpoints’s blog post.

Note: this is not a meme.

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