Archives for August 2009

You say Paris, France, I call it Little Britain upon Seine. To suggest that France is a foreign country where they speak a different language is to misunderstand the British invasion of the last ten years which has seen us snap up the best of France and it's culture, or at least put a firm down payment on all things Parisian.

You only have to listen to the number of calls or read the amount of emails and text messages that we get from listeners in France to realize that we had to do a programme from Paris. After all we've been to Hay on Wye and the Malvern Hills we've broadcast programmes from Greater Manchester, Newcastle and Edinburgh. With Paris now just a two hour train ride away from the capital, Paris is geographically closer to us than some far outer regions of the British Isles. Also, this was the week in which France succeeded in dragging itself out of recession whilst we still languish in that negative economic situation. We had to come here to find out how they did it. We spoke to the economist, the sociologist and the poet. Only Nicolas Sarkozy could have added anything to that, but Gordon Brown has probably got first dibs on the information the President of the Republic has got to share on how to get yourself out of a tight spot.

On a personal note I have often wondered what was so romantic about a gap year in the merde. What is so attractive about Paris that Brits would choose to live there over Birmingham? Take my daughter for instance, just ten years old, born and brought up in the People's Republic of Tottenham, spent the last three months of her junior school life in the 10th arronidissment just a stone's throw away from the Eurostar terminal at the Gare Du Nord. This very same London girl who was too cool for the cats in the French capital has virtually forgotten about the family she left behind in London N17. Now she's talking about having a flat in London and one in Paris when she's seventeen.

Well, as you can imagine, I took the next possible train from St Pancras to bring her home before we needed to re-mortgage our house to keep her there. Joking aside though, she represents to future of British relations with our French cousins. For her generation there will be no borders, few cultural differences and, if the teaching of French in British schools is taken seriously, no language barrier.

I've spoken to so many ex-pats over the weekend I've spent in Paris and I think I'm starting to get it. We need to eat like the French do - better. We need to chill out like they do. They need to learn to make love like we do. And they need to stop making out that they make love better than we do. But I wouldn't take my word for it if I were you. The ex-pats who contributed to Up All Night's weekend in Paris say it much better, more passionately and more informatively. Ooh-la-la.

Dotun Adebayo presents Up All Night at the weekend.

• Dotun was in Paris last weekend. Listen again here.
• The picture shows Dotun interviewing Catherine Sanderson, creator of the blog La Petite Anglaise

5 live's new website is now in the final phase of testing, ahead of launch next week, and we're excited about what we've got in store for you. We've been working hard with the agency Good Technology, to build a vibrant online home for the network and we're almost there.

I wanted to give you a sneak preview of the homepage and explain a few of the changes that you'll see when it goes live. The first thing you'll notice is that the look and feel will be bigger, bolder and more vibrant. We want to showcase the depth and variety of content that 5 live produces, 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week and make it easily accessible.

The annnotated example details how you can expect areas of the homepage to change through the day. You'll also notice three sections with associated colours: News (categorised by a red theme), Sport (in green) and Life (in blue). The colours are used on links and in design to direct you, visually, to the type of content you might be interested in.

You may be wondering about the title Life too. All of our content that isn't strictly news or sport, and certainly not just entertainment, now has a home. So, expect to find the in-depth and emotive interviews, discussions on books, the popular Mark Kermode film reviews and much more, accessible in Life.

One of the key ambitions for the relaunch was to reflect the 'live' nature of the network online. So, you'll see regularly-updating text in the on-air bar, informing you of what's on-air now and what's coming up next. It's the same text that scrolls across a DAB digital radio screen. Additionally, we wanted to show 5 live's close relationship with the audience online. We're sent a huge volume of texts, emails and - increasingly - messages through social media sites, not all of which, due to time restrictions, can be read out on air. This can be frustrating for someone eager for their point to be heard. So to address this issue, we'll be launching '5 live Now' shortly after the initial launch of the new site. 5 live Now will pull together the best comments sent via text messages, email and online onto a single page, in real-time, alongside the on-air discussion. When we launch it, it'll be accessible from the top promo on the homepage.

The News, Sport and Life homepages will be a front door into the wealth of content from across 5 live's output. We're going to make our audio far more accessible, by launching a first for the BBC - chapterisation. We'll be highlighting points in our output, which you can jump straight to with one click. We'll be able to bring you a vast range of our interviews, news items, sport reports and film reviews, all accessible from our new programme episode pages.

Fans of Mark Kermode's film reviews will be pleased to find that we'll have an audio/video archive of his reviews from the past year or so, sorted into movie genres, to help you find the best way to spend a night out at the cinema, or in on the sofa.

There's this new 5 live blog too. It'll give you insight into what's coming up on 5 live, new presenters and programmes, as well as detailing the complex process of moving the whole operation to BBC North in Salford Quays. You'll have the opportunity to comment on all posts here on the blog.

That's probably enough information for now. I hope you like what you see.

Jags Parbha is senior content producer at BBC Radio 5 live and is responsible for the site redesign

• Brett Spencer, 5 live Interactive Editor, wrote about the new web site on the BBC Internet blog.

We're about to relaunch the 5 live website and among the many developments we've been planning is the creation of this blog.

Why am I doing it? Well, I want to tell you more about what's going on at Radio 5 live and 5 live sports extra - everything from current issues and changes we're planning to the story of our move to our new home in Salford which is scheduled for 2011. The next couple of years should be very exciting for this station and I and my colleagues want to use this blog to make sure you've got the inside track about what's happening. We'll try to provide behind-the-scenes pictures and background information as we do something no other national radio station in the UK has done before: moving 200 miles whilst maintaining and developing a 24-hour radio station.

And of course it's not just an important development for 5 live but for the BBC as a whole. BBC North includes the move of BBC Sport, BBC Children, BBC Learning and parts of Future Media and Technology as well as providing a new home for the 800 or so BBC staff who currently work at Oxford Road in Manchester. It's a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the BBC to redefine itself and I want this blog to help capture the full story of how it feels along the way.

To work properly this needs to be a two-way process - something which the 5 livewire - which this in part replaces - could never really achieve. We want to hear your thoughts, comments and questions and we'll try to respond to them as best we can. We'll always try to be open and direct as well as informal and accessible - in fact I hope just like 5 live sounds on air. There are many things to talk about - from the move to digital to our plans for covering the next General Election or London 2012. So please come back next week as we begin the next stage of our journey. See you on our new site.

Adrian Van Klaveren is Controller of 5 live and 5 live sports extra.

• 5 live Interactive Editor Brett Spencer wrote a blog post about the planned changes to the web site for the BBC Internet blog.
• The latest edition of 5 livewire.
• Adrian Van Klaveren's profile on the BBC Press Office web site.
• The pictures are from 5 live's flickr stream.