College of Production round up: Access All Areas, radio visualisation

I’m Rob Khan, assistant content producer at the BBC College of Production (CoP) website.

Since our last post we’ve been busy working with Radio 1 and 1Xtra on their exclusive online Access All Areas season.

Radio 1 has an impressive online presence with over 1 million subscribers to its YouTube channel. We wanted to show how some of the content that has helped to reach this number is produced and how the use of digital technology is helping it to reach a wider audience.

The idea behind Access All Areas was to open up the stations to the audience and show how the networks are using digital technology to innovate both on air and online. We produced five films for Access All Areas in collaboration Radio 1 and 1Xtra, getting behind the scenes with the likes of Nick Grimshaw, Mistajam and Fearne Cotton.

Radio1 uses online platforms to create radio visualisations. Our film on what it takes to produce the visual chart - part of The Official Chart with Jameela Jamil looks at how the visual chart uses a mix of live cameras (controlled in a small gallery) and music videos broadcast on the Radio 1 website at the same time as the live radio broadcast. Another film explores how Radio 1 records the Live Lounge, and uses it to attract international online viewers on the Radio 1 website and YouTube.

Arts institutions are harnessing the power of the web to take their productions directly to wider audiences, as we discovered in our podcast on the arts…live!,

Producers from the Natural History Unit and STV's new series Let Me Entertain You joined us to look at the challenges and opportunities for making the most of user generated content in their programmes; digital content created by the audience is uploaded online in seconds and accessed just as easily by the production teams, saving time and money. And the current batch of radio apprentices, working for BBC radio programmes such as Saturday Live, Desert Island Discs and The Film Programme, produced their own radio features, which were published online and featured on the BBC homepage and focused on how speech radio should use online and social media platforms to engage a younger audience.

As part of the BBC World War One Centenary coverage, we heard from digital producer Katherine Campbell, who is responsible for the ambitious online World War One at Home project. She has been working with local radio stations across the UK to discover local stories about the First World War which, as well as being broadcast, are being kept digitally and forever on the World War One at Home website.

The BBC College of Journalism, like the College of Production is part of the BBC Academy. Last week they published a blog post from BBC News producer Trushar Barot about BBC News use of instant messaging platforms in the forthcoming Indian election campaign.

There's plenty more coming up in the next few weeks with podcasts on the BBC iWonder project and a discussion about the future of scheduling for TV in an online and on-demand age.

Rob Khan is an assistant content producer for the BBC College of Production on attachment from BBC Radio 1 & 1Xtra.