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The Inside Story
We had a chat abouth ethe project with Mark Flashman who is the Programme Lead for the Connected Studios World Service work
What is Global Newsbeat CatchUP?
This is the next iteration of the BBC Minute CatchUP pilot from last year that came from our work with the BBC World Service in Africa. We wanted to take the format and see how it worked with other languages and thus how it would perform with an even larger potential audience.
Essentially it's a web-widget that embeds into existing websites and webpages and offers users the latest Global news in just 60 seconds. Though it can also be used like an app or media player on android smart phones.
The idea is to help users to stay in the know through a quick hit consumption of energetic audio news. Users can choose 2 minute news bullet-ins from BBC World Service in either Arabic, French, Swahili or Urdu with BBC Global Newsbeat content..
How did you make it?
The whole thing got started at a BBC Connected Studio event held in South Africa in collaboration with the BBC World Service. BBC Minute CatchUp (this pilot’s predecessor) was built by a team from RLabs, a tech hub based in Cape Town. While the BBC was already producing the audio news, the web player itself is a new means of delivering the content through any site via simple HTML5 code. It has been re-purposed to feature other BBC Global Newsbeat audio content in four different languages.
Were there any new challenges?
The biggest issues were to do with language. Firstly we discovered that, unlike in English, some words like "pause” may not be a single word in other languages. Then there was the fact that Urdu and Arabic script goes from right to left, this was a new way of working for us. Both these challenges were great opportunities to explore clever solutions.
Why did you make it?
The main reason for the collaboration with BBC World Service was to help reach new global audiences through new digital, innovative ways. The BBC World Service is looking at means to retain its core audience in Africa, while at the same time, also trying to attract a younger demographic in the digital age. While this the original idea was a simple proposition, it has given us with a great opportunity to scale the project and see how it works in other languages around the world providing a channel for quick consumption of the latest news on your mobile and directly from other existing youth oriented websites.
