MUMBAI: The BBC’s Journalism division has unveiled plans for a new look for its BBC News and BBC Sport websites.The first phase of the revamp will launch next week.
The new look will include higher profile promotion of the new embedded video service, extra emphasis around breaking news and live events, wider page designs and more ambitious use of pictures.
A second stage launching later in the year will deliver further improvements to design and
functionality.
The embedded media player puts the BBC’s best video and audio at the heart of story pages and indexes of the News and Sport websites. Users can watch video within the story rather than in a separate pop-up window. It also allows users to share the clips with others or put them on their own websites.
Other developments include a range of revamped programme “gold” websites aiming to maximise the
impact of flagship news and current affairs programmes across all audiences.
The BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat website has relaunched with a dedicated team producing a mix of text, audio and video news for its younger audience.
The Today programme site relaunches in May and an overhaul of Panorama’s online presence is planned for the summer. The mobile versions of the BBC News and Sport sites will also see a range of new features across the year, which started with the redesign earlier this month to improve the user experience.
The moves are part of BBC Journalism’s Creative Future plans to develop web and other digital platforms so that audiences can find, play and share the BBC’s content.
Multi-Media Journalism editorial development head Pete Clifton said, “This is the start of a
rolling programme to refresh our sites and introduce exciting new designs and features across our services.All the changes are focused on showcasing our unbeatable content, underlining our reputation for breaking news, coverage of live sport, and brilliant reporting and analysis from our local, national and international journalists.”
These developments are part of wider plans by the BBC to aggregate content more effectively and give users more control over their online experience. Last month’s revamp of the homepage was the first step in this process of redesigning the whole of bbc.co.uk.
