BBC Audio & Music Interactive positions the BBC's radio and music brands and content on a wide range of digital platforms to ensure we continually embrace the opportunities available to us in terms of audience reach. This page is designed to provide information on the department and its priorities and additionally to guide existing and prospective suppliers through our commissioning process.

Online, the department maintains and develops websites for each of the BBC Radio networks as well as programme and event based sites and learning initiatives built around radio brands and content such as One Music, Radio 1's unsigned artists showcase, Glastonbury and the Electric Proms. In July 2007 we launched our full Podcast Service and there are now over 150 podcasts available from the full range of radio networks.

We are also responsible for the BBC Radio Player for iPlayer which brings together over a thousand recent programmes from across UK-wide, local and national stations along with the World Service and enables listeners to hear them on the internet for up to a week after they are first broadcast.

We're always exploring new ways of getting radio networks and music programming to our audiences, focusing on several key disciplines:

Visualising radio:

Radio can increasingly be consumed on devices which have a screen, so we are working to add distinctive and original content to make full use of this space. This can be text, pictures or video.

Mobile:

Radio and mobile are natural partners, we're working to create compelling content on mobile devices.

Syndication:

It's no longer enough to expect the audience to come to us. We have to go to the audience, therefore we're working to bring our content to spaces where our audience gather.

R&D:

We look into the latest devices, the latest platforms and identify current and future opportunities. We get the right people to work together to develop new services, working with interactive, policy and production teams to experiment and trial ideas to explore new ways of listening and accessing content. For our latest thinking, take a look at our blog.

Who's Who

Mark Friend, Controller, Multi-platform and Interactive
Chris Kimber, Managing Editor
Ayesha Mohideen, Head of Speech Radio Interactive
John Ousby, Head of Distribution Technologies
Vibha Nigam, Senior Project Manager (Main point of contact for all Indie enquiries)

Audio & Music Interactive Commissioning

The Audio & Music Interactive plan for the next 2 years is based around 4 key audience facing propositions which reflect our main priorities:

• Innovating and enhancing content - including visualising radio and events, focusing on engaging users with creativity and content richness.
• Distributing across all digital platforms - including Mobile, as well as syndication to major sites and content aggregators to enable us to touch "harder to reach" audiences.
• Improving user experience - through enhanced design, navigation, search, aggregation and providing comprehensive information.
• Getting users involved - through participation and personalisation, adding one-to-one user engagement to the provision of community based offerings. Music Discovery falls into this category.

• Distinctive - make the best of the BBC's strengths
• Innovative - push our creative boundaries & exploit the full potential of new media
• Focused - deliver the multiplatform strategy
• Excellent - inspire audiences, the wider industry and ourselves
• Value for money - reach audience levels that will justify the spend
• Public service - fit with the BBC's public purposes that will justify the spend
• Educational - support our role in education and stimulate informal and formal learning. Drive digital literacy by introducing new audiences to new digital services. This is especially important for our older skewing radio services

When you're pitching your ideas to us, we need you to be able to tell us:

• What is the idea? Ideally expressed in one sentence. Think elevator pitch.
• Who's it for? Which audiences will use it? Is it aimed at giving new experiences to existing audiences, or bringing in new audiences? Our key BBC audiences are under-35 and C2DE audiences
• Why will they use it? What needs, desires, interests, predilections or problems will motivate people to use it?
• Why is this something the BBC should do? Think about our strengths, public purposes, strategy, previous successes/failures and what the wider market is doing (or not doing). What is it trying to achieve?
• How will people know it's there? What will make this idea cut-through? Think about calls to action from Radio, PR, marketing, search engine optimisation, links from other sites, viral promotion, etc.
• How will people find and share it?
• How do we ensure it is findable and accessible? Will web users be able to link to it, embed it, talk about it & promote it to their social networks? Do you intend to make the content available to other sites or services to reach wider audiences?
• How will we know what people thought of it? Consider if we should establish some form of dialogue with the audience? That might be through email, ratings, message boards, or some other mechanism.
• What are the key skills & expertise required to deliver?
• Does the team pitching the idea already have the skills and expertise required (editorial, technical, design, production)? If not, have you identified potential partners (internal BBC teams, external suppliers, strategic partners)?
• Is there technical scoping/proof of concept work required? And if so, do you have an estimate of how long that will take/how much resource?
• How much will it cost? Consider both initial set-up costs and ongoing costs and maintenance.

Pitching 360 ideas to us:

• If an idea is primarily linear, the proposal will be considered by the relevant commissioning network editor, who will involve the interactive editor (IE) as part of the evaluation and decision making process. If the idea is stand-alone or primarily interactive, then the proposal will be considered by the relevant IE who will involve the commissioning editor as appropriate.
• The interactive proposition should form part of the initial proposal, to enable all elements of a project to be considered together at the same time. All 360 proposals should be sent both to the commissioning editor for that network and the associated IE. For more details on this please contact Vibha.Nigam@bbc.co.uk
• Soon all BBC Radio & TV programmes will have an automated webpage including billings information and stills where appropriate, and for the vast majority of programmes this will be sufficient web support. Interactive proposals need to go beyond this basic format. We're looking for ideas where the interactive platform adds real value for the audience.
• If an interactive service is commissioned relating to an indie programme, that company will get first refusal on producing the interactive aspects. If not, the indie can work with a company from the BBC's approved supplier list.
• There will be a dedicated technical Project Manager and Producer to facilitate technical compliance and delivery of interactive projects from external suppliers. Editorial sign-off still rests with the network editor and IE.
• Internal BBC production and technical teams can still sub-contract agencies for specific design and technical projects. The existing BBC online commissioning system and Approved Supplier List will still be used for this process of approving technical suppliers and tendering.
• This process applies across BBC Audio & Music Interactive.

Getting In Touch

Initial enquiries should be directed here.