Shiny & Panorama and TechCrunch & the BBC

It seems to have been a week of good and bad moves by the BBC in terms of their relations with the UK’s online community. A schoolboy error with Shiny Media, and hopefully a conversation-opening exercise via TechCrunch. A few thoughts of my own below – and, you’ll be pleased to hear, links to much more thorough posts too…

Shiny Media & Panorama

Finally got round to having a read of Ashley Norris from Shiny Media‘s righteous rant about the uncredited use of Catwalk Queen interviews on the Primark-Panorama expose. I didn’t catch the show but it’s been talked about TV amongst friends and colleagues so I’m so annoyed for the girls at CQ, and Shiny in general, that they didn’t get credited for their input in a major UK fashion story. They were rightly asked to be involved as one of the biggest online voices in UK fashion, but not given the status they deserve. Especially as CQ gave the show some good on-site promotion, going right to the sort of Primark-buying audience who probably wouldn’t normally have had Panorama on their radar.

I often hear stories about and from bloggers, about the weird ways they get treated in comparison to journalists and this is just another example. It’s good to see the open BBC apology on Ash’s post, but it still as he says, leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth.

TechCrunch & the BBC

I made it the really interesting BBC-TechCrunch UK debate on Wednesday. The BBC picked up on Mike Butcher’s challenge about why they’re not doing more to open up and work with the UK’s talented and exciting web businesses. A very good question.

So, with TechCrunch they invited other broadcast reps (C4, BBC and Of Com), TechCrunch and UK start-ups to come down and openly discuss what should be done. An encouraging and interesting event, which drew lots of passionate opinions and was generally positive.

What other people have been saying:

Both stories have collided and overlapped a bit this week – see posts below

TechCrunch UK: Live Blog: The TechCrunch BBC debate – MIke’s live blog of the debate

Neil McIntosh: The BBC goes a’trampling – interesting resonses form the BBC and Jeff Jarvis

Charles Arthur: Bad form, BBC, re: the bloggers

Arthur Guy: BBC TechCrunch debate – covers the all-important right issue in a bit more detail

Grapevine Consulting: Where have all the women gone? – Points out the rather blokey panel

Virtual Economics: Screwing the Shinies

(Disclosure: I work for Shiny Red, who are connected to the Shiny Media network)