"Due to Technical Problems…" – Stuart Pinfold's Blog

I only spent six months full time there, followed by the odd freelance shift, but BBC Bush House off the Strand in central London really did leave a lasting impression on me.

Next week the first services will start moving out of the iconic building, first built in 1923 and partially-occupied by the BBC World Service for over 70 years, and move to the newly-built Broadcasting House in the West End; the first non-English broadcast from the new studios will be the BBC Burmese bulletin. By the summer, Bush House will be empty but its legacy and history to the BBC’s worldwide audiences will never be lost.

I’ve overheard producers and presenters from various language services talking about their childhood memories: recalling their parents listening to the World Service in secrecy – tucked up under the bed covers or where whole communities gathered round a single radio – because being caught listening to the infamous words “This Is London” and the news that followed it was illegal. Even when my colleagues were kids, Bush House was a magical place where truth and impartiality was spoken to all corners of the world via technology which was difficult – if not impossible – for their governments to stop.

I’m not entirely convinced the image of Bush House in their mind matched the reality when they first walked through the doors of the building – as the first speaker in this video proves!

Sure, Bush House had its faults. Its endless hospital-like corridors meant many a struggle to find your destination; a glance out of any window facing the internal courtyard would show you how dirty the external walls had become, at least partly as a result of the huge, noisy electricity generators plonked on the car-park.

But the studios… ahh, the studios. The nicest ones I’ve had the pleasure to work in; old-fashioned switches, buttons that actually clunk, workhorse sound mixers that have been in operation for decades, and would almost certainly last decades more. They just don’t compare to what is essentially a big computer in the new studios: five buttons presses to do anything more advanced than adjusting the volume on a channel, its reliance on another computer in the technical room to operate in the first place, the constant threat of a crash and sudden loss of sound on output.

Broadcasting House is open-plan throughout: great for workflows and collaboration, bad for escaping what will be the largest newsroom in Europe when you just need to get away from it all. Bush House was perfect for this: lots of rooms with actual closeable doors; corridors with a personal touch, containing large poster-photos of inspiring images from whichever language service you happened to have wandered into; and – an often-used, but never misused, comparison – United Nations-type community of people from all over the world with no (visible) tension between them. They simply share a common goal – broadcasting to their various audience for the sole purpose of improving their knowledge of world affairs. Journalists from India and Pakistan, Iraq and Iran, Bosnia and Serbia, south America, east Europe, and anywhere else you can imagine in the world, wander the corridors and eat together as one.

I don’t know if that community feel will be kept once the move to W1 is complete. I certainly hope it will be, but when the sanctuary and isolation (from the rest of the corporation) of Bush House is no longer there, and the World Service is competing for budget, space, studios and facilities with the rest of the BBC, I fear it will be much more difficult to consider Broadcasting House ‘home’ in the same way Bush has been for 70 years.

Whoa. I’ve done it again. Nearly 5 months since my last posting. I have a good track record in blog abandonment. Apologies.

In my defence, lots of things have happened in the last six months or so.

In July I got married, then went off for the most fantastic ten days in Italy; the mountainside villa combined with visits to Florence, Pisa, Siena and elsewhere; amazing food and wine; and, of course, perfect company was the best antidote to the hectic Saturday just before.

On our return, it was straight back into life with a bump: we both started new jobs, and my six-month contract with BBC Persian TV, the World Service’s Farsi-language television station.

A whirlwind trip (about 20 hours in total including Eurostar travel) to Paris in October was to cover 2011′s G(irls)20 Conference for the Nike Foundation, who sponsored a debate about the personal development of young women in poorer areas of the world, with a particular emphasis on east Africa.

Coming back absolutely shattered to an early Persian TV shift the day after, my boss came over during some down-time, and asked for a quiet word with me. Uh-oh, I thought, having a flashback to three years earlier when ‘a quiet word’ confirmed that my contract wasn’t going to be renewed. Or maybe I’d screwed up on something that morning and not realised it because I’d needed a couple of matchsticks just to keep my eyes open?

“Just wondering if you’d have any objections to us making you permanent staff?” he asked, in his usual quiet, not-going-to-give-away-anything manner.

“OF COURSE I BLOODY DON’T!” I wanted to scream in the corridors of Egton. It’s only what I’d been working towards for the last five years or so. Permanent contracts in content-making areas of the BBC are like gold-dust, and someone was standing in front of me asking if I had any objections?!

So, six months later with my shiny new contract just around the corner due to start on February 1st, and with two extra-special work requests fulfilled already, I’m looking forward to being a permanent member of staff at the BBC. I’ll be able to pay into a pension and go through regular pension reform processes, see staff numbers reduced through regular redundancy rounds or department mergers, while being criticised daily for my work by certain elements of the press. Yay!

I’m still working on websites in my days off, too, and have recently put together sites for a comedian, an audio-visual music recording company, a fashion blogger, a musical trio, a football club and a shop for homemade skincare products.

As for one of those extra-special work requests? This video (below) shows BBC Persian’s business reporter Amir Paivar standing beside the computer program I coded in order to display live market data, including stock markets, individual companies and currencies depending on what the daily news agenda demands:

This has been used on-air a number of times since it was coded, in order to graphically demonstrate the ongoing Eurozone crisis, and more recently to show how quickly the US Dollar:Iranian Rial conversion rates raised as sanctions against Iran’s oil exports were considered and, eventually, implemented.

As for the second special request? Far too complicated to go into here – but if you ever need to work out how to have two guests appear in a TV programme, who both need to be translated for the audience, need to hear both each other and the translator’s live translated questions, and the presenter to hear the translator in the studio – I’m your man!

Last week I found myself with some spare time on my hands, which rarely happens, so I thought I would take the opportunity to update my BBC Correspondents Map.

Once I’d picked myself up from the floor after realising it’s been 18 months since the last update, I ploughed through all the names and locations of BBC correspondents, cross-referenced them with the BBC News site, and made changes as necessary.

I found some changes quite surprising and interesting, so I made a little summary of my findings.

The Arab world

It’s not surprising that a lot of BBC resource has gone into this region, particularly north Africa and the Middle-East, in the year that saw the so-called ‘Arab spring’ uprising in many countries. I recorded no fewer than 8 correspondents in Libya whereas previously there was only one stringer, Rana Jawad, who was known in the months leading up to the fall of Tripoli as “Libya Witness“. I’ve placed all Libya-based correspondents on the map in Tripoli although some are based in Benghazi and Sirte, but seem to be moving around the country. For ease I have placed them all in one location.

Elsewhere in the Arab world, it’s surprising after Egypt’s own prolonged uprising that Cairo now only seems to have one reporter there – Shaimaa Khalil – although it’s likely that other normally-Cairo-based reporters have been assigned to cover the new conflict in Libya. It’s also worth noting that the BBC now has a correspondent in Tehran, the first since Jon Leyne’s dismissal from Iran in 2009.

Africa

The resource across Africa seems to have been streamlined towards the main capitals, and offices in many smaller places have been closed. Asmara (Eritrea), N’Djamena (Chad) and Dakar (Senegal) have all had their Newsgathering correspondents removed. The decision with regards to Dakar may have been taken as a result of the World Service’s French for Africa service moving offices from London’s Bush House to that city; World Service correspondents do not (yet) appear on this map.

North America

There has been a lot of centralisation in North America towards Washington and New York. Many correspondents formerly reporting from Los Angeles and San Francisco have been moved to Washington or back to London; this may be as a result of the upcoming US Election next year.

The two stringers in Canada remain – Ian Gunn in Vancouver and Lee Carter in Toronto, both who work for Canada’s CBC who have reciprocal sharing agreements with the BBC.

Latin America

Not much has changed here – the majority of people across south America are stringers in all the major capitals including Sao Paulo, Lima, Caracas and Santiago.

Australasia

There has always been a lack of coverage in this region with the notable exception of Bangkok; now the BBC seem to have boosted coverage of this area, with the addition of a correspondent each in Australia and Indonesia; we say hello to Duncan Kennedy (Sydney), previously based in Rome, and Alice Budisatrijo (Jakarta).

Europe and Eurasia

Here is where the biggest changes have occurred; eastern Europe seems to have been the hardest-hit with the loss of bases in Tbilisi (Georgia), Kiev (Ukraine), Prague (Czech Republic), Riga (Latvia), Copenhagen (Denmark) and Helsinki (Finland).

(Update 7th September 2011: Thanks to Rob Cameron in Prague for getting in touch to confirm he is still there)

For some inexplicable reason there now seems to be two reporters in Tallinn, where previously there were none. Whether the idea is for Tom Esslemont (formerly Tbilisi) and Damian McGuiness (formerly Riga) to cover news from much of northern and eastern Europe from their base in the Estonian capital (travelling where necessary) isn’t yet clear.

(Update 3rd October 2011: Thanks to Damian McGuiness in Tbilisi for getting in touch to say he is now based there. This means that, to my knowledge, Tom Esslemont is the only correspondent in Tallinn).

The UK

The BBC’s own homeland has never been a major feature of the Correspondents Map; there would simply be too many pins in too small a space, and the focus has always been on the locations of foreign correspondents.

However I have always tried to have a smattering of World Affairs and specialist (technology, political, etc) correspondents pinned in London, and a selection of reporters covering the nations and regions from places like Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast and Manchester. Laura Kuenssberg has gone, as has the Norwich and Newcastle reporters. Over time I expect I will focus the map less and less on the UK, focussing more on getting World Service correspondents pinned over those who report solely on domestic issues for domestic services.

However there has been one addition to the UK – kind-of! Following a message by Sami-Jaine left in the feedback comments (see below), we welcome Ellan Vannin to the map, reporting from the Isle of Man.

Comments

In order to keep all comments about the map in one place, click here to leave your comments on the latest changes.

I’ve been a long-time user of Google Calendar, the search giant’s diary solution, and I’ve always loved its ease of use and flexibility.

As Google rolls out it new design across its product range, I’ve been embracing the change. I love the more integrated look and feel of the top navbar, especially how it all links into Google+, and I’m generally a fan of the extra breathing space they have introduced by padding out items on the page and using white space more liberally.

However, I think they should revisit the Google Calendar redesign to address some serious usability points. Let’s compare the two (easily done for now, as they include an option to switch back to the old view – although I imagine not for long…)

Old view (click to expand)

New view (click to expand)

What does get my goat, though, is the amount of space which contains the most important information and functions – the calendar itself. Look, particularly, at the list of available calendars in the left-hand menu, as well as the amount of room available for events in each day in the month view (the only view I ever use). This is how I see gCal on my laptop screen at 1366×768 resolution.

Under the old design, I can see 8 and a half calendars in the list which I can toggle on or off as I choose. In the new view, just seven-and-a-half – and that’s when I’ve hidden the mini-calendar above the list. With that showing, I can only see three.

Worse, though, is the amount of events it can now show for each day. Have a look, to pick a day at random, at the 4th July on the new view. What was I doing on that day? That involves an extra click to see the three events (remember to put the recycling bin out for collection, a hair appointment, followed by dance practice in the evening). In the old view, all three of these events are visible at a glance. Another example – look at 1st August. What time do I start work on that day by looking at the new view? You can’t tell without an extra click – under the old view, this is visible immediately.

Some suggestions

I hate criticising other people’s work without leaving some feedback on changes, as I know how hard it is to come up with a design that suits everybody (indeed, some people are writing that the design is a lot better on many fronts, some of which I agree with). So, here’s how the same design can be kept but space can be increased:

• Reduce the size of the search bar
  I maybe use the search function of Calendar once or twice a month, usually to find things like dentist appointments in the future. While I know Google’s “thing” is search, it’s not part of the usual calendar workflow so this can be reduced.
• Merge the logo and the word Calendar
  If the new red “Create” button could go where the static word “Calendar” now is, this would create a taller left-hand menu to display more calendars in the list, and maybe allow me to see the mini calendar again.
• Move the display views to the right of the search bar
  There’s a whole load of empty space to the right of the search bar. It looks like the day/week/month/agenda buttons, along with the print and reload functions, would fit perfectly in that space. If the size was reduced slightly, you could also get the current month/week/whatever, arrow buttons and the “Back to today” button there too (although I can’t speak for users on other screen resolutions). This would remove the “third” horizontal bar from the top altogether, making more space for the calendar.
• Shift the left-hand side back
  There is now extra space on the left-hand side before the menu starts (but not before the very top navbar starts?!) but the right-hand side bleeds all the way to the edge. While this could be an effect of me enabling some “labs” products such as the world timezone display, shifting the left-hand menu would, again, increase the space available for events in the calendar.

While going into browser full-screen (F11) mode does show all the events in almost the same way as the old Calendar view, I don’t think I should be forced to use this workaround every time I want to quickly check what time I finish work on days next week, or see what appointments I have before committing to another one.

Google, please, reconsider and make some more space for our events in our calendars!

Following budget cut announcements, the last BBC World Service radio programme in Turkish was broadcast on Friday 27th May 2011.

The website service and TV partnership with Turkey’s NTV will continue.

If you can help with a translation, please contact me.

The full programme is below:

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