By Mercedes Bunz: The BBC is planning to relaunch the Strictly Come Dancing website in time for this weekend’s show.
Users will be able to get more involved with the show while watching it, giving their own ratings for the contestants and selecting their favourite moments while the show is on air for viewing afterwards.
The new Strictly Come Dancing site comes ahead of the wider relaunch of the BBC’s websites to include more social media.
Simon Nelson, the BBC’s controller of portfolio and multi-platform, discussed the plans at the BBC’s recent open day, saying: “We are focusing our efforts this time on social viewing and community building around the show.” On Tuesday, during the launch of this year’s MediaGuardian Innovation Awards Anthony Rose, the BBC’s FM&T controller of vision and online, confirmed the move: “With Strictly Come Dancing we will have a site hopefully getting live this weekend, where you can have a make live comments and interact and have a social viewing experience around Strictly.”
“The BBC has been doing social media for many years. We do blogs and comments and rating, but there is a whole new world out there related to APIs and friends and so on, and we are not in that space.”
Rose emphasised the BBCs slow but meticulous approach. “We will start with some smaller sites, some theme things around particular programmes,” he said. “It is these kind of small steps around theme programs with a self-selecting audience, which will help us learn more. Also under the hook we a create whole new kind of technology, that I hope to see flowering across the BBC site over the coming months.”
The BBC is free to innovate, but only within its public service guidelines. “Each new thing we do, we think through very carefully,” said Rose. “Clearly the population expects us to innovate. If we don’t innovate, we get slammed for doing nothing.”
This article originally appeared in © Guardian News & Media Ltd..
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