As you may know, the 606 message boards have been suffering from a number of problems recently. I鈥檇 like to thank all the users鈥 patience and loyalty during recent months. The team who run the service have been working hard to work out the best way to move it forward in the future.
We have identified some principle aims and objectives:
鈥 To provide a richer, more in-depth user experience
鈥 To raise the standard of contributions
鈥 To reduce the amount of ephemeral, low-quality chat
鈥 To make 606 more distinctive
鈥 Raise expectations of users and of content
Next season, the 606 format will change and will feature a number of different types of high-quality content 鈥 users can submit match reports, articles, and team/player profiles, as well as debate the latest football.
We also have plans for personal pages for users plus, in time, enhanced privileges for trusted users, members鈥 journals, and many more. We also want to have better links with the 606 radio show. More details on this as these ideas develop but please tell us here what you want to see too.
We have more immediate plans for the .
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There's been a lot of skirmishing on the border of late. The Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell said he'll be in the World Cup - and conspiracy theorists claimed that Alex Ferguson (a Scot) seemed to be against Wayne Rooney (an Englishman) travelling to Germany.
Meanwhile, we were under attack from a couple of SNP politicians for allegedly choosing an anti-Scottish World Cup theme tune; and I was summoned onto the 大象传媒's Points Of View programme to promise fair play for all parts of the UK during this summer of sport.
And we'll do our very best, but it's worth saying this is one area where we can't please all the people all the time...
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I get a lot of stuff in my inbox pointing me at things around the web. The worst ones are badly-conceived sales pitches, which usually contain words such as 鈥渃ompelling鈥 and 鈥渁ddictive鈥 when the product is anything but...
The best are when you get an example of something you鈥檝e thought of yourself and never done because you (or your colleagues) have neither the time, energy or skills.
From a work perspective, the best example is . In 2001 I was in Munich watching and some guys in a van try to recreate the goals in 3D - and would you believe beforehand we wondered whether we鈥檇 have enough interesting incidents to try it out? It was nearly three years later when technology caught up and a different method proved successful.
I don't know whether took that long to develop (I doubt it). But almost inevitably it is responsible for now making another dream a reality - near-3D modelling of the entire route.
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As Chris mentioned a couple of days ago, we have been making some changes to the site in recent days.
The latest one to flag up is what we feel is a big improvement to the way we present our live coverage.
As you'll see if you look at our updates on the , we've tried to link the various elements - namely the text updates and full report, Test Match Special commentary, scorecard, and photos - in a clearer and more user-friendly way through tabs at the top of the page.
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Time to answer a common question about our headlines, namely why they sometimes seem longer than they need to be, or conversely not long enough to explain all angles of a particular story.
Well, in short, this is because our stories are fed to various 大象传媒 services, and therefore need to conform to certain parameters to work everywhere they appear. So currently, for example, the main reason our headlines are between 31 and 33 characters is so they fit adequately on Ceefax.
In days gone by, Ceefax journalists valiantly endeavoured to make every headline exactly the same length, and so 'justify' to the end of the line on your TV screen. But we relaxed this rule when we introduced multi-platform authoring - and justified that on the basis headlines should above all make sense, even if they don't fit perfectly.
Having said that, we recognise our present constraints still sometimes mean players rather than contemplate a transfer, officials launch rather than investigations and occasionally, a manager rather than criticises a counterpart. And that isn't ideal.
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I'm the Head of Product Management for 大象传媒 Journalism. My job title is one of those 大象传媒 classics which means very little to the outside world, but my team of product managers provides a key role in the ongoing development of various 大象传媒 interactive services.
We study how our audiences' needs are changing, our editorial colleagues' priorities and what the changing technology can offer. We turn these ideas into services which our designers and technical teams can build, and which you - the audience - will want to use.
The "products" we manage include all of 大象传媒 Sport's , mobile services and , their equivalents from 大象传媒 News and Weather and many of our local, regional and international services.
So, while it's no longer my only objective, sport remains my first love. Previously I was Development Editor of 大象传媒 Sport Interactive and part of the launch team for in 2000. We've come a long way since then but I believe all of the 大象传媒's interactive services have a lot further to travel amid the current relentless and breathtaking pace of change.
My sole aim here is to share some of what we're up to and get constructive feedback but forgive me if I occasionally stray onto , , , and the rest of my sporting passions.
The eagle-eyed might notice some changes to some pages on the site. These are part of a number of developments designed to improve the way we display stories and information, and - as ever - we want your feedback.
Perhaps the biggest immediate change is the removal of the "also in this section" list of stories from the right-hand side of story pages. The dropdown menu containing the same information disappeared a week ago too.
This has been done for a number of reasons. There is a limit to the amount of links you can put on a page before people just switch off to everything, a limit we think we have gone beyond at times, especially on some of our .
All our research and testing shows that very few people actually use the "also in this section" links so these were the unlucky ones when the difficult choice was made about which links should go.
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I'm the Executive Producer for the 大象传媒's television coverage of , , and .
Working for I have been lucky enough to work on some of the greatest sporting events in the world and whilst fulfilling my executive producer duties dealing with budgets, planning, talent and programme strategy I have also continued to direct many major events.
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What鈥檚 your favourite World Cup moment? Football鈥檚 showpiece is full of iconic images: , , ,
And then, of course, there is Jimmy Hill鈥檚 Christmas tree.
Not to be confused with the tactical masterplan of Hill鈥檚 old sparring partner Terry Venables, this is in fact the moment that kicked off 大象传媒 TV鈥檚 review of the 1982 World Cup in Spain. The half-hour show opened with a stereotypical 鈥80s title sequence, then mixed to a Christmas tree, before the camera panned across to reveal Our Jimmy, sitting resplendent in trademark beard, lemon-coloured polo neck and brown slacks. Think meets and you won't be far off.
It鈥檚 a televisual gem guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of football fans of a certain age. And I only know about it because I stumbled across it while checking out some of the footage in a new of classic World Cup action that we launched on the website this week.
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I'm Head of Sports News for , which means I'm responsible our sports news output across and on our Interactive services. On a good day I get to work with some very creative people covering a range of interesting stories. On a bad day there's a lot of meetings and arguing with news editors over which story deserves inclusion and the right way to do it.
Luckily I'm fortunate enough to work with talented enough people that, in some people's opinion, the output is better when I'm busy in meetings! I love the unpredictable nature of working in sports news, never knowing what story might happen on a certain day. And because there's always something happening somewhere, the great thing is there's no off season.
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We've launched this blog because we want to let you know what 大象传媒 Sport is doing, across all our outlets - whether it's on TV, radio, this website or any of our new media services.
We're also keen to hear your views and want people to engage and comment on what we have to say.
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Hi, I'm the sports news editor for all our interactive services, which means I oversee the coverage we provide on demand in text and pictures, video and audio.
At the moment, that means my day-to-day focus is on our , and TV text services (大象传媒i and Ceefax), and also ensuring they enrich and complement our live output on TV and radio, primarily News 24 and Radio Five Live.
We have a team of talented editors, journalists and producers who deliver that distinctive and in-depth digest of the sporting agenda, and who work tirelessly to keep everything you see, hear and read on those services as up to date as possible.
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I'm director of , which means heading a department of around 500 people with an annual budget running into hundreds of millions of pounds. We produce sports programming for , radio (mainly Five Live) and for our .
I was born in 1958 and brought up in Bradford. My first-ever football match when I was four years old was at , but after they went out of the League we started going to and I've supported them ever since. The other big sports for me when I was growing up were - our family were Bradford Northern fans, and . Nothing like watching Geoffrey Boycott carefully piece together a century on a sunny afternoon...
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I'm proud to say that our was published on the night of the draw last December. But I now wonder whether we did it too soon!
The problem is that the rules for qualification Fifa told us last October, when we were building the application, are different to what is now on their site - .
So goal difference will be used to determine the order of teams in groups, as it has been in previous World Cups. We were originally told that Germany 2006 would follow the Champions League convention of using results between teams to sort out the order.
I know what you're saying now. "So what, it ought to be an easy change - just reorder the way it does it sums and off we go."
If only....
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Viewing figures are now in for the . I was in Cardiff and it was by far the best Final I've seen - so credit to both teams.
I'd like to think that being entertaining, even if you lose as West Ham did, means the event lives vastly longer in people's memories. And the early indications are that audience appreciation seems to have been very high.
We started at 3pm with 6.8m viewers - 57% of people viewing TV at that time. By 4 o'clock the number had risen to 8.2m (60% of the total viewing audience); and at 5pm it went over the 10m mark, making it the most-viewed sport event of 2006.
Then for the penalty shoot-out we had 11.3m viewers - a 65% share of the market. In other words every other channel and service in the UK was competing for the remaining 35% of viewers. It was the second highest FA Cup audience of this decade.
And if you like statistics, as you can tell I do, and want to compare with recent finals...
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It was the Football Writers鈥 Association annual dinner last night, where the cream of Britain鈥檚 sports press met to pay tribute to Thierry Henry - their player of the year for an .
These events are always entertaining in one way or another 鈥 but this one in particular provided a fascinating insight into the media鈥檚 relationship with our national game.
The audience could be characterised by a single stereotype 鈥 middle-aged white bloke in a shabby suit with a soup stain on his tie (and before anyone accuses me of having a go at my colleagues, I should know because I fit the bill perfectly). On the evidence of the hundreds of faces in the Lancaster Gate Hotel, it is unlikely that the football writing community will be heralded as an example of diversity in the workplace 鈥 not for a while anyway.
In the middle of this journalistic love-in stepped Henry, the modern master and surely one of the finest two or three players ever to have graced British football.
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I hesitated before sharing this picture. The sight of 大象传媒 staff brainstorming the website's future in the May sunshine is probably meat and drink to some of our critics. But I want this blog to be genuinely behind the scenes and of course sometimes that means we talk about what we do and where we're going - with flipcharts.
So yesterday a few of us were at the 大象传媒's R&D HQ to discuss the future of the site in a web 2.0 world. Those who commented last weekend can be reassured - we didn't spend all day talking about the wonders of user-generated content.
One thing worried me though. When most of us talked about what we've enjoyed doing the most on the web, so many examples were from years ago, almost a decade in some cases. Are we all a bit jaded or is this something more serious?
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Forgive the slight self-publicity here (hey, it is our blog!), but in , it was notable how many contributions we received from people in Eindhoven itself.
And not just from our man (as he lapped up the sunshine!), or the other 大象传媒 reporters out there.
Such snippets are especially welcome for us in the build-up to a big game because we often find it difficult to keep the 'preview' story or quotes fresh if training, team selection and the news conferences are done and dusted the day before.
So whether it's fans mailing from internet cafes or their own laptops, or indeed sending us info using their mobile phones, I think their messages really help to convey the - particularly if the game is in a foreign country.
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Greetings all..Just a few words from me to outline what we'll be offering on the 大象传媒's World Cup Interactive TV service, although if you're resourceful enough to find this blog then the chances are you have found out all you need to know already.
We are basically going to be putting out two services - one for matches screened live on the 大象传媒, and a Highlights service that will be available all day, everyday, whenever there is no live match taking place.
The live service will offer a choice of commentaries (we are hoping to include some foreign broadcasters here!), constantly updated highlights and a new "fans' channel" which will allow viewers to send in their messages via text, e-mail and 3G while viewing the live match.
We're still looking for a name for it - all the obvious ones (Your Say, Your Shout, Fan Zone, Fan Scene etc) seem to have been blagged already - suggestions, anyone? Live stats, Results, Group Tables and a News section will also be included.
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It's never straightforward trying to provide accurate coverage of Manchester United - and Sunday was a good case in point.
We heard at lunchtime that Ruud van Nistelrooy would not be playing against Charlton and that the striker had "driven away" from Old Trafford.
It didn't take long for stories to appear on our news wires speculating that Ruud would soon by sent packing from the club by Sir Alex Ferguson.
But would it have been right for us at the 大象传媒 Sport website to have done the same?
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One of the things about my role here as "head of the future" is while almost everyone else is totally focused on the World Cup, I spent half of today talking to colleagues about what we do afterwards.
We hadn't really thought there was life after July 10th, such is the way Germany has occupied every waking hour. But today we wondered - what do we do once the trophy has been handed over? Even the FA have worked that one out now!
The list of tasks is already pretty long so there's no time for much of a rest - last week's plans for 大象传媒 Sport and the current are both rather important for us.
Hopefully if you鈥檙e reading this you also think so....
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A lot of comment this morning about the new , which will bring in 拢1.706 billion over three years. Something of a tribute to the business skills of the we reckon...
But it prompts some thoughts about balance within the sports broadcasting market. The explosion of choice in recent years is a good thing - and it was inevitable that . (And the Premier League has actually never been live on free-to-air.)
At the 大象传媒 we're pleased we still have a strong portfolio with the TV events that bring the nation together like the World Cup and the Olympics; and unbeatable support from our radio and online services.
But there are a couple of points that need to be made about the future.
First, there's a seductive argument that the British government's listed events won't matter when we're all in a digital world - that there'll no longer be a need for major sporting moments to be guaranteed for the whole of the population.
But that argument is wrong...
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The end of the season is always a busy time football-wise, with titles and trophies to be won, ups and downs decided, and all sorts of ins and outs on the horizon.
But I for one can't remember a time when there were so many big and exciting stories worthy of extra coverage all coming one after the other (and even on the same day, as they seemed to last Saturday!)
Rooney's injury and England squad conjecture, the whole Scolari/McClaren saga, Chelsea's title, Portsmouth putting Birmingham and West Brom down, Hearts in the Champions League - with Spurs hoping to follow suit, Curbishley quitting Charlton, the farewell to Highbury... the list goes on and on.
I haven't even mentioned Middlesbrough and Arsenal set for historic European finals in the next two weeks, a tasty-looking FA Cup final between Liverpool and West Ham, intriguing play-off battles, or several other stories you probably feel I have unfairly ignored.
And this with the only five weeks away.
So how do we do it all justice, given that - even here at the 大象传媒 - we can only do so much?
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The essence of sports coverage is live action. Along with breaking news, it's the area where broadcasters like 大象传媒 Sport build their reputation. With that in mind, I was intrigued by a comment on the blog from David B:
Regarding "Live" football coverage online, I have to say this really is appalling. Listing every foul and throw in, but no sense of what is actually going on at all, I have no idea who thinks this is a good format. Compare with the ball-by-ball cricket updates which are fantastic, they really give you a feeling of what is going on. Why can't the football be more like this?
OK, let's deal with the good bit first... I'm delighted you enjoy our , David. Our cricket specialists put a huge amount of time and effort into these over-by-over reports and they are one of the most popular areas of the whole website. They aim to provide both a snapshot of the latest action as well as a flavour of the atmosphere and "colour" at the Test match - and while we're always looking to improve every aspect of our coverage, I think they do the job extremely well.
But now to the football...
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