BBC Red Button

BBC Red Button is the most public of two entities that resulted from the 2004 devolution of BBCi into a an on-demand digital television service known as BBCi Red Button, and a web content provider known as BBC Online. While Online formed directly from the 2004 split, the brand "BBC Red Button" dates only to 2008.

BBC Red Button is standard to all digital television installations in the United Kingdom. Its goal is to provide additional non-linear content to enhance the viewing of particular programming on standard, linear television. Because its history is so intertwined with that of both the BBCi and BBC Online, this article will talk about all three entities.

Overview
The name "Red Button" derives from the fact that viewers access it by pushing a literal red button on their remote control. This action then drops down a menu in a box over the programme one is watching, allowing a viewer to pick from a variety of different "channels". Some of these channels are text-based and generally remain displayed over the main programme one is watching. Some are video based and can be optionally viewed as a picture-in-picture display, or simply chosen as a regular, full-screen channel would be.

Relationship to Doctor Who
Historically, Red Button and BBCi have generated the most content in relation to sports, news, business and other non-fictional programming. However, the BBC have occasionally used both the broadband and interactive television capabilities of Red Button to add to their viewers' enjoyment of Doctor Who.

BBCi programming
Because the BBCi was firmly the combination of what is today the separate entities of the Red Button and BBC Online, it is difficult to know whether some of the things that BBCi broadcast online would have in fact been made available on digital television in the modern era. Regardless, their early forays into commissioning new fiction for their web services are the earliest efforts of the BBC as a whole to provide additional narrative outside the scope of regular television episodes, and shaped the futures of both Red Button and Online.

Their very earliest webcast was an experiment. Death Comes to Time had originally been commissioned as a pilot for BBC Radio 4 in 2001. Radio 4 declined to pursue the series beyond this, so BBCi decided to pick it up. They converted it to an animated adventure in 2002. In December of that same year, they followed with what was the first project actually conceived as a webcast: Real Time. In 2003 they went back to merely converting an audio project to video. Shada was a step up in terms of animation, but it took already-existing audio and married it with specially-commissioned artwork.

Scream of the Shalka came in the waning months of 2003. It was a sort of "test case" for the digital broadcast platform, in that it was created by the then-BBCi to a standard that could have been broadcast via the Red Button of the day. Ultimately, however, it received only a web debut.

At around the same time, BBCi was beginning to generate content for what would ultimately become the iPlayer. They were envisaging the ability to push whole episodes of televised Doctor Who to their web users. Towards this goal, they commissioned animated versions of the missing episodes of The Invasion so as to offer the whole serial for the first time since its original television broadcast. This newly-complete Invasion would, they thought, instantly drive Doctor Who fans to their new player. This new player would be different from the way they had previously made video available. Instead of depending on people to navigate to the Doctor Who portion of their website, and access a fixed video display solely dedicated to showing one particular video, their new player could offer multiple video feeds from anywhere on the BBC site. In the end they didn't choose to offer any Doctor Who episodes at all, and the reborn Invasion instead went straight to DVD.

BBCi Red Button programming
In 2004, BBCi divested itself of its online responsibilities, spinning off BBC Online as a separate division. At the same time it rebranded as "BBCi Red Button", and focused on digital television programming alone.

The BBC Wales version of the programme availed itself of the platform, generally offering original programming during the Christmas season. Attack of the Graske was the first major piece of Doctor Who programming to debut on Red Button. Its 4:3 aspect ratio reveals the age of the piece, as Red Button adopted a widescreen ratio after its parent networks did. In 2007, a Cardiff concert of music from Doctor Who was exclusively premiered on Red Button.

BBC Red Button programming
In 2008, another rebranding followed, and all reference to "BBCi" was dropped. However, the process was leisurely, and references to "BBCi" can, as of 1st April 2010, still be seen on the BBC Website. Under the "BBC Red Button" brand came 2009's Dreamland, which was originally broadcast in its entirety on the service. The BBC Red Button has also been used as a marketing tool to braodcast clips from upcoming episodes, such as when on 24th March 2010 they showed the first scene from The Eleventh Hour

BBC Online programming
Unlike BBC Red Button, BBC Online split from BBCi in 2004. The most obvious impact BBCi's other successor has had on Doctor Who has been the maintenance of the official websites of Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood. As a consequence they have become major producers of video content. The difference between the video contributions of BBC Online and BBCi in terms has been extreme. Indeed, Online have gone well beyond simple video to offer their users truly interactive experiences. The first major piece of original BBC Online programming was the documentary The Doctor Who Years, a 2005 web documentary that gave viewers a history of the classic series in the run-up to Rose. The documentary attracted hundreds of thousands of hits, and demonstrated there was a market for original, web-based video.

Thus, Online has been continuously feeding their websites purpose-built video since that humble beginning. Tardisodes, Doctor Who Advent Calendars, video diaries, and the Doctor Who Video Explorer series are but a few of the original productions commissioned by BBC Online to enhance viewers' experience of Doctor Who. Unlike BBCi's efforts, there has been no significant animation to debut on BBC Online sites. Instead, live action video — most of it documentary in nature — has been supplemented by a variety of interactive materials. In addition to videos, BBC Online have provided Flash animation games, trailer makers, comic makers and a variety of sampled sounds.

External link

 * BBC Statement of Future Media policy, the effective "job descriptions' of Red Button and Online