Exploring BBC Podcasts And Program Archives
1 Exploring BBC Podcasts And Program Archives
1.1 Summary
A short overview of tools on the emacspeak desktop for easily exploring and accessing BBC program content.
1.2 Background
The BBC offers a wealth of audio content from both domestic BBC Radio as well as BBC World Service. Much of this content is available as Podcasts for a week after it has been broadcast; in some instances, content is archived and available for more than a week.
The primary gateway to this content is BBC IPlayer. In addition, one can subscribe to RSS feeds for BBC Podcasts.
1.3 Accessing BBC Content From Emacspeak
Here are some of the tools I use on the Emacspeak desktop to quickly find and access content from the BBC:
- The BBC publishes a continuously updated directory of RSS feeds; Emacspeak url template BBC Podcast Directory can be used to open this directory of feeds.
- With the above directory of feeds at hand, it is easy to subscribe to oft-accessed feeds via emacspeak-feeds — see Managing And Accessing Feeds.
- In addition to the directory of feeds covered above, the BBC publishes a detailed program guide as XML; Emacspeak url template BBC Program Guide accesses the program guide.
- The program guide described above gives access to RSS feeds for both current programs as
well as past archives. The program guide is a wealth of information that makes all the information available in one location, unlike the BBC IPlayer site.
- A note for UK users; the program guide above is presently set up to only show content that is available world-wide; if you're in the UK, you may want to remove the test for
region='all'
in the XSL stylesheet emacspeak/xsl/bbc-ppg.xsl.
- You can find the XML feed for the BBC Program Guide, as well as the associated XML Schema definition on the BBC's Web site.
- Finally, you can access the BBC IPlayer page for any given BBC channel via Emacspeak url template BBC IPlayer.
Share And Enjoy! And Hear's Wishing Everyone A Very Happy 2014!
