BBC Teams with Tim Berners-Lee on "Open Source" Documentary Series, "Digital Revolution"

The BBC announced Friday that its BBC Two broadcast network is teaming with World Wide Web inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, on a four-part documentary series, provisionally entitled "Digital Revolution," that it says will mark the 20th anniversary of the Web's invention by taking an "open source approach to its production process." According to the corporation, the series' production team will give Web users early access to its content by making their rushes available online and sharing some of their key arguments, inviting comment, input and story leads from the Web community. "After 20 years of tumultuous innovation, now feels like the right time for us to take stock of the profound change our society has undergone since the birth of the Web," George Entwistle, controller for BBC Knowledge commissioning, said in a prepared statement. "I'm delighted the BBC audience will have the opportunity to play a pivotal role in the creation of this project, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it unfold online in the months leading up to TV transmission."

The "Digital Revolution" project is being kicked off by journalist and academic, Aleks Krotoski, with a series of what the BBC calls "manifesto blog posts" at bbc.co.uk/digitalrevolution. She is asking the Web community to join in an open debate by sharing opinions and suggesting stories (she made her first post last Friday). In addition, the BBC says, the project will marshal Web users in a series of online experiments that have been developed in consultation with the Web Science Research Initiative, a joint venture between the University of Southampton and MIT, which is co-directed by Berners-Lee. According to the corporation, the online debate will shape the production of the BBC Two documentary series, informing Krotoski's arguments as she assesses the claims made over the years by the Web's key innovators and tests those claims "against the hard realities of the emerging Web today." She will also uncover various "extraordinary human stories" that illustrate how the Web is being used and abused today, the corporation says, and look for clues to "evaluate its--and our--uncertain future." "Digital Revolution"--which is a co-production between the BBC and the Open University (the commissioner for the BBC is Martin Davidson and the commissioner for the OU is Emma De'Ath)--is slated to air next year. "This is a hugely important and timely series and it's very exciting that the father of the Web himself, Tim Berners-Lee, is involved," the series' executive producer, Dominic Crossley-Holland, said in a prepared statement. "The production team is committed to being as open as possible in a way that may have far-reaching consequences for the way that TV is produced in the future."

In other BBC news: The corporation's director of Future Media & Technology, Erik Huggers, told the Intellect Consumer Electronics Conference that Project Canvas would "democratize" access to television similarly to how the Apple iPhone App Store has opened up the mobile platform to content providers and developers, according to a report in the UK broadcast-industry trade publication, Broadcast, last week (note: Project Canvas is a joint over-the-top venture between the BBC, commercial broadcaster ITV, and incumbent telco BT that seeks to develop a common standard and interface for the delivery of online catch-up services such as the BBC iPlayer and the ITV player, as well as other Internet-based VOD services, to broadband-connected set-top boxes--for more on Project Canvas, an on the mixed reactions the project has received from the UK's media and technology industries, see the article published on itvt.com, June 5th). Broadcast also reported that Huggers stated that Canvas would offer an EPG home page that would combine a traditional TV guide with areas for TV-based VOD services and for Web and other interactive content, with services such as the BBC iPlayer, the ITVPlayer and 4oD located in the VOD area, and with the Web area offering such services as Amazon VOD, Flickr and Dailymotion. Huggers also stated that the service would allow independent producers to launch their own channels--though, according to Broadcast, he did not specify which EPG section those channels would be located in.