[interestednovice]

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2023/new-bbc-operating-licence-fit-for-digital-future

Ofcom, the regulator, has released a fairly strong license proposal that comes into play on April the 1st, holding the BBC accountable for delivering on it's remit, both on it's traditional linear broadcast offerings and it's websites, such as BBC.co.uk, iPlayer, Sounds, etc.

While digging into what research they had conducted in regards to their online services, I found I tended to agree with most of the participants in the document, as the main homepage of the whole entire corporation just feels like an extended gateway to BBC News, while BBC's services, mainly iPlayer, could do with a significant refocus, away from just being entirely branded as a "catch-up" service.

The BBC homepage used to feature much more content from “across the BBC”, as they put it, but this was scaled back in favour of a focus on news largely due to a BBC usability study which found that most people ending up there were actually looking for the BBC News website, if I recall correctly.

At one stage, at the height of the Web 2.0 era, it was very customisable with different widgets and settings - linked to a BBC ID - and even an analogue clock.

I also imagine much of the simplification is to better account for tablets, but it is a shame!