BBC Ending support for RSS Podcasts | Hacker News Reader

BBC Ending support for RSS Podcasts

bbc.co.uk

21 pointsafandian13 comments

I listen to the Friday Night Comedy Radio 4 podcast every Friday. There was an announcement on there that Apple Podcasts would still get them, but 30 days later than BBC Sounds.

I must say, I remember when the BBC were moving to HTML5 video players on their website and they were happy they weren't locked into RealPlayer anymore and how over the years, the BBC has always provided all its services as platform agnostic as possible.

I'm quite angry the BBC has pushed its podcasts to its own platform. The whole point of the BBC operating the way it does is to remain open and not have these weird closed platform scenarios. I also don't really like the BBC Sounds app.

I was particularly sad to hear Andy Zaltzman reading out the words. Of all the people I'd hope would skewer the BBC management double-speak.

The submission title seems like an exaggeration, for now at least. They seem to have just removed the old podcast portal, and moved the RSS feed links to other places, the links themselves haven't gone away. Many of their podcasts still seem to support RSS. Yes, you have to click through a lot, and there are quite a few that have always been exclusive to the BBC's Sounds platform, but the RSS feeds are still there.

Where is the RSS feed for https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b006qshd ?

If you just want the direct URL, then according to my podcast app, you can find it here:

https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nrss1.rss

I mean, is it discoverable via the show's webpage?

That's not the show's webpage, that's its Sounds page.

More or Less' programme webpage is here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd

You can click on the the "More or Less Podcast" link in the show header there, which takes you to https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrss1/episodes/downloads, which has an "RSS" link just below the "Subscribe in Sounds" button.

I can't find it. But I'm on mobile and not in the UK. The page does reference https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidance/feeds-and... but that isn't the podcast feed (and seems mostly unrelated).

I submitted this link, and tried hard not to editorialize the page title. But the communication around this from the BBC has been dishearteningly weasel-worded and posting the original would have been, IMHO, deceptive through omission.

The original title is "Why has the BBC Podcasts page changed?". The wording of the campaign (trailers spliced into Podcasts), as well as this, is evasive. When they say:

> some content will be exclusively available on BBC Sounds for 28 days

The only reading I can make of that is "we are introducing an artificial 28 day delay to RSS". This is not honest communication IMHO.

This seems like a clear indication that they plan to deprecate RSS. Just like the interstitial nag screens on the BBC news website send a clear message that they want to restrict all access to the BBC to those who sign-in.

Here's a canned statement I got by email:

<quote>

Thank you for contacting BBC Sounds support. I understand that you are unhappy with the news that some content will be exclusively available on BBC Sounds for 28 days after its initial broadcast.

Since we launched BBC Sounds we’ve had a number of podcasts either available first, or only, on BBC Sounds, giving listeners easy access to them on the BBC’s own digital platform.

We are making this change because we want more people to use BBC Sounds to listen to their favourite BBC audio, and to easily discover more from the BBC. This gives licence fee payers even more value.

Continuing to make BBC Sounds a success and increasingly valued by our audience is a priority for us. We think it’s vital to ensure brilliant UK content continues to thrive now and in the future. With more people listening on their mobiles, TVs and smart speakers, we want to make sure we’re helping create and deliver for the next generation of UK radio and audio fans.

This change is expected to take effect from March.

However, we do appreciate your feedback on this, and that some users will not be happy about the change, if for example they get their Sounds content from third party providers such as Apple or Google podcasts. Rest assured we are minoring all feedback about this change as user feedback is important to us. I have recorded your feedback on our Sounds feedback report to be seen by the Head of Sounds and the various Sounds product teams.

Thanks again for getting in touch.

Kind regards,

</quote>

I love when I am a paying customer of a service and they "give me even more value" by taking things away from my friends who haven't paid and significantly hurt my ability to talk to my friends or the general public about a podcast because half of them are a month behind the other half.

(To be transparent I am not a paying customer of the BBC but this sounds exactly like what I went through with YouTube Premium where my favourite channels switched to putting out mostly "Premium" content that was maybe slightly better than their standard stuff but I couldn't share with friends or even comment which to me is the main feature set of YouTube as opposed to something like Netflix)

I had not heard the 28-day trailer yet. I imagine all this is the beginning of the penny pinching after the recently announced reduction to the BBC's funding. We should probably just be grateful any of these are available at all, they might not be around a few years from now.

It was on the News Quiz and In Our Time FWIW.

This is all about ADVERTISING. When you listen to BBC Sounds you have to listen to an advert trailing some other BBC product.

And I too was disappointed to hear Andy Zaltzman trying to make this sound like some great feature.

I fear this is the end of Podcasting. Soon, if you want to subscribe to 10 podcasts you will need to use 6 — 10 different players. Still, it was good while it lasted. But it is sad to see the BBC taking part in this user-unfriendly process.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com