Anyone observed content change through Rogers?

[Amanda Yilmaz]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 06:45 -0400, "William Muriithi"
<william.muriithi-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
...
Yesterday evening, I ended up on news.bbc.co.uk to get my
daily dose of world news. I was surprised in a sad way to note
the whole site had extensive changes, full of advertisements
and heavy flash use. The most prominent ones were from
Rogers.  Five minutes into it, I gave up and decided to call
it a day. All through that experience, I assumed the changes
had something to do with the bbc organization.
...

This does appear to be due to a new policy at the BBC. From
<http://faq.external.bbc.co.uk/questions/bbc_online/adverts_general>:

"The BBC puts advertising on its website for users outside the UK. We use the income to help fund BBC services and keep the licence fee, (paid by UK households), lower than it otherwise would be."

The above-mentioned page also contains information on how to contact them if you're "experiencing an issue with video advertising" or see "inappropriate advertising" on their site.

While I understand their reasoning in theory, I'm not at all convinced that this is a good idea in practice. From a world perspective, BBC News isn't just any news service; since the halcyon days of shortwave radio it's also effectively been a part of the UK's foreign relations, a way of promoting Britain and the "British way" abroad for relatively little cost compared to the dividends in worldwide respect and goodwill. Seen this way, it might have made more sense to keep the BBC News site free of advertising for the same reason the BBC World Service (as far as I know) never carried advertising: advertisements can blunt the impact of the actual content, and have the potential to reduce the worldwide impression of the BBC's quality and impartiality.

Of course, no one asked me.

Amanda
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