Saturday 9 March 2019

BBC-Word (and it isn't Corporation)

In 2004 I noticed something of a typographical glitch on the BBC Home page. 

Before


When I checked four years later they it had changed.

After a little judicious kerning*

This page on the perfectly good Listen Again  is now history. It was replaced with the rather annoying BBC iPlayer (for radio) which is not the same as the BBC iPlayer (for television).

Now they have launched BBC Sounds, a platform for podcasts as I understand it. We are told it is the future of audio on the Internet. Not sure about this, but I fear we will be deluged with it and one day we will understand that the word  'sounds' means BBC podcasts and no longer means  'things that we hear'. I wonder what will they call the equivalent for television? Sights? 

Sigh...


* Kerning refers to the adjustment between space between a pair of letters. My dictionary says the past tense is Kerned and may be pronounced Kernt... a slight mispronunciation and there, we are back at the beginning.

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