One of the points that Adrian Monck raises in his entry on online video is the issue of video specifically commissioned for the web.

He points out that the BBC News website is “awash with audio and video material but rather modestly, it hides these jewels away.” But this material is essentially TV packages made available online. So there is next to nothing that has been specially commissioned, shot and edited for the website.

Part of the problem here is that TV and radio news bosses at the BBC tend to view the internet as another means of distribution. So rather than conceive of new ways of using video, they tend to see the web as a way of making their content available to a younger audience which rarely watches BBC TV.

I can understand the strategy to offer BBC TV and radio content on anywhere, anytime, any place. But this is just a small step in exploiting the potential of the internet.

Services like YouTube have shown there is an appetite for video, but it often a very different product to the packaged TV news reports on the evening newscast.

The audio-video team at the BBC News website occasionally produces its own TV packages, or offers a clip of must-see video. These are the types of clips that draw a large audience. For the most part, the audience figures for AV on the site are a fraction of the demand for text-based stories.

In January, the BBC did try something new. BBC TV, radio and online worked together in the coverage of the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. The most visible sign of this collaboration was the Tomorrow’s World blog.

As part of this project, the team behind BBC’s weekly technology show, Click, produced a series of video blogs specifically for the web.

This is the sort of thing more news organisations should be experimenting with. In this case, offering video blogs about a show packed with all the latest gadgets and gizmos is a non-brainer.

The CES coverage was an example of how the silos of TV, radio and online can be broken. But more importantly, it showed how you can offer something in video that is distinct from the TV coverage and caters for the interests of an online audience.

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