BBC to offer 'personalised' radio online

By: Oliver Luft
The BBC will allow audiences to create personal radio stations from its content - said the director general.

According to BBC Online the planned service - provisionally called MyBBCRadio - was revealed by Mark Thompson at the Radio Festival, in Cambridge.

The aim of the project is to create a BBC iPlayer that will combine existing online radio services, along with TV on demand, to allow the audience greater flexibility and choice over when it can view or listen to shows.

The BBC reported that Thompson said MyBBCRadio would use peer-to-peer technology to provide "thousands, ultimately millions, of individual radio services created by audiences themselves".

He added that the BBC hoped to share these ideas with the commercial sector.

Last month, Channel 4 laid-down a challenge to the BBC by launching its own online radio station and hiring ex-controller of Radio 2, Jim Moir, to act as a consultant for the push into the UK radio sector.

The broadcaster took advantage of an absence of regulation that allows internet radio stations to broadcast without the licence required by digital and analogue stations.

Channel 4 also plans to launch its own interactive radio service later in the year where listeners will be able to construct their own music radio station from scratch from the Channel 4 Radio website.