Monitor the output...everywhere

While carrying out research today for a paper I'm writing, I checked some websites of major international channels. And I discovered that it's almost impossible for media companies to be across their entire output.

It used to be simple in the old analogue days - in the BBC, a Presentation Department report at the close of transmission each day provided a summary of faults on individual transmitters, so that the powers that be could see where audiences hadn't been able to watch BBC1, for example, after a piece of kit broke down.

Today, it's rather more complicated and not only do broadcasters have to make sure that everything is OK in the studio, but also across multiple distribution networks feeding multiple platforms. And that's just the programming. What about the website? When the whole site crashes, then it's glaringly obvious that there's a problem. But when one part of it stops working, then it's quite difficult to see.

So, discovering a problem, I have fired off e-mails and text messages to various people in the hope of them kicking someone who can fix this small, but annoying, problem on the channel's website. One that could prevent people from watching the programme they want to see. I hope that they manage to correct it soon.

The moral of the story...make sure that staff check not only the live output on the screen (or loudspeaker, for radio), but also what the public can see on the web. Otherwise, you start to look rather unprofessional. Now, how's the AIB website performing?