Tom Coates
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A permanent web page for every programme the BBC broadcasts

One durable, structured, linkable identity, per episode.

IMG PLACEHOLDER — Programme page

PIPs gave every broadcast a permanent address — not a listings blurb that vanished after transmission, but a real page, with structured metadata, that would still resolve years later. It sounds obvious now. In 2005, most of the BBC's own schedule barely existed as addressable data at all.

Design the data first

The project rolled out first across Radio 3 and Radio 4, and became one of the clearest proofs of an idea I kept coming back to in talks that year: design the data first, and the pages follow.

IMG PLACEHOLDER — Schedule grid
IMG PLACEHOLDER — RDF/XML sample
Sample record
PID · b00ffxyz
Title
Today — 25/03/2005
Service
BBC Radio 4
Broadcast
25 Mar 2005, 06:00
Duration
3h 0m
Year2005
Rolled out toRadio 3 · Radio 4
FormatsHTML · RSS · RDF
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