Business Strategies: when should a roll-out be rolled back?

The BBC's Listen Again service was a bit slow and clunky and relied on RealPlayer which users had to download - and getting the free player without promotions, pestering email wasn't easy - and nor was getting the program set up so as not to do things you don't want it to do.

So the announcement of the BBC's dreadfully named "iPlayer" that would stream faster, and would not require RealPlayer to be installed, seemed like a very good idea.

But the iPlayer has been designed by whizz kids, or so it seems. It is very, well, whizzy.

In the early days of desktop publishing, designers getting the toolkits for the first time would use far too many fonts, print sizes and clip art - far more than they would have considered suitable for something they were laying out with pen and paper. A similar problem appeared in the early days of web page design. Far too many colours, which often clashed, fonts and animated graphics were shoved onto pages.

But things have moved on and one of the more interesting developments in web design is how hierarchical structures have developed - almost to follow the approach adopted in libraries - general headings gradually narrowing to the point of interest.

And, no doubt due to the influence of Google with its famously uncluttered first page, layouts have a lot of white space, making it easier to differentiate between sections.

And so onto the iPlayer.

The reason for the change was so that UK users could watch TV on their computers. It is specifically UK viewers - for if anyone from outside the UK tries to watch, the system geo-locates their IP address and tells them they are not welcome. Aside from legal and political reasons behind this, there's an important issue: UK ISPs have complained that iPlayer video has become so popular within just a few weeks of launch that it is slowing the entire UK internet. There is talk of banning the service from some ISPs and others (before the Verizon decision in the USA) were talking about traffic shaping in relation to iPlayer.

But someone decided to integrate the existing radio service into the new TV service.

And that's where it has all gone wrong.

Aside from dreadful navigation - it takes seemingly endless steps to get to listen to The Archers - the system has a number of major flaws.

Let's use The Archers as an example, but similar issues arise in relation to other programmes.

First, once the programme has been selected, a ful-browser window opens. The centre pane is the player and in the middle of a large graphic is an invitation to use a "pop-out player." But what the program doesn't tell users is that the links in the main window open in the same window. Therefore listeners who do not choose the pop-out player cannot click on a link to the playlist for the programme - or to be more precise, if they do, the player closes and a text page opens. The "more like this" feature is graphics-intensive - and in the case of The Archers is laden with links to an attractive blonde who has no connection whatsoever to The Archers, and her programme is similarly afflicted.

Secondly, the Archers plays on weekday evenings and is repeated the following weekday lunchtime, and the iPlayer says that it refers to the first "origination." So to hear Thursday evening's episode, one clicks on the Thursday link. But when the link opens, the time shown in the player panel is the following day. So Thursday's programme becomes Friday's when listeners look at the player information. Such an inconsistency is quite simply silly.

Third, since Friday last week (yes, that's five days so far) many programmes have not been available. Instead there is a message saying "Audio stream is unavailable at this time." But nowhere can we, or posters of complaints to the site, find any information as to why, or when the issues might be addressed.

Surely now it's time to realise that iPlayer is not ready for prime time and to take the brave step of saying "oops. It's not what we thought we were delivering. We'll take it down, fix it and put it back when it works, and when we've addressed the navigation and other problems."

But no: amazingly on the 5th August, the BBC's Internet Blog at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/ said "We were really happy to find that older people, as well as younger ones, are using BBC iPlayer, so we're not just attracting the stereotypical younger early adopters who will generally pick up on new technologies and gadgets before the mainstream."

But for how long: the internet is buzzing with exactly those "older people" (which, in BBC terms appears to be anyone over 44) complaining that the iPlayer is a disaster.

The BBC doesn't have to care: it's the advantage that broadcasters have of delivering unique content and that puts them into the position of a monopoly. If I want to listen to The Archers with my morning coffee as my PC grinds through its daily chores before I start work, then I have no choice but to use iPlayer. Except that it isn't working.

And it's not been working properly for a while: here is an extract, a very optimistic extract, from the BBC's internet blog dated 1 August:

BBC iPlayer Radio: Radio 3 Programmes On Listen Again* James Cridland 1 Aug 08, 1:56 PMQuiet, isn't it?Launching a new product like Radio in BBC iPlayer is bound to raise a few unexpected glitches.Listeners to Dead Ringers on Radio 4 a few years ago will remember the team's affectionate tribute to Radio 3: "quiet, isn't it?"Recently, if you listen again to BBC Radio 3 on the iPlayer, you may have noticed occasional programmes which have been really very quiet indeed. Entirely silent, in fact.This is due to something going wrong (he says, obviously) and we think it's a combination of software and hardware producing these issues on one of our encoders.Our friends at Siemens hope they've isolated the problem and they're monitoring the issue carefully to ensure that you hear the BBC Proms in all their glory. This season has been especially good, so we wouldn't want you to miss a note.Our plans to completely overhaul the system producing Listen Again is still going well behind the scenes, and I hope to report back to you later next month about how the rollout is going. Meanwhile, we're receiving a ton of nice feedback about the improved audio quality for our Listen Again service - so, if you've not tried it yet, please do go and enjoy some of the best that BBC Radio has to offer at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio.James Cridland is Head of Future Media & Technology for Audio & Music Interactive.

Ah. Well. Now there's an invitation.