Click (TV series)
Encyclopedia
Click is a weekly BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
programme covering news and recent developments in the world of consumer technology, presented by Spencer Kelly
Spencer Kelly
Spencer Kelly is the presenter of the BBC's technology programme Click, broadcast on the BBC World News and the BBC News in the United Kingdom. He grew up in Bishopstoke, near Eastleigh in Hampshire and attended Wyvern Secondary School in Fair Oak, then Barton Peveril College in Eastleigh...
.
There are four editions of the programme, including two 30-minute programmes: the first is produced for a UK audience and shown on BBC News, the second is produced for a global audience, aired on BBC World News, usually identical with a commercial break in the middle. The 15-minute version is shown on BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
and BBC News during BBC Breakfast
BBC Breakfast
BBC Breakfast is the morning television news programme simulcast on BBC One and the BBC News channel. It is presented live from BBC Television Centre in White City, West London, and contains a mixture of news, sport, weather, business and feature items...
(at the weekend). The fourth edition runs for 5 minutes on BBC World News at selected times of the week featuring one story.
Thursday 29 December 2005 marked the last edition of Click Online, as the show was previously known. This coincided with the departure of presenter Stephen Cole
Stephen Cole
Stephen Cole is a presenter for Al Jazeera English. Previously, he worked for the BBC.-Broadcasting career:...
after 295 shows. The programme was rebranded with new music and titles and now concentrates more on consumer issues, and not necessarily the internet or what users can do or visit "online".
BBC World Service
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...
broadcasts a weekly sister radio show, also called Click, presented by Gareth Mitchell and Bill Thompson
Bill Thompson (technology writer)
Bill Thompson is an English technology writer, best known for his weekly column in the Technology section of BBC News Online and his appearances on Click, a radio show on the BBC World Service. He is also an Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at City University London .Born in Jarrow, Thompson grew...
Presenters
The current presenter of Click is Spencer KellySpencer Kelly
Spencer Kelly is the presenter of the BBC's technology programme Click, broadcast on the BBC World News and the BBC News in the United Kingdom. He grew up in Bishopstoke, near Eastleigh in Hampshire and attended Wyvern Secondary School in Fair Oak, then Barton Peveril College in Eastleigh...
who had already been a reporter and producer on the show, and also compiled reports for The Gadget Show
The Gadget Show
The Gadget Show is a British television series focusing on technology and is broadcast on Channel 5. Originally a thirty minute show, it was extended to forty-five minutes, then later to fifty five minutes. Repeats have also aired on the digital channels 5*, Dave and Channel 5's Internet on-demand...
on Channel 5. Kate Russell
Kate Russell
Kate Russell is an English technology reporter who first appeared on the show Chips With Everything on The Computer Channel, which was later renamed to .tv....
introduces featured websites in the weekly Webscape segment.
Previous presenters of the show include Stephen Cole
Stephen Cole
Stephen Cole is a presenter for Al Jazeera English. Previously, he worked for the BBC.-Broadcasting career:...
who left the BBC to work for Al Jazeera International
Al Jazeera International
Al Jazeera English is an international 24-hour English-language news and current affairs TV channel headquartered in Doha, Qatar. It is the sister channel of the Arabic-language Al Jazeera....
.
With the departure of Stephen Cole, Rob Freeman is the last remaining on-screen member of the original Click Online team. Responsible for starting the Webscape segment, he currently answers viewers' technical questions.
Other journalists occasionally present segments of the programme, brief biographies of whom can be found on the Click website.
Bot net Controversy
In 2009 the show and the BBC produced some controversy when it aired a special episode highlighting the dangers of botnets and how easy it was to get caught in one. The show bought control of a botnetBotnet
A botnet is a collection of compromised computers connected to the Internet. Termed "bots," they are generally used for malicious purposes. When a computer becomes compromised, it becomes a part of a botnet...
of some 22,000 infected computers (for "a few thousand dollars") from a Russian hacker, and used it to send spam to an email address set up for the experiment and to perform a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on a website setup by Prev-X (an internet security company that provided technical support for the show). After the programme was made the computers on the botnet were sent a piece of software to remove the malware and a warning was sent to them telling the users what had happened and that they were vulnerable.
The response was mixed with the show receiving many emails both for and against the programme along with some negative press. The BBC was criticized by some legal consulting organizations as well as computer security companies. Computer security expert and senior technology consultant at Sophos, Graham Cluley, asked in his blog whether the BBC was breaking the Computer Misuse Act - which makes an offense in the UK to access or modify a third-party computer without the owner's consent. On the other hand internet security comentator Melih Abdulhayoglu went as far as making a video in support of the BBC. Click rebutted criticisms by stating in its Twitter posts that:
Transmission times
The following times are local to the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
(GMT
Greenwich Mean Time
Greenwich Mean Time is a term originally referring to mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. It is arguably the same as Coordinated Universal Time and when this is viewed as a time zone the name Greenwich Mean Time is especially used by bodies connected with the United...
and BST
British Summer Time
Western European Summer Time is a summer daylight saving time scheme, 1 hour ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. It is used in the following places:* the Canary Islands* Portugal * Ireland...
respectively). Broadcasts are sometimes replaced by other programming at short notice due to the nature of these channels' reactions to news and current events. Some weeks the 30 minute programme may not be shown at all due to coverage of live events, even when it is scheduled to be shown up to six times over the weekend period. In this case, website viewing on the BBC iPlayer is the only way to see the programme.
15 minute edition
- Saturday, 06:45 on BBC OneBBC OneBBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
and BBC News - Sunday, 07:45 on BBC One and BBC News
30 minute UK edition
Airs on BBC News. May be replaced with 15 minute version if fast news day, or scheduled showing canceled entirely- Saturday, 11:30, 15:30, 20:30
- Sunday, 04:30 (version used for the online video), 11:30
- Monday, 00:30
- Wednesday, 03:30
30 minute global edition
Airs on BBC World News- Saturday 06:30 GMT
- Sunday 03:30 GMT & 13:30 GMT
BBC website
A number of recent episodes are available to select regions on the Flash-based BBC iPlayerBBC iPlayer
BBC iPlayer, commonly shortened to iPlayer, is an internet television and radio service, developed by the BBC to extend its former RealPlayer-based and other streamed video clip content to include whole TV shows....
. More specifically, every weekly edition of Click since September 2004 is available to select countries on the BBC Click website page.
The full 30 minute UK version broadcast on BBC News 24 used to be updated on iPlayer and the Click website page after the first showing of the 30 minute UK edition at 11:30 each Saturday morning, then disappeared for undisclosed reasons (instead since early 2011 the only 30 minute full edition available was the World Service broadcast, which was now not available until the following Tuesday or Wednesday on both iPlayer and the Click website page).
However demand for the programme meant a new full 30 minute episode transmission has been added to BBC News 24 at 01:30 since Saturday 9 April 2011, which then gets added to the iPlayer and Click website shortly thereafter.
All of the programmes are available in RealPlayer and Windows Media format. With the exception of early broadcasts, there are streams optimised for both narrowband and broadband connections.
Persian Click
Farsi speakers can also watch BBC Persian Click online and on BBC PersianBBC Persian
BBC Persian is the Persian language radio station and TV operated by the BBC which conveys the latest political, social, economical and sport news relevant to Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, and the world. Its headquarters are in London, United Kingdom...
TV.