original, technical, editorial

[Bryn]

Just wondering whether anyone here knows the rationale for these three alternative postscripts to the PID (BBC Programme IDentifier) found in iPlayer and Sounds programme names as downloaded by get_iplayer, e.g.:

His_Dark_Materials_Series_2_-_01._The_City_of_Magpies_m000pb15_technical

His_Dark_Materials_Series_2_-_02._The_Cave_m000pk3m_original

His_Dark_Materials_Series_2_-_03._Theft_m000prjm_editorial

(boldface added for clarity).

"original" is fair enough, and by far the most common. "technical" and "editorial" are much less commonly encountered and suggest, to me, some degree of editing prior to being uploaded.

[Bryn]

Ouch! Can Host please correct the typos in the thread title to read "original, technical, editorial".

[Pulcinella]

I wonder if there was viewer feedback that has been taken into account that has resulted in what is now available not being 'original': technical, if there were issues of lighting or dim dialogue, say; editorial if 'bad language' got removed to make the episode more acceptable to a younger audience? That sort of thing.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Ouch! Can Host please correct the typos in the thread title to read "original, technical, editorial".

Done

[Bryn]

Done

Many thanks.

[Cockney Sparrow]

I don't know the answer to your question, precisely.

I do know that on occasion one or more of the episodes in a series of Radio 4 material aren't re-broadcast (often on R4 extra). I’ve noted re-broadcasts of programmes I recall enjoying – then when I listen (say, over an episode a week) I find one of them is missed……

I speculate the reason is the content touching on a subject which might be subject to controversy, offending current sensibilities. I'm not sure how much time there is available within Radio 4extra to assess such aspects - a lot of 4extra is automated and seems to run on a shoestring, so perhaps it has to be a quick decision. I can't give specific evidence as I haven't logged it, but I'm sure I have come across it a number of times. One instance I do recall relates to a TV series – “The Secret History of our Streets”. It got broadcast in about June 2012, April 2015 and November 2016. The episode about Caledonian Road wasn’t broadcast in November 2016.

[Andrew Slater]

Some, but not much, clarification for the first one is 'Technical Replacement' which can be seen under 'versions - type' in the json version of the programme web page. (I use Firefox to read json files in a structured format.) I haven't yet found anything which describes just what the replacement involved. For the other two programmes the version types are "Original version' and "Editorial".

By the way I've also seen 'Other' used in this context.

I should add that I strongly suspect that get_iplayer gets its information from the .json files.

[Forget It (U2079353)]

In my experience, (using get_iplayer)
I don't think there is much logic to these postfix labels (another is shortened - but hardly ever is)
However when the postfix is podcast (e.g. In Our Time or The Verb)
the download may be proceeded by the dreaded 5 sec jingle,
may have an off-pat intro (the same each week)
may have extra programme material than that broadcast and
may have a trailer for another programme patched on at the end.