Amanda Powell

Our first guest appearance to take the Brit Acres arena stage was the editor of BBC Wales online, Amanda Powell. www.bbc.co.uk/walesnews . I was looking forward to this lecture because I am keen on the workings of online. I spend a fair amount of time surfing the BBC websites and could be a job possibility come May. Interesting aspects arose from the lecture, but overall, the content was fairly dry.

Shock horror, the average length of time spent on a BBC page was 0.82 of a minute. What would you expect to achieve in that time? Digest the major headlines? Amanda informed us of the difficulties of online journalism, with the pace being more like broadcast than print and also the tight frameworks for a headline. Each headline must consist of between 31-33 characters.

Amanda threw in several statistics regarding how many impressions the BBC receives a month. The English version of BBC Wales receives 11-12m impressions a month with the main BBC website, helped by its international readers, receiving a staggering 30m a month. But the eye-raiser for me was the Welsh speaking version which only gets 300,000 a month. This may offend people but will this version be economically worthwhile and sustainable in the long run?


We know the broadcast channel S4C receives a fixed annual grant from the UK's department of Culture, Media and Sport to the tune of 85m an annum which makes the channel one of the most subsidised in the world. The same is on-going in Scotland with the Scots Gaelic language enjoying its revival so what is the future for the Welsh speaking version on BBC Wales Online?