A BBC Programme Identifier (PID) is an alphanumeric,
persistent,
unique identifier
A unique identifier (UID) is an identifier that is guaranteed to be unique among all identifiers used for those objects and for a specific purpose. The concept was formalized early in the development of computer science and information systems ...
for a television or radio programme brand, a season or series, or an individual episode, used by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
in their web URLs,
iPlayer
BBC iPlayer (stylised as iPLAYER or BBC iPLAYER) is a video on demand service from the BBC. The service is available on a wide range of devices, including mobile phones and tablets, personal computers and smart televisions. iPlayer services del ...
viewers, and internal databases.
[ - this source erroneously expands the acronym as "Packet Identification number"]
All PIDs consist of a lower-case letter, followed by seven or more other characters which may be lower case letters, or digits. Vowels (a, e, i, o, u) are not used, so that offensive words cannot be generated inadvertently. The first letter "b" means the
content reference identifier (CRID) authority is
Red Bee; a "p" means that the authority is the BBC's
Programme Information Pages database, (PIPs). An "s" is used internally, for PIDs identifying partners and suppliers. Other sources, denoted by different opening letters, could potentially be introduced.
For example, the PID for the series ''
The Life Scientific
''The Life Scientific'' is a BBC Radio 4 science programme, presented by Professor Jim Al-Khalili , in which each episode is dedicated to the biography and work of one living scientist.
The programme consists of an interview between Al-Khalili a ...
'' is
b015sqc7 while the PID for the individual episode of that show first broadcast on 8 July 2014 is
b048l0g3 which is used in its URL,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b048l0g3.
PIDs have been created retrospectively, for some programmes from the pre-digital era.
An example, in the "p" range, is the PID for the 1956
Desert Island Discs
''Desert Island Discs'' is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme on 29 January 1942.
Each week a guest, called a " castaway" during the programme, is asked to choose eight recordings (us ...
episode featuring
Ada Cherry Kearton,
p009y95q.
Most PIDs have eight characters, but in the past, some
World Service
The BBC World Service is an international broadcasting, international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the Government of the United Kingdom, British Government through the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Secretary's o ...
programmes were given eleven-character PIDs, starting with "w"; an example is
wcr5dr3dnl3.
The BBC encourages viewers and listeners to
machine tag media relating to programmes, on social sites such as
Flickr
Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and professiona ...
, and their own blog posts, using the relevant PID, in the format
bbc:programme=b048l0g3.
PIDs are also used to identify BBC programmes, in
Wikidata
Wikidata is a collaboratively edited multilingual knowledge graph hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a common source of open data that Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, and anyone else, can use under the CC0 public domain licen ...
.
References
External links
{{Wikidata property, P827
Description of use of PIDs in linked dataArticle on the development of PIDs2004 post explaining thinking behind BBC URL structureBBC Programmes and Music on the Linking Open Data Cloud- 2008 Presentation on
SlideShare
SlideShare is an American hosting service, now owned by Scribd, for professional content including presentations, infographics, documents, and videos. Users can upload files privately or publicly in PowerPoint, Word, PDF, or OpenDocument format. ...
by Patrick Sinclair, Content Producer at the BBC
Linked Data on the BBC- 2009 Presentation on
SlideShare
SlideShare is an American hosting service, now owned by Scribd, for professional content including presentations, infographics, documents, and videos. Users can upload files privately or publicly in PowerPoint, Word, PDF, or OpenDocument format. ...
by Patrick Sinclair, Content Producer at the BBC
BBC
Identifiers