Radio Explorer was an online radio and playlist streaming application from the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

originally developed by Jason Williams and launched on 29 May 2014. It later appeared on BBC Taster, the BBC's portal for ideas and experimental projects, in March 2015. Radio Explorer allowed the streaming of generated playlists based on searches, which would then play continuously. The service discontinued on 15 December 2016, the development effort and service was rolled into

BBC Sounds BBC Sounds is an Over-the-top media service, over-the-top audio streaming media, streaming and download service from the BBC that includes live radio broadcasts, Streaming media, audio on demand, and podcasts. The service is available on a wide ...

Development

Radio Explorer was developed during the BBC Design + Engineering's 10% time initiative. It was prototyped using the BBC's Forge platform, in order to show content the service took full advantage of Nitro, an API which allowed BBC products to search for content. After internal usage Radio Explorer went on to become a BBC online service. Radio Explorer worked by searching through programmes titles, subtitles, short synopsis, long synopsis and descriptions. Results were then filtered by those being available to play, including clips. Initially only speech networks were included, but later the service included all BBC networks. The service was later discussed on BBC Radio 5 live'
The Radio Review of 2014
where "Christmas Puddings" was searched for during the show, it also included an interview with Jason Williams. Due to the

Beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...

nature of the project the launch was with no marketing regarding its release. Instead there was a tweet from BBC Radio 4 for users to try it out and a blog post regarding its development.

References

{{BBC Radio Radio Explorer 2014 software 2014 establishments in the United Kingdom Internet properties established in 2014