Always good to take a peek at a brand new radio website, even better when it’s not a direct and unauthorised ripoff of another one.

So, after a considerable amount of months beavering away in Django, it’s great to see a brand new and much less unpleasant Capital Radio website has appeared.

First impressions are favourable: a big (very big) animated carousel on the front, which appears to be de rigeur in many content rich websites these days. Right now, the carousel is promoting something on the radio (as number one); a competition (as number two); and a feature on the site, the London Guide (as number three). I like the arrow motif at the top, which shows what’s coming next; and the ‘related links’ on the right hand side (though it wasn’t immediately obvious that they were related to the big picture).

The advertising is tastefully done. There are three big ads on the front page - one, the MPU, cleverly treated with the same graphical treatment as the other images on the site (a kind of coloured underlining) which is a nice design touch. I’m surprised by the amount of advertising on the front page; but the effect isn’t as unpleasant as you’d think, mainly because the pages are long: the front page itself is four screens long.

In common with most radio websites, ‘listen live’ is the biggest and most prominent link, in a consistent place just below the logo. It’s accompanied by something similar to the livetext that accompanies DAB broadcasts. I first saw the site during a programme, Capital Dance Anthems, that I suspect isn’t played off the playout system; since I got a rather confusing message that they were currently playing Oasis, and they’d just played… Oasis.

In a nice touch, the ‘on-air’ page lists the last four songs; but there’s little information about the current presenter. Clicking the names of the songs leads you not to a music section, but to a direct link to iTunes. The big splash on the front page about Johnny’s breakfast show leads you to a four paragraph story about his programme - it’s only on scrolling down the page, past the pointless social media bookmarks, that you realise there’s more about the programme. And not much more, it ought to be said. Mind, it’s more than the other programmes, which have one page each. For a radio station website, there’s precious little content about the radio station here. It’s always unfair to judge a website’s content on their first few days, but it will be interesting how quickly more content will appear for the radio presenters, and how much character the template is capable of giving.

Mind you - there’s a ton of news (mostly from ITN, but nicely presented); and then, there’s the London Guide. And, all of a sudden, GCap’s purchase of welovelocal.com makes sense. This is a ton of local, relevant, and impressive data. While a search for “pizza” near my house gives me the local Pizza Express but not the two italian restaurants and the takeaway that the area also offers, the “live events” search has pointed me to a venue I was previously unaware of, only three minutes’ walk away. There’s a ton of data, cleverly delivered mostly through a Google Maps mashup. And there’s some fun language used, too - things can be “five minutes away”, “one minute away”, or “a hop, skip and jump away”.

Technically, the URLs appear to be nice and clean; a vast increase from previous Article.asp?id=861883 type website addresses; the site appears to validate as valid HTML (yay); and the JavaScript libraries are minimised and consolidated for quick downloading. This is a quick site to use - again, a tremendous increase from previous incarnations.

The legacy stuff is less impressive. The webcam is the size of a small postage stamp, which for a young station is a little unfortunate; and, running something that’s not Windows, I’m unable to listen live to the radio station - the website refuses to show me the player, though does give me some useful advice to try to listen.

The music section (cleverly called “music and showbiz”) includes some bespoke content, like video interviews, which is a good thing to see (not that I could). I’m surprised that the station hasn’t moved to flash-based streaming - YouTube, et al, has rather forced the rest of the world to move away from proprietary solutions like Windows. But there’s a good amount of content here, mainly authored by the station (and using the benefits of the group, like photographs taken in Cardiff, where sister station Red Dragon lives). The link to the Hit 40 takes me surprisingly away from the main website, which I found a bit of a jarring effect; but it’s good content otherwise.

And it’s also clever to call the news section the “news and travel” section; while it’s difficult to find the travel stuff (it’s not in the main page once you move in, you need to find the link in the left-hand nav). Again, there’s some nice Google mappage going on here.

So - as a London website, it’s pretty good - a ton of news and music, a load of local info, and some really nicely put together content. As a radio station website, however, it’s content-poor. For now.

I know, I know, I’m sounding like a BBC shill at the moment. Sorry. Will stop shortly.

Richard Titus has written a great blog posting about the equally good new BBC homepage. (That isn’t it above - I didn’t want to spoil the surprise for you).

Two things I like about the posting: his sense of humour (humor?) shines through; and the excellent credits list at the end of his posting. Which makes me wonder why we (us, the internet) don’t do more credits on websites. My old team at Virgin Radio have credits (though that page doesn’t now appear to work correctly for me); Media UK has credits (though they’re rather out of date) but I think this is possibly the first time I’ve ever seen full credits for a piece of work on the BBC’s website. If we’re setting a new tradition here, then I’m all for it.

Photo: Dan Taylor. Used under licence.

BBC Radio 1 beat my former employer Virgin Radio to a recent Webby Award - and I wasn’t very pleased about it, if I might be honest. I genuinely thought that the Virgin Radio site had undergone a seismic change, reinventing itself as a music destination and innovative social network, all with a very small team. The listening public agreed; and Virgin got just 0.1% less votes than NPR (which has around ten times as many listeners). The judges disagreed with the voting audience, and voted BBC Radio 1’s site as better. I was cranky for a number of weeks after the award, and even now, recognising my current colleagues in BBC Radio 1’s interactive team as a bunch of geniuses, I still can’t quite tell myself to be pleased that BBC Radio 1 got the Webby.

Not that I’m saying it’s not well deserved. It is. The BBC Radio 1 website is great, and particularly when compared with the embarrassment of many commercial stations’ websites (here and overseas) the difference of quality is tremendous. The current Interactive Editor, Dan Heaf, is a hugely clever man who doesn’t apparently understand the meaning of the word “no” in the phrase “no, we can’t do that”, and amazingly gets it done anyway.

I say ‘the current editor’, because he’s moving on. Which is great news for Dan, but less great news for the rest of us.

The BBC Radio 1 (and 1Xtra) Interactive Editor gig is a great one, and probably the biggest gig in interactive music radio. I know that there are loads of people who read this blog who’d do a great job at it. Which is why I reckon you ought to take a peek at the job specification and if you think it’s you (yes, you), then apply.

And if you get the gig, hopefully we’ll retain the Webby next year. Yay! (Listen to me, what a turncoat.)