Vision switching centre in Broadcasting House, during the 1952 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth. Phil Fearnley hopes that the Olympics will do for digital and connected TV what the coronation did for analogue TV.

In August last year, Roger Mosey, the BBC’s Director for 2012, and I set out our editorial and digital ambitions for the BBC’s coverage of the Games at the Media Guardian Edinburgh International TV Festival. We have come a long way since then, and over the past year, my team has been bringing those digital ambitions to life.

One of the key elements of that strategy is to bring our audiences over 2,500 hours of live sport online via 24 High Definition streams - every sport, from every venue on every day – across four screens: PC, mobile, tablet and connected TV.

Today, we have announced plans which allow cable and satellite providers to deliver the same 24 streams that will be available on the BBC Sport website, via the BBC Red Button service and corresponding EPG channels. Roger Mosey has blogged about this, and I wanted to outline how this will work technically in a little more detail.

We want our audiences to intrinsically feel that they are part of a family of BBC digital Olympics products, no matter what platform they are on – PC, mobile, tablet or TV. The design of these new red button services reflects that, and adapts around the capabilities of the various platforms and their set top boxes.

The red button services will be built by the platform operators themselves in line with BBC product, technical and UX designs, to ensure that consistency, standardisation and ease of use.

Our Digital Olympic services for TV extend beyond the satellite and cable platform plans we have announced today, and we intend to go into more detail on this in the coming weeks. While it is significantly more complex to design and deliver standard services for connected TV, we are working hard to make sure our audiences have as much choice and access as possible on all platforms, alongside our core digital offer on the BBC Sport website.

Our vision for BBC Online is as a single service, made up of ten products (including News, Sport, Weather, iPlayer) across four screens (PC, mobile, tablet and connected TV) - our 1-10-4 strategy.

Our announcement today is clearly focussed on the TV platform. However, over time the lines are starting to blur between IP and broadcast channels, and between platform boundaries. Today's announcement ensures that 24 channels are available on all BBC online platforms in the UK, but also on traditional TV platforms, and as red button services.

We have already started to deliver aspects of the digital Olympics. Our portal for the games showcases the best video, news, and content from the BBC and forms the main digital gateway into the BBC's 2012 and Olympic coverage.

The Olympic pages on the newly re-launched BBC Sports site are already proving extremely popular as the number of Olympic sport test events happen. We are also hugely excited by what we are testing in our "labs" at the moment and look forward to sharing more of this with you very soon.

Broadcast television’s first big moment was the coronation in 1953, which brought the nation together around the TV screen for the first time. Our aspiration is that 2012 will do for digital and connected televisions what the coronation did for TV. I hope and believe when the dust has settled on the Olympic Games you will agree with me.

Phil Fearnley is the General Manager, News and Knowlege, BBC Future Media

Current BBC London 2012 portal, bbc.co.uk/2012

At the Media Guardian Edinburgh International TV Festival I took part in a session about the BBC's plans for London 2012. BBC Director of 2012 Roger Mosey opened with an overview of our editorial ambitions for the Games, also announcing plans to capture key moments in Super Hi Vision and show these across three UK locations - reported here in The Guardian. I followed by presenting a 'sneak peek' of the BBC's online plans.

The BBC holds digital media rights for the Games, and more licence-fee payers than ever before are now connected: according to Ofcom 74% of people now have broadband; more than a quarter of adults (and half of all teens) own a smartphone; and one million internet-enabled TVs were sold during 2010. London 2012 provides an unparalleled opportunity to make the sporting and cultural celebration the most connected and inclusive yet.

This is also an opportunity to offer audiences unprecedented choice: last month we outlined our intention to deliver to audiences over 2,000 hours of live sport online via 24 High Definition streams - every sport, from every location on every day - but it's not just about choice of content. In line with our 'Delivering Quality First' strategy for BBC Online, we plan to make services available across four screens: computers, mobiles, tablets and connected TVs, or as Ralph Rivera has put it in the past "on whatever piece of glass you choose".

Key innovations

At Edinburgh, I talked about some of the innovations that we're experimenting with, with a view to including in the final BBC Olympics experience.

"Intelligent video"

To create a more active and immersive viewing experience when you're on the web. We plan to enrich video streams by providing context-sensitive data overlays. These overlays can then allow embedding of direct links to content. So if you're watching the fencing, for instance, you could click on the athlete's name in the data overlay on the video to jump straight to his profile page. And vice versa, through sophisticated tagging you could go direct from a leader board, into the video of a winning finish, for instance.

Dynamic curation

We're developing a new publishing platform that delivers pages that are dynamically and automatically created. Content can be tagged with an identifier that can be automatically pulled into the relevant page to provide a real-time, extensive, and trusted companion to events. We delivered a page for each country, squad and player during the World Cup in 2010 using this model and we're scaling this up for next year to deliver unparalleled up to the minute detail on each athlete, country and event. Delivering such a detailed and broad service via traditional editorial curation would be cost prohibitive.

Visual-first navigation

Pulling all this together is a user-experience based on horizontal navigation, consistent across all devices. This highly-visual "stream" allows us to give greater prominence to video and encourage browsing beyond this, making the breadth of content more accessible. Already popular in smartphone and tablet design, this natural and intuitive way to browse content is just like flicking through a magazine. Filters too, would enable users to tailor content on the page, like opting for more video according to their preferences.

Location-based mobile experience

Mobile will be integral to the way many follow events and interact with others. We'll be leveraging the distinct benefits of devices to improve London 2012 for audiences.

With half of teens now owning a smartphone (and 60% considering themselves to be 'highly' addicted to them - especially for social media) the mobile experience is going to be important for them. We envisage a digital experience that's as seamlessly social on mobile as on the web - with geo-location used to identify activity near to where users are and tools to share with friends on the move.

In the living room

The Independent summarised our plans to bring the Games into the living room - connected TV is another area of focus.

Analysts are forecasting that around 36 million TVs with built-in internet capability will be in homes by the end of 2016, and forthcoming innovations from the likes of Google TV and platforms such as YouView will help increase the penetration of connected TV before the games.

Our BBC iPlayer product for connected TV is available on over 300 devices (most recently Sony PS3), and we recently launched a BBC News app for connected TV which we'll be rolling out across further devices this year. For the Olympics we're developing a similarly structured product, with a navigational panel allowing users to flick between the 24 live streams via their remote control, and access stories and updates in full from the internet on the living-room TV.

Beyond London 2012

These innovations don't start and end with London 2012. Many will find feet in the other products of BBC Online over time. And, we'll continue to explore ways to improve our four-screen offer - the development of broadcast technology is iterative and we're some way from realising the connected storytelling vision that Ralph Rivera has outlined in the past (where a highly social and seamless experience is enjoyed through all four screens) - but the Games provide an opportunity to take real steps in that direction.

Phil Fearnley is General Manager for News & Knowledge, BBC Future Media responsible for the delivery of the Digital Olympics.

Phil and Sinead described how the Knowledge and Learning Product would enable learning journeys all through BBC content and on multiple devices. A film gave two examples; finding out about Madagascar Tortoises, and using BBC Food across smartphone, tablet, and TV to bake a cake and upload a victorious photograph. They took three questions.

Bookmarking live content and being able to access related content on the website is part of the plan, and the first question was about bookmarking live content across the rest of BBC online. Phil answered yes.

We see this as equally applicable across the whole of online … the recipe binder is just the same as a collection of news stories ... as a binder for your favourite sports team ... You should abstract ... across all of online.

Andrew Fox captured this ambition on twitter:

AndrewFox Nice, ambitious, K&L concepts. How to scale to all programming/content? That's the trick. #BBCOnline
17 Jun 14:29

Similarly, the the CBBC product includes the Games Grid, which the whole of BBC Online uses for persistent data.

Andy Doyle noted that the iPlayer was an App, and asked if there would be separate apps for seperate products. Phil said there was a role for both, with Apps more useful when you need native capabilities:

Whether it's around location services, whether it's around DRM, whether it's around a whole pile of things.

Finally, Sinead was asked whether individual brands, such as Bitesize, would disappear. Confirming that commissions would continue whatever the brand, Sinead said:

We're still thinking about what sits within the Knowledge and Learning banner, what is a brand in itself ... this product isn't officially launching until Autumn 2012 ... but we still need to create the same kind of content we have always created from a learning perspective ...

Phil Fearnley is the General Manager of News and Knowledge Future Media. Sinead Rocks is the Creative Director of BBC Learning.

Today's announcement of the launch of the BBC News product for connected TV represents an exciting step forward in the evolution of a truly multiscreen BBC News experience.

In a previous post I explained the BBC's new approach to product development, part of a single strategic vision for BBC Online and our plans to reshape the service: from 400 websites to ten products. Such synergies in news have helped us deliver a refreshed BBC News website and the continued roll out of a web experience optimised for mobile via our popular BBC News app. Ralph Rivera has published a post today about the importance of linking these screens via the concept of 'connected storytelling.

The BBC's sixth Public Purpose is to deliver the benefits of emerging technologies to the public, and the benefits of the coming together of broadcast and broadband are clear - new ways for audiences to enjoy content, enhanced availability of services and programmes, and opportunities for audiences to curate their own experiences.

Analysts are united in their expectation of huge growth in the number of connected devices in the market - whether internet-connected TVs or browser-enabled consoles. Internet connectivity can and will make TV even better for audiences.

Today's announcement is just the latest development in the BBC News interactive story. Ceefax, its digital BBC Text replacement, BBC Red Button, and BBC News Online have provided rolling access to breaking news and analysis, collectively, for decades. The BBC News product for connected TV builds on this by providing an on-demand, video-based news experience via video clips which can be navigated via your remote control.

BBC Online news editor Steve Herrmann will blog shortly on the BBC Editors' Blog explaining how this comes together editorially in the newsroom.

Although the connected TV market is still in its infancy and the medium is not yet a mainstream proposition, our plan is to build on this initial launch with Samsung and we're looking to work with other manufacturers to bring our product to their platforms as quickly as possible - technically, as it's built in HTML, it can be repurposed simply for a wide range of different operating systems and devices. By working with standardised products (we also build in Flash and MHEG) we minimise complexity for the market, and keep our re-versioning costs low.

We'd like to get your feedback, so please leave your comments under this post or tweet using the #bbconline hashtag.

Phil Fearnley is General Manager News & Knowledge, BBC Future Media

It was in this capacity I talked to industry at IPTV World Forum today, building on Executive Editor of BBC Online Roly Keating's address to the DTG earlier this month, by exploring how core BBC Online products could be re-imagined for connected TV.

Like Mobile, IPTV will be an expression of BBC Online. You'll be familiar with the headlines of our recent Putting Quality First announcements and the impact on BBC Online: a 25% reduction in budget, but for the first time a single strategic vision for the service comprising ten distinctive 'products', aligned to our editorial priorities. We've adopted a collaborative Product Management culture which unites tech and editorial to enable delivery of these distinctive, quality interactive propositions, whatever the platform - online, portable devices, and increasingly connected TVs.

The BBC is interested in IPTV for a number of reasons. The BBC's sixth Public Purpose is to deliver to the public the benefits of emerging technologies, so we're constantly innovating to drive digital adoption. For instance, BBC Text launched in 1999 and evolved into today's BBC Red Button service, used by over 12 million users per week. And, quality digital propositions in turn drive demand. BBC iPlayer has been a great catalyst in bringing video-on-demand to the mainstream. Launched in 2007 when the market for online 'catch-up' was negligible, in January we received 162 million requests for programmes. So we've a commitment to keep pace with innovation to fulfil our sixth Public Purpose, and respond to our audiences' demand - this is why we're backing YouView.

IPTV is arguably the platform of the future. Screen Digest reports that by 2014 90% of TV sets sold in Europe will be internet enabled. And of course, connected TVs are only part of the story; around three quarters of major brand consoles purchased in 2011 will be browser enabled so this is a huge area of growth.

That said, the IPTV market is in its infancy and we don't know what mainstream audience reaction will be. An agreed editorial strategy and defined product roadmap from the BBC are still a way off, but in the meantime we're keen to prototype and pilot within the market, glean audience feedback, and iterate quickly.

By looking at the strengths of BBC News on the web we can start to see how the service could be re-imagined for IPTV. When BBC News Online was refreshed last year we introduced 'live pages', housing up-to-the-minute AV content and real-time updates. Major events continue to demonstrate that traditional, 'lean-back' consumption isn't enough for audiences. During the recent disaster in Japan over 79,996 users 'shared' the live page; the live event experience on the web is strong.

Imagine a browser-based BBC News experience on your TV. With closer proximity between the live broadcast and BBC Online you can envisage users dipping out of a London 2012 linear broadcast to access details of an athlete, event, or location online - a context enriched by our advances in dynamic semantic publishing, which my colleague Jem Rayfield blogged about last year.

In comparison, apps optimised to a platform standard could deliver a more focused type of utility. You can imagine a BBC News app for connected TV that unites digital journalism with the AV of the BBC News Channel, improved by on-demand, allowing users to navigate through bulletins and to drive their own consumption. There's huge potential here, and the BBC's role is the same as ever: expressing the full, creative potential of the medium.

I ended my talk by pointing to complexity of the infant IPTV market. Our aim is to take our content and services where our audiences are, but it's impossible for the BBC - funded by the licence fee - to support the multitude of specifications emerging. By standardising our product definitions we aim to minimise complexity for the market and reduce re-versioning costs: this is the case with Mobile, and is a principle I hope to apply to our IPTV endeavours.

Lastly, the BBC is committed to delivering a common and consistent BBC IPTV experience across a variety of platforms and devices. Future interactive services will need to appeal to early digital adopters and more mainstream audiences. Services like Ceefax and its Digital Text replacement are so successful because they're so easy to use. A simple, intuitive navigational platform standard - seamlessly integrating linear and on-demand worlds - is what we ask of industry.

Phil Fearnley is General Manager News & Knowledge, BBC Future Media