The trial service BBC Hull Interactive has been developed specifically for Kingston’s world-leading interactive television platform as part of the BBC’s five year investment programme in the region.

As well as exclusive interactive material from Eastenders to the Tweenies and Blue Planet – the service will offer unprecedented levels of local information and news content from regional and national BBC sources. In parallel, the service will offer new learning opportunities under the BBC’s Headstart umbrella delivering new interactive educational content to homes and schools via Kingston’s network.

This content will sit alongside the broad range of programmes already available on Kingston interactive television, including 60 channels of digital television, video-on-demand services, high speed Internet access and existing local information. At the end of July, 10,000 homes in the city had access to the service.

Kingston Chief Executive Steve Maine said: Kingston is delighted to be working with the BBC to realise the potential of our broadband community here in Hull. Kingston is committed to ensuring we offer our customers the broadest range of interactive content. The breadth and depth of the BBC service – and its uniqueness makes for more compulsive viewing. But it has broader impact too, in the development of new learning initiatives for our local children in school and at home.

This development underlines the shared vision between Kingston and the BBC of delivering compelling broadband content. We look forward to developing this relationship and expanding still further the range of services we can offer to the community we serve.

Launching the service in Hull today, BBC Director General Greg Dyke said: Hull will be seeing the future of broadcasting before the rest of the country. We are opening the door to a new era. New interactive technologies provide the BBC, as a public service broadcaster, with a unique opportunity to get closer to our audience – and for them to get more back from the BBC.

My ambition is to harness all of the benefits that digital technology provides and extend the BBC’s local and learning role still further – to place the BBC right at the heart of British community life in the twenty-first century.

BBC Hull Interactive will offer a new kind of interactive local TV with local information provided on-screen by BBC North and Radio Humberside, which will have a dedicated news team providing specially created multi-media programming, including local news, sport, weather and what’s on information. In total, there will be some 10,000 web TV pages and over 35 hours of video clips.

In addition, a wide range of national BBC content, from EastEnders to the main news bulletins and from Blue Planet to The Tweenies will be specially packaged for the Hull trials. In terms of interactivity and viewer choice, these will go far beyond what is currently possible on either the internet or conventional narrowband digital TV.

Two parallel Learning initiatives will offer for the first time anywhere a fully multi-media approach for children and adults under the new BBC HeadStart umbrella. This will be delivered into schools at all levels across the Hull Education Authority area and direct to homes via Kingston Communications’ interactive television platform and broadband network. Innovative packages have been developed to meet local educational needs and support the great opportunities that exist at community level throughout the area.

SOURCE: COMPANY PRESS RELEASE