UPDATE: Reboot was a competition to rethink the bbc.co.uk homepage during April and May 2006. It is now closed.
- The gallery of submitted designs and prototypes
- The winner
- The runners- up

FF Ecosystem and BBC Malkovich

What we liked:
- The way that Andy (and his colleagues ?) have cracked how to reflect content, conversations and data taking place away from bbc.co.uk
- That nod to Being John Malkovich - seeing "our" content through someone else's eyes, that letting go, neatly articulates some of the new challenges for a BBC2.0
- How it also has several answers to the query posed to us by Jeff Jarvis after a recent visit; "shouldn’t your role be to guide viewers/listeners/readers/users/us to the best information and programmes you can help us find"
- As with several of the runners up, this was a design you wanted to have. now. (even if, on reflection, some of our more practically minded colleagues expressed a few concerns!.)
- This is a simple page/front end for a hideously complex amount of data.
- Actually it was the BBC - You - Everybody else slider that swung it. A brilliant idea for a widget.
- And mentioning the tears that had gone into producing the concept.

My boss is a Spurs fan. A devoted Spurs fan. Clearly MattB (the sample user) is a gooner . Don't say we aren't going out on a limb in plumping for this one.

Actually this was really tough. Apologies to everyone who has put aside many hours submitting entries. I think you're supposed to say "You're all winners" at this point. Unfortunately you're not. Just FF Ecosystem are but full respect to everyone who committed hours and effort as part of this competition.

We will be contacting Andy(and his colleagues) today and hopefully getting him into the BBC soonish to hand over his prize.

Full list of the runners up.

So the runners up in no particular order are:

1.Cintrao - BBC Homepage
Things we liked: The integration of widgets, the contextual help (step by step guide to ...), the control of the user over the layout and the boxes.

2.Paul - BBC Active
Things we liked Paul did something that several users did (but we didn't insist on) which was to articulate his vision and thoughts on the competition in extensive detail back on his site. This was a particularly rich example of that. What impressed us also was the smart usage (tucked away in the top rh corner) of a minimised media/radio player and his thoughts (that Martin Belam also cited in one of his reviews) on how to customise that "Radio 1 in the morning, Five live in the afternoon".
Read his notes and you'll also find some musings on Charles Clarke's head.

3.James Willock - BBC Cool Blues
James Willock
Things we liked:
This was an example where the commenters were aligned with the judges..
Tim Dennell said:
" I really like:
Use of lenses to reveal more info.
Use of vector graphics for weather symbols.
To make the customisation button more obvious I’d prefer it to ‘flash’ gently or even flash and say ‘click me’.
Overall a nice personalisation page."
I never say the word nice, though, if I can help it.

4.BBC:refresh - Frankie Roberto
Things we liked:
Here again we've been a bit paradoxical in the sense that we've shortlisted this site although overall there were other designs that we valued more. What swung it was incredible documentation. Frankie really does show us "his working out".

5.BBC 2.0 - Netrix
Things we liked:
Netrix rethought the page almost entirely around the concept of playing out video and audio and sees the homepage entirely as an a/v content guide/EPG.

6.Calvin - BBC Web 2.0ed out
Things we liked:
We envisaged more entries like Calvins. This does border on a web2.0 parody (well we did mention Web2.0 in the brief again and again). Ajax: tick, Tag clouds: tick, RSS: tick yep they're all there. Even the mocked up promo was about Web2.0, that said it handles the representation of personal data across the internet (and the BBC) really well.Yet again there is an Incredible level of documentation, varied mock ups/user journeys and some novel ideas (tag link bubble anyone ?).

7..Croops - BBC Reinvented
Things we liked: This looked real. I wanted to use this.

8. I don't want a portal, I want an information workspace - ukavu -
Things we liked: The title. Although you had me at "I don't want a portal". The only person to include personalised Major League Baseball scores.

9. Jim Schumacher, Sean Schumacher - future is delicious
Things we liked: I liked the nod to the fonts of the Apple homepage (can you spot ?). This is another extensive rethink of entry points for the BBC in far more depth than we envisaged receiving. Worth noting just for the "at a glance" dashboard.

10. Triple John - BBC feeds
Things we liked: It was the 2 fascinating "social media" ideas here that swung it. The promos for Project: Planet Earth ("six billion volunteers required"). Eat that myspace! And the idea of a collaborative wiki based EastEnders script also stood out. This pushed things a bit. This felt like it might happen.

We will (from tomorrow morning) be in touch with all of the above to arrange your prizes and addresses.
So what about the winner. They're picked and waiting but ... I'm afraid we'll be leaving that til...tomorrow.

1.Thanks
We were bowled over by the # of entries for the competition. In the end we received 138 designs, prototypes and mock ups. In retrospect we probably didn't give you enough time to enter and then, in the end, dithered over announcing the winners (in fact we still are) so so a very British cheers and all that and thanks for sticking with us.

2.The Judging
The entries have been judged by myself; Jem Stone (I'm an executive producer at bbc.co.uk ) and Tom Loosemore who is bbc.co.uk's Head of Strategic Innovation and is leading a project to radically overhaul the BBC website. We also had input from Martin Belam who was a guest poster to the reboot blog whilst we were running the competition, and thanks to the hundreds of comments and blog posts about the competition. In doing the shortlisting we had a big steer from the entrants to the competition and the users of the site.

Also as part of Tom's project a selection of the designs were also evaluated by on a bbc.co.uk away day (and no they didn't play croquet) by the heads of dept for the various BBC web teams.

3.Criteria
We were looking at a number of criteria. Surprisingly, despite our pleadings there were v.few that did, in the end take it in Ben's phrase "all the way back to the drawing board". Bucking the trend were these three entries (from the same team ?) all received at the same time; Matthia's; BBC icecubed, Benno's Complete Shuffle Box, and Carina's BBC Shuffle combination box that had a real poke at navigation metaphors but that was about it. The overwhelming pattern was boxes and tables and panels and lists.
The other key criteria was exploring greater relevance and if i must say it then that (horrible) word; personalisation. Inspired by a number of speeches and interviews with Ashley Highfield before the competition started where he talked about coming up with a "a personalised BBC homepage that will provide people with a starting place for their journey through the BBC's content and beyond.", many of the entries focused on the concept of share. Several were actually called mybbc.

Finally with the impending launch of the BBC's iPlayer we were looking for (and got) all manner of attempts to crack how to showcase and highlight video content.

4.Special thanks for trying to subert the whole thing
You didn't win but we had good fun with Chris Hammond's streamlined portal, Matt Sephton's Ceefax tribute and we had a soft spot for NIrelan's empty screen; "I am sending you a blank page becuase this contest proves that what you need to do is give the content away in a format that everyone can use to design thier own version of the site.". Perhaps one day (he says wistfully) the rather complex and vast BBC site will be structured in such a way that we really will be able to do a CSS reboot competition.

5.We had no idea that Slashdot would run a reboot competition at exactly the same time offering the same prize(s). It was a genuine coincidence. Honest.

6.Finally: We want to reboot, not rip-off. Just to echo Ben's post from back in early May. This has been a valuable process for us as we go through the process of rethinking bbc.co.uk. It was part of a number of inputs. As Tom said in a note explaining how we used the entries "internally" - "It helped freshen up our thinking and stop us from getting too parochial. It's proved very helpful to have the 'voice of the user' in the room, albeit manifested as A3 printouts of entries covering the walls. "

In the meantime. Martin Belam who contributed a 16 (count em') part guide to designing and building a bbc.co.uk homepage as part of the blog for the competition has been surveying the entries (over 5 parts..natch) on his personal blog; Currybet.
Reviewing the reboot: bbc.co.uk entries: Part One | Two | Three | Four | Five

There are also further blog coverage of the competition on my del.icio.us reboot tag.

See you on Wednesday.

What i have done is grouped important features together into there own sections to make browsing easier because th web page is not as cluttered...

As you can see the search box is in i's own little space and your eye is drawn immediately to it... you know what it's like when your on a webpage and you go 'where have the put the search box now' and all the time it stares you in the face because it's not eye catching enough... I feel my design elimenates this problem...

Although Simplistic it allows for alot of interactivity and functionality as well as being very user friendly and usability standards compliant...

I suggest the following major tasks that the BBC faces with:

• 
  To preserve the existing BBC audience that visit BBC sites and surfs over the content that you can rely on.
  
• 
  To combine the already existing technologies and ways of presenting the information with what we used to call Web 2.0.
  
• 
  To integrate smoothly into new conditions and forms of the existing web huge array of high-quality content being then and now created by BBC editors.
  
• 
  To create services meeting the demands of the present time and make a tight integration both between with them and also with the existing traditional services.
  
• 
  To provide a simple and convenient interface to the easily access both of the existing content and to create and share users’ data.
  

In practice, the major and prospective on-line BBC services will be transformed into the following:

• 
  The already existing educational, entertaining and other sites should be closer to the people without prejudice as far as to the quality of information is concerned. I think I believe it would be logical to complement them with the editors and journalists blogs of of these sites, both individual and shared. Probably there is a sense It might be reasonable to invite volunteer bloggers experts in the mentioned subjects. It may be realized by way of personal invitations to such blogs. Actually, don’t you think it will be bad (I believe it would be good) if that very professor whose course was finished (closed?) by the site editor will make his entries to the blog on the BBC History site from time to time? Moreover, common users will have an opportunity possibility to post their comments.
  
• 
  I have no idea what is iMP. There is no information regarding it, except one screenshot I've find. If it is such a small new window that looks like Windows Media Player we would better do this differently. Definitely, there is certain meaning to to download the playlist simultaneously looks rather logically, to use momentary search, and everything the rest etc. the AJAX and MM Flash technologies provide us with (similar to that everywhere throughout the site). Such buttons as "Play", "Pause" and others are essential.
  
  
  But, I believe they should not be similar to those on the screenshot. For them it will be enough for it just to function — but in the same browser window it was called up, with those very links at the top of the page, with that very search toolbox, with that very look as usual web page. After all, multimedia in the web is no more something new. It is not a stress and a wonder for which you should open a new window, supply it with solid big buttons to understand that the music is breaking out just now!
  
• 
  The Internet is very big, and regrettably the search engines are only robots. Despite of the site ranking criteria, (while the major criteria for their operation is our desire that the results of each search should be better...) they are founded on we wish the results to be better from the point of view of their humanization.
  
  
  Meanwhile, regarding the category of artistic photography I would prefer to see link to Helmut Newton’s site on the very first page. It might be regardless of how good the web-master has optimized this site it under this or that searching machine. In my view the catalogue of the sites that it is necessary to regenerate (or it is only me am I alone who couldn’t find it?). As far as I remember once it was there.
  
  
  It could be looks logically enough that the BBC Directory or at least what concerns the cataloguing and sorting the information should be continued and extended. It might be possible to reflect the BBC sites at the top, if the BBC has sites that require the given category. Of course, this is not the Web 2.0. This radically contradicts to the ideology of the Web 2.0. But this is the BBC.
  
  
  There should be sites in the Catalogue that are looked through (reviewed) and provided with annotations of the editors or volunteers of that very "first circle", whom you can get in only owing to the personal invitation of the editors. Oh, Well, but who prevents from providing the description of the sites with tags? And, here we are again making Web 2.0!
  
  
  Most likely, that the existing content will be also provided by way of tags. Isn’t it? And by the way, according to the user’s choice the BBC Directory can be shown not only in the form of systematic catalogue but also like "clouds" similar to the tags on Web 2.0 sites.
  
• 
  So, for saving to preserve the succession of what is now "A-Z Index", it should be transformed into tags. This would be logical and it would take less time to get used to the new titles of the same services of content indexing.
  
• 
  0. Subsequent to that we need an interface to create, share, change look of the user's content. Most probably, the basic number of services have to look approximately like the following, starting from "Your BBC's-":
  
• "Profile" is the personal users’ information
• "Tags" is a a set of key words that describe interests of the current user. If it is full, it can be used for automatic personal ranging, being displayed on this or that information page.
• "Groups" as a service is the next logical continuation of "The BBC Directory" and "The Catalogue" with greater qualifying split of information according to the interests. There are those groups in the user’s profile which user takes part in, or those groups which user has created. Of course, group creator will have an access to the interface for the adding and changing the tags that will describe its content. All users can make groups within the limits of the existing categories of "The Catalogue". All members of the group write down to the general blog, that can consist of (may comprise) private blogs. Other users write down their comments.
• "Bookmarks" the place for online links storage. For sure, links are automatically rated according to the number of clicks and/or to the number of their mentioning in general users' links base. The user can be also shown "Popular links", — based on the statistics of their entering to the bookmarks by other users/number of clicks in addition to those links that he/she entered in the list himself/herself. Otherwise, "It Can Be Interesting For You", that is based on the tag correspondence describing the links to the users' tag.
• "Friends" is the list of the people whose personality this given very user is interested in. Most popular personalities of the portal can be represented additionally by offering to add them to "Friends".
• The "Multimedia Box" or the "Playlist" is a collection of links on the audio- and video-podcasts. Evidently, it also has a sense to announce most popular rolls and those that mostly correspond to the users' interests.
• "Surf History" is the log to advance the user through the BBC sites
• "Recent Searches" - no comments :)
• "Feeds" is the user’s personal adapted page, mixed with the blog posts of another users, including translation of RSS feeds from the other popular blog-sites, such as LiveJournal
• "Page" is the user’s personal adapted page mixed with the above mentioned content. Its necessity is a moot point but…
• 
  Search Engine. I would not like to look like a fan of the "It-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named" fruit company… But, what can prevent us from leaving on each page a one text input entry field? IMHO, we don't need "ok" or "search" buttons. "Enter" button on the keyboard is closer to the letter keys than the mouse.
  
  
  On the page with search results, somewhere on the top we can type 5 (7, 9,12) from that site where the search was initiated. Then, below we can type top 5 from "Catalogue", then top 5 from "iMP", other BBC sites, blogs, the Internet and from other places, any way we like. One can make an experiment, with the possibility to further demonstrate all the results from each source. AJAX will be to the point here, especially for the search in what is already found.
  
• 
  And, of course we will put links to the RSS Feeds wherever it is possible.
  
• 
  Nothing special but has just come up to my mind. Such sites as http://www.thefwa.com/ give us many examples of playing the multimedia Internet. Some things should be used on the sites of TV and radio channels, as well as educational sites.
  

And at last, we smoothly move to the home page. Though the fashion on total adjustment of all and everything sank into the oblivion, but we can and must adjust a little bit with common sense, only that one which needs the adjustment. To be exact:

• "Default" profile is to display all of the great BBC content in small pieces and all of the user's activities.
• "Newspaper" is to display much more political, regional, sport news; TV programs, information about the culture life, etc. in the users' region.
• "Journal" is to display educational, etc. and of this sort content plus some information about cultural events in the place your residence area live.
• "Blogger" is intended for the people who lead active public life in the Internet often communicating with each other.
• "Multimedia" is intended for the people who are interested, first of all, in audio and video content items.
• "Search" is for those people who want to use the BBC site primarily as a search instrument.

It is evident that two layouts should be applied to each profile.

90 percents of the users have monitors with 1024*768 screen resolution, and higher. For them is the base "wide" layout.

Other 10 percents of the users have monitor with of 800*600 pixel resolution. Especially for them, and also for those whose monitors’ resolution wasn’t detected, we would employ the "narrow" layout. Moreover, we will do it in such a way that the graphics for different layouts should not be saved twice. We will provide an the opportunity to switch the layouts for both categories.

That's all at this time.

P. S. I've not so much time to create design, that will never been implemented. So I've finished and upload only the "Deffault" page. In the other hand, it's a very interesting task. I'd like to improve the rest of the pages, if it needed, as soon as possible.

There are three parts, each with sub sections

+Header
--Quick Links to main sections
--Log In Register
--Search
--Page Path (www. BBC.co.uk ->)
--Launch the BBC Media Player

+Content
--Promo
--BBC infomation
--Page content
--User specific

+Footer
--copyright
--Terms and conditions
--Low Fi version

I'll now try and explain in more detail what I'm trying to achieve with each section and my ideas for the BBC:

+Header
--Quick Links to main sections -
The sections most likely to be visited muct be easy to see and use.

--Log In Register -
Prominant so people see it quickly

--Search
With the ammount of content on the BBC this is a valuable resource for all users, there is also a link to "search options"

Search Options could be somthing as extreme as choosing a search engine like google or yahoo, or just the ammount of results per page.

--Page Path (www. BBC.co.uk ->)
So users can see how they got to that page and can track back sections (i.e. if they were linked to a page they may wanto to visit pages in that category and will be able to go to that category instead of trying to find it by going back to the homepage and searching).

--Launch the BBC Media Player
Something I think is lacking on the BBC site at the moment, so I made it more prominant so users don't have to be invited to use it, as I see at the moment. They choose when they use it and what they view/listen too.

+Content
--Promo
All important advertisment for BBC programs, scemes etc.

--BBC infomation
Stats on the BBC, this can be changed on the other pages, e.g. it may become a list of category's on the news page. Each stat would be a list giving infomation on that stat or going to a list of stats (i.e. RSS feeds would go to a list of RSS feeds) This infomation can also be used by the BBC to see which sites are mor popular, which need work etc.

--Page content
The main content of the page, the too central columns would collapse to one on pages past the homepage

--User specific
User profiles and their local area, so the y can see what they can do. They'll need to be logged in for the user options, and the local info would have to default to somewhere. This infomation can also be used by the BBC to see which sites are mor popular, which need work etc.

+Footer
--copyright
Self explanitory

--Terms and conditions
Self explanitory

--Low Fi version
This can be used by dial u users, it will display a almost graphic less screen, just preview images on a simple CSS layout for quick loading.

There could also be a way to force this on when alot of traffic is expencted, i.e. in a national emergancy.

The User System would include contac info with the option of hiding it to the public or not.

Also a postcode, so people need not worry about the cookies for the weather etc. it would be in the database.

A user system means that when someone registers they don't need to join BBC sites multiple times, they are automatically registered to the entire site, whether or not they use it, they may get and interest in some part in the future and will ot need to register.

It may not be the prettiest, but I believe it has potential.

Tabbing for the directory section.
Instead of providing links to the actual page (e.g Music) is should be possible to view the essential contents within that box.

Instead of having the same colour for all the boxes I found it better to use different colours.. In this way , users will find the relevant section more easliy the next time they visit the website.

To navigate to other webpages (e.g news, radio , tv ) There is a kinda navigation bar at the top-right corner.

If I had money (which is not the case right now), I would save it :) For the sake of improving the service I strongly recommends that BBC introduces a toolbar for Mozilla/IE users.
I regularly check the BBC for news and each time I have to come to the website. It will be gr8 if there was a toolbar especially for the BBC giving the headlines, news alert, tv listing and a search bar as well.
Moreover users should be made more participative : they can judge what story deserve to be on the homepage (a bit likee digg.com)

When you currently go to the BBC website what's the first thing that you see? Try and answer this question from the top of your head, without looking. You can't. There is so much there. BBC has a wealth of content like no other organization in the world, and the homepage tries to show it all at once.

The premise for my idea is that clutter is unnecessary and counter intuitive.
The first thing that you see when you go to my version is the dark blue navigation column and the interactive content area it controls. As well the 'BBC Today' news area on the right.

The first item on the list is 'Radio', the white box area under it lists a brief of information for it. If you were to click on the next item ('TV') the radio white box would collapse and the TV one would expand. (See: new www.yahoo.com on the right for effect, this is achieved purely with Ajax)

The content area (where it says "content goes here") would have the radio stations listed via a hierarchical system similar to the Radio section in the iTunes media player. (See: www.apple.com/itunes) This is a more effective and space economical way to find the station you are looking for. Once you are at the desired station you are presented with scheduling information and an internet radio feed if one is available. (detachable player window)

The TV and other items on the list work in much the same way.

Search

Next up is the search area. Currently, the BBC homepage has a duplicate of this on the left and the top right. This is unnecessary, and is a waste of space and could be cause for confusion in my opinion.

I have created a single, integrated search box with a drop down menu with the following selections: 'All of the BBC', 'BBC News & Sport', 'BBC Audio & Video', 'The Web'.

Browsing the Directory

The directory is simply HUGE. It takes most of the space the homepage has, and towards what end? Why have such an extruding eyesore and distraction (human eye is drawn towards the left) all over the page.

The directory is not something you want to be looking at most of the time, but only very occasionally. Hence, it shouldn't even be seen without scrolling down. Instead of it being vertical I made it horizontal.

Also, having too many items makes it that much harder to locate the one you are looking for. I decreased the number of items listed. The 'Full Directory' link will bring you to a page dedicated to this if wanted. Also, a suggestion would be to have the items from the directory listed on the main page be decided upon by popularity.

BBC Local

Selection of your locale for the BBC can easily be done from the front page with no need to go to a second page. Just select your location on the map, zoom in or enter a zip code for a greater degree of accuracy.

The information presented here is the weather, your local news and other information and perhaps snippets from your local BBC page.

"Reserved for the BBC"

The light blue colored area to the left of the 'BBC Local' area is reserved to whatever content the BBC website team deems important to push on to the front page. It's ever changing.

"Less is more – What do you mean that's it?!"

At the common 1024x768 resolution you won't see past this point without scrolling down. Let's take another look;

You got your interactive compact menu area full of nicely presented information and media, you then look to the right and see today's major news and events. Below it is the area dedicated to your local area, and to the left is other BBC content. The eye is drawn clock wise, it feels very natural.

Also, there's no need to actually signup or login, at worst you'll have to reselect your local area, an operation that takes mere seconds.

Whatever content that your looking for that's not directly listed you get to via the directory at the bottom of the page, one short scroll of a mouse away.

There you have it folks.

"Wait, what about all the Web 2.0 stuff, what's that gray area over there?'"

You guessed correctly, the dark area between the directory and the BBC Local is an area for the user, full of web 2.0 goodies. For this you need to signup and have a browser that supports cookies.

Notice that near the top left of the page it says "hello, John Cleese". (if you're logged out, it says 'register' instead naturally) To get to your preferences you simply click on your name.

From here you can set your locale, and create RSS feeds.

You could also add various widgets like boxen to the dark area I mentioned. (ala, personalized Google, or Apple's dashboard, konfabulator, 'etc)

Any page on the BBC website when you are logged in will have an 'add to my interests' link in a prominent place. From your profile you have a page that lists them all and where applicable has an 'add widgets' option.

For example, consider the following scenario: you registered to the BBC, you are now logged in. You scrolled down to the directory and selected 'Business and Money', on one of the pages in that category you clicked on the 'add to my interests' button and continued reading, uninterrupted. Later, at your leisure you click on your profile and see 'Business and Money' in your interests list. Next to it you click 'see available widgets' – for example a stocks widget, 'etc. You then add it and it appears on the BBC homepage in the dark area, and on a 'my widgets' list in your profile.

Widgets are customizable and draggable. Also just clicking on that 'add to my interests' lets the BBC have more data about you to analyze and better cater content to your liking.

Since there is such a wealth of content and large number of categories the number of widgets can be almost unlimited. It would be smart for the BBC to consider creating the first hundred or so and later releasing an API for the public.

Next, there is the whole social interaction scene. Where the BBC matches you up with people from your locale or with similar interests, 'etc. You can allow others to follow your reading activity (just friends, or everybody), messaging, 'etc.

Also a system similar to Digg.com where you read a story on BBC and vote for it, making it go higher in the story list and more likely to appear in other peoples 'to read' lists in their widgets. (while also having such statistics is quite useful for the BBC staff to have as well, for them to better editorialize content for none registered or none widget using users which are probably the majority still)

Finally, an online bookmark system similar to del.icio.us is quite useful. With your one BBC login you can take your bookmarks and other information with you. Separate it for internal BBC content and external content for easier navigation.

Also, the search results page should be revamped to include other related sources such as wikipedia and IMDB and other news sources for example.

Technical Details

I mentioned a 1024x768 resolutions before, while it is quite common nowadays, 800x600 still needs to be supported.

In such a case, instead of a two column layout the page will shrink to a one column layout. (see: www.alistapart.com – it's quite doable)

The colors I selected are the reds from the news section and the very same light blue color the BBC currently uses. I opted for a darkish background for various reasons, it seems to me to be more aesthetic and readable. The boxification (word that I just made up) serves a purpose, it's a natural guide for the eye. Instead of the mess the current page is, my version makes it very easy to focus on whatever you want to look at.

I also went for a simple gradient at the very top of the page based on the original gray currently in use.

These are all just suggestions, the purpose of this all was to get my ideas and the feel across. If for various reasons (such as usability, however I'd disagree that darker colors impair usability) the theme must be kept light, a white background still works. I strongly urge for a darker background to be at least an option in the user preferences.

Nothing you see on the page requires anything more then some Ajax in various degrees of complexion and should be fine for just about all browsers visiting the BBC presently. I do however have a suggestion about the delivery of video: RealPlayer and WindowsPlayer are not viable or desirable options for everybody, why not take this redesign as an opportunity to switch to flash as your primary means of video delivery (you can still keep the other formats as options)? Flash 8 was designed for this very purpose and is quite suitable. (See: YouTube, Google Video)

Though the screenshot only shows two columns on the center section, the idea is for those two columns to fluidly rearrange themselves into 3 or 4 columns if the user's screen resolution allows it, specifying a minimum width and and maximum width so extremely large widths will not "destroy" the layout.

The World Weather box is self-explanatory. When available, or appropriate, a weather alert appears below it with an news weather item related to the choice of country/city that is selected on the World Weather.

The user can choose one of three skins to view the page. Those three skins change the overall color - and mood - of the site. The three base colors chosen, refer to the RGB color system used on monitors and televisions.

The video box on the right allows the user to choose other videos to view right on the homepage, or to go directly to a video area page where the user can search, preview or download any available videos from BBC.

The myBBC tab refers to an overlay that loads on top of this page where a logged user can edit not only his profile but where he can edit (delete, etc) rss feeds from any part of BBC. These RSS feeds are automatically combined into a single RSS feed so the user can follow up threads, breaking news, weather, etc, and even syndicate that content for his or her blog or personal page. Non logged users can of course login here.
All of the content from the feeds stored in myBBC and possibly the choices a user does while logged (i.e. view an article) feed all or some the content that appears on the page so as more choices and content is viewed by the user, the content showed gets more and more related to the users preferences.
Editorial content can, and should, take priority over this functionality, when deemed appropriate by the BBC staff (late breaking news, etc).

If I had more time, I would have put together a working prototype! I'm right in the middle of A-level exams at the moment so time is rather limited and although I did start work on an HTML version I couldn't get it finished in time.