University of Sunderland Library Blog

2 million on-demand TV & radio broadcasts now available

by · Published · Updated

A list of all 65 channels available through Box of Broadcasts

Current broadcasts from 65 free-to-air channels are available through BoB.

We have recently begun a subscription to Box of Broadcasts (BoB), an on-demand TV & radio streaming service.

BoB is an educational broadcasting and archives service from the British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council (BUFVC) which gives access to over two million TV and radio broadcasts dating back to the 1990s. Content includes BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Four, ITV, Channel 4, Film4 and more. There are 10 foreign language channels (including Italian, French and German) and BBC Shakespeare Archive content dating back to the 1950s.

As well as giving stable, legal access to broadcast content, BoB offers some exciting features for teaching and learning.

  • Links to broadcasts or clips can be embedded into presentations, or embedded into Canvas.
  • Advanced search: It’s possible to search BoB by subject or program as well as by date e.g. it’s possible to see everything broadcast from a date in time.
  • Clips and notes: You can use slider bars on a broadcast to create clips and write annotations on those clips. It’s possible to put these clips into a compilation. No extra software is needed.
  • Playlists: Tutors can create playlists, with annotations, and make these available publicly, to a cohort, or keep them private in a workspace. There are over 80,000 publicly available playlists, and it’s possible to search these by curator, keyword, or institution. Playlists can include programs, individual broadcasts, clips or clip compilations
  • Transcripts: BoB also offers transcripts, which would be helpful for accessibility, language comprehension, quoting for essays, as well as scriptwriting. Transcripts are fully searchable by keyword

Ready to get watching? You log in directly from the BoB homepage. Before you are able to watch, you will need to log in with your university ID and password, and then enter your email address and name (one time only) to create an account within BoB. It should work in all internet browsers, but Chrome seems to be working the best at the moment. Due to licensing restrictions, BoB can only be used in the United Kingdom.

If you’re interested in finding out more about how to use BoB in your teaching, learning and research, book training for yourself or your students. Meantime, BoB offers a few video tutorials to get you logged in and searching for content.

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