Serendipity reveals ontological description of BBC programmes

I have been enjoying Flight of the Conchords on BBC Four recently. Unfortunately, I missed the first couple of episodes of the new series. So that I could configure my Humax HDR to record all future episodes, I visited the BBC website to access their online schedule. It was while doing this that I discovered visible usage of the BBC's Programmes Ontology. The programme title (i.e. Flight of the Conchords) is hyperlinked to an RDF file on this schedule page.

The Semantic Web is supposed to provide machine readable data, not human readable data, and hyperlinking to an RDF/XML file is clearly a temporarily glitch at the Beeb. After all, 99.99% of BBC users clicking on these links would be hoping to see further details about the programme, not to be presented with a bunch of angled brackets. Nevertheless, this glitch provides an interesting insight for us since it reveals the extent to which RDF data is being exposed on the Semantic Web about BBC programming, and the vocabularies the BBC are using. Researchers at the BBC are active in dissemination (e.g. ESWC2009, XTech 2008), but it's not often that you surreptitiously discover this sort of stuff in action at an organisation like this.

The Programme Ontology is based significantly on the Music Ontology Specification and the FOAF Vocabulary Specification, but their data deploys – admittedly not in the example below, except in the namespace declarations – Dublin Core and SKOS.

Oh, and the next episode of Flight of the Conchords is on tonight at 23:00, BBC Four.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf = "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:rdfs = "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
xmlns:foaf = "http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"
xmlns:po = "http://purl.org/ontology/po/"
xmlns:mo = "http://purl.org/ontology/mo/"
xmlns:skos = "http://www.w3.org/2008/05/skos#"
xmlns:time = "http://www.w3.org/2006/time#"
xmlns:dc = "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:dcterms = "http://purl.org/dc/terms/"
xmlns:wgs84_pos= "http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#"
xmlns:timeline = "http://purl.org/NET/c4dm/timeline.owl#"
xmlns:event = "http://purl.org/NET/c4dm/event.owl#">

<rdf:Description rdf:about="/programmes/b00l22n4.rdf">
<rdfs:label>Description of the episode Unnatural Love</rdfs:label>
<dcterms:created rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime">2009-06-02T00:14:09+01:00</dcterms:created>
<dcterms:modified rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime">2009-06-02T00:14:09+01:00</dcterms:modified>
<foaf:primaryTopic rdf:resource="/programmes/b00l22n4#programme"/>
</rdf:Description>

<po:Episode rdf:about="/programmes/b00l22n4#programme">
<dc:title>Unnatural Love</dc:title>
<po:short_synopsis>Jemaine accidentally goes home with an Australian girl he meets at a nightclub.</po:short_synopsis>
<po:medium_synopsis>Comedy series about two Kiwi folk musicians in New York. When Bret and Jemaine go out nightclubbing with Dave, Jemaine accidentally goes home with an Australian girl.</po:medium_synopsis>
<po:long_synopsis>When Bret and Jemaine go out nightclubbing with Dave, Jemaine accidentally goes home with an Australian girl. At first plagued by shame and self-doubt, he comes to care about her, much to Bret and Murray&#39;s annoyance. Can their love cross the racial divide?</po:long_synopsis>
<po:masterbrand rdf:resource="/bbcfour#service"/>
<po:position rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#int">5</po:position>
<po:genre rdf:resource="/programmes/genres/comedy/music#genre" />
<po:genre rdf:resource="/programmes/genres/comedy/sitcoms#genre" />
<po:version rdf:resource="/programmes/b00l22my#programme" />
</po:Episode>

<po:Series rdf:about="/programmes/b00kkptn#programme">
<po:episode rdf:resource="/programmes/b00l22n4#programme"/>
</po:Series>

<po:Brand rdf:about="/programmes/b00kkpq8#programme">
<po:episode rdf:resource="/programmes/b00l22n4#programme"/>
</po:Brand>
</rdf:RDF>