Programmes

The BBC Humber website gives you the chance to listen to our programmes both live and in some cases again and again.

Our 'on demand' services are constantly under review and are subject to national BBC guidelines agreed with the appropriate authorities. The guidelines specify which programmes we can make available, how long they can be accessed for, the level of audio quality, what can be made available for download and importantly whether the programme is available to an audience outside of the UK.

Here are some things to bear in mind:

• We do not broadcast live commentary on football league games through the BBC Local sites. Our current contract with the football authorities allows us to cover games on local radio and in return, clubs to take our commentary and make it accessible to those who subscribe to the clubs' sites. The BBC does not deal with subscriptions.

• Audio quality is restricted. This saves the licence fee payer funding excessive bandwidth payments and to ensure that even people with a 'dial-up' facility can listen. It also means less strain on the BBC system so that other BBC sites still work well when 'high capacity' events are taking place.

• Being a large organisation with new developments taking place constantly, some services are 'trials'. This allow us to experiment with systems and more importantly prove that the development of these services are in the public interest. Rolling out a new service across the country would be expensive and wasteful if it was found that people didn't want it. This is why some services are only available on certain networks.

• At the moment we're not part of the trial to offer downloads for playback on mp3 players which is why you wont' see our programmes available via the likes of iTunes.

• We are limited in the number of hours we can use for our 'Listen again' service.

Times and technology are constantly changing and evolving and what is true today won't be the same tomorrow. A new gizmo from the boffins might make all our existing technology obsolete overnight. One thing is for sure, the range of things on offer and their availability will only improve over time.

Our audio services have traditionally been available via the internet through 'Real Player' software. The reason is that this particular software could be used on different computer operating system including Windows, the Mac and Linux. How to use Real Player is covered elsewhere on the site.