Member-only story
Predicting School Holidays from BBC iPlayer Viewing
Can we tell whether kids are in school just from the viewing of certain TV shows on BBC iPlayer? Spoiler— yes! We can also identify when schools are closed due to snow!
This was the first project I worked on at the BBC, and remains one of the most fun to have delivered!
While the information on school holidays is available on the internet, it’s presented on local government websites which vary in format from council to council making web scraping impractical.
Use cases
The BBC produces a lot of content for children and being able to effectively and appropriately deliver this content is crucial. Our current use cases include:
- Reporting
- Timely output of Children’s content
- Recommending child-appropriate content
- Evaluating the effectiveness of marketing campaigns
- Audience Segmentation
Real-time Results
Wouldn’t it be great to automatically personalise the BBC iPlayer homepage with a child-friendly version when it’s a school holiday?
While some of our use cases, such as audience segmentation, can be performed with historical data about school holidays, the most…
