How HRT failed in their intention to become Croatian BBC
This one goes to all our foreign readers which would otherwise probably be left out from knowing news of the week in Croatia – Croatian National Television (HRT.hr) bluntly copied British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC.co.uk) website!
The shit hit the fan few days ago and whole Croatian web community got pretty pissed off. HRT spokesman said (in defence to accusations of stealing BBC’s design) that HRT wishes to be Croatian BBC, and ok – I absolutely respect that. I also respect their understanding for the need to redesign the site. The old HRT.hr website was 8-10 years old and not something to look at.
But lets get one thing straight – I totally and absolutely disrespect the method of execution of their intentions. Whoever did the production of this monstrosity lacks the proper knowledge and experience… 10 years of experience in web development field at least.
Client is always right, but clients are not web designers (no matter how bad they would want it to be), and our sole professional and moral obligation is to notify client of possible breach in copyright laws, breach in functionality or any kind of possible side-effect that some of their ideas could do to harm the project, harm them self or harm web developers reputation.
Not once, but every time, we ask client – which websites do they like, who are their competitors, who is their role model in business… And based on our previous experience, knowledge, research, strategic planning and comprehensive user tests – we produce results. Results which are specially suited for our client. Not fake copy of website they wish to have.
As our friend Maratz nicely wrote, and I couldn’t agree with him more: “This is the embarrassment of the decade for the Croatian web community.”.
Compare and cry ™:
More voices:
- http://www.mi3dot.org/forum/
- http://www.maratz.com/blog/archives/2008/05/15/croatian-hrt-rips-off-bbccouk/
http://zytzagoo.net/blog/2008/05/15/hrt-vs-bbc/ - http://mcville.net/journal/archives/30
- http://marketingservis.com/internet/hrt-hr-i-bbc-co-uk/
- http://www.index.hr/vijesti/clanak/iz-koda-hrtove-stranice-najednom-nestalo-ime-tvrtke-koja-ju-je-radila/386937.aspx
- http://www.delo.si/index.php?sv_path=41,790,296704
- http://regionalexpress.hr/site/more/puleani-kreirali-web-hrt-a/
Updated 20.05. – Big up to our comrades in arms at BBC. And thanks to Alan Connor (co-editor of BBC Internet Blog) who linked to my article, and hey I really don’t know how I missed this beauty – http://www.rtl.hu/. It seems that BBC was true inspiration for many “web designers”. But, RTL.hu is light AGES ahead of HRT.hr. Whoever did the job, they did it well. There is just a small we-copied-bbc-design fact… but hey. :)
13 thoughts on “How HRT failed in their intention to become Croatian BBC”
May 18, 2008 at 22:55
As Google Translator would say:
“This is prestrašno” :)
May 19, 2008 at 05:07
a i navigacija im je u banani. mislim menu za navigaciju se pojavi kada kliknes na dno. ono helloou… a kada odes na program ceka te jos bolje iznenadjenje – nema datuma nego samo za danasnji dan vidis. ok sada su to popravili – tako da se redirecta na http://www4.hrt.hr/raspored/ … sve jedno bolje od drugog (do prije par dana je bila neka ip adresa umjesto www4)
May 19, 2008 at 19:26
@Davor: haha!!! LOL :)
@phz: ne ne… najgore od svega je što se content pregenerira, tako ti se zna dogoditi da kad dodjes na homepage vidis stranicu…. please wait 30 sec or come back later… to je strašno. pa daj cache neki opogonite.
May 21, 2008 at 15:53
Za mene najgore je u cijeloj prici kaj ce na kraju doci neki klipan i reci ‘ti serveri ne valjaju’, a u biti je problem u glavi dizajnera :(
May 22, 2008 at 00:29
HRT je ionako jedan od najgorih televizijskih kanala, a ova krađa, pogotovo začinjena njihovim “opravdanjem”, samo dokazuje o kakvoj se hrpi neprofesionalaca radi.
May 22, 2008 at 11:45
Na svjetskom trzistu gdje se pokusavas izdici iz mase dajuci svakom projektu uvijek 10x vise sebe od planiranog budgeta, porazna je cinjenica sto kod kuce vecina ljudi misli da se siteovi rade sami od sebe i da to moze raditi bilo tko iz dokolice.
Svakoga tko mi ne vjeruje, ja pozivam kod nas, nek dodje i vidi koliko krvi, znoja i suza, truda, ulaganja, ucenja, surfanja, preorderanih knjiga, developer mailing listi, subversion commitova, subversion revertova, pokusaja, promasaja, testiranja, benchmarkiranja, debugiranja…. je potrebno da se napravi svjetskog ranga kvalitetno, lijepo, funkcionalno, tehnicki kompleksno, ispred-svog-vremena web rjesenje.
May 22, 2008 at 22:48
wow.
what a flagrant copy. not even “inspired by” just ripped off. and this is supposed to be a –respectable– news-media outlet.
what WAS the client meeting like exactly
“hey we like the BBC´s website.
copy it.
exactly”
shameful
June 4, 2008 at 20:10
off topic a bit, but euronews just did a redesign of their site
http://www.euronews.net/en/news/
June 5, 2008 at 01:25
Astro: Haven’t seen old euronews site but this one isn’t much. Lack of content is a real killer.
June 6, 2008 at 00:35
I would just like to add a fact, who can prove to even BBC build that site?
Maybe they just got template from online and changed around, then did not pay for it 2000$, well is cheaper to go with 120$ and get just files.
What leaves same thing open for other people. I am sure if I just start looking at internet I will find at least dozen websites like that.
It is not easy to copy web and files if you don’t have access to servers, what again will bring if it is BBC servers even secure?
Little link so everybody can understand what I am talking about
http://www.entheosweb.com/photoshop_templates/news_radio_tv.asp
June 7, 2008 at 12:00
@WebDeveloper: Haha! LOL! Maybe you are true. But from what I know, developers behind BBC are bunch of very smart people and they know what are they doing. Just check out: backstage.bbc.co.uk, support.bbc.co.uk, wikipedia on bbc.co.uk…
May 25, 2009 at 20:14
OK.Ovaj pokušaj možda nije uspio,ali ima još dana…