1998's Best British TV Web Sites
The UKTV Site of the Year Awards have been announced and the big winner was beeb.com from the BBC. beeb.com is home to a wide range of sub-sites including the Radio Times telly listings site, the beeb Comedy Zone featuring the best in BBC comedy programs over the years, Top of the Pops, the BBC's long running pop music showcase, Top Gear, for car enthusiasts and Good Food which brings the popular BBC cookery show to the web. beeb.com won the Best Commercial Site category, beating such worthy opponents as the official sites for Channel 4, Granada and Sky, as well as receiving the most votes of any of the scores of nominated sites in the awards 14 categories.
A unique aspect of the UKTV SotY 98 awards is the Fan Loyalty Award. Voters (of which there were more than two thousand) had the option of naming their overall favorite site from all the nominees. While not every voter named an overall favorite, quite a few did and Mike Plowman's Coronation Street Visual Update site took the Fan Loyalty Award. This treasure trove for corrie fans also took home the Best Soap Opera Site award beating such sites as the Official Brookside, Official Eastenders and even the Official Coronation Street site. The main feature of the winners site is its daily episode recaps using video captures and an informative and often amusing text commentary. There's quite a bit more to the site as well so it's no surprise that it possesses such a loyal fan base of its own.
For many, Monty Python's Flying Circus is the quintessence of British comedy and this year it broke away from the Best comedy category and into its own Best Monty Python related site award. The somewhat surprising winner was the one nominated site not dedicated to the original Python's but to Python alum John Cleese's Fawlty Towers which received more votes then even the esteemed Pyth-Online, the officially sanctioned Monty Python Site. The Unofficial Guide to Fawlty Towers site collects an impressive array of Fawltian information and boasts quizzes and a message board for FT fans.
The Best British Comedy Related Site Award was a dog fight between Jeff Rice's perennial favorite Are You Being Served and Are You Being Served Again site and the Unofficial Keeping Up Appearances site. In the end the two sites split the awards with the Are You Being Served site winning the category and Keeping Up Appearances snagging the Fan Loyalty award. Both sites are textbook examples on setting up a fan site and getting and
