Putting the moving image to work in biochemistry education

There is tangible evidence of the growing importance of visual media in science education. While large amounts of material on the video-sharing service YouTube would not be considered educational in a positive sense, there are many hours of quality scientific information available for viewing. These can be called upon for both formal and informal learning. We have also witnessed the rise of ‘TED talk’, short presentations by engaging speakers which often tackle cutting-edge developments in bioscience. This year also saw the awarding of an Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) impact factor to JoVE, the Journal of Visualised Experiments. I want to suggest in this article that there is an additional resource that we are not yet exploiting to its proper potential, namely, broadcast media.