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Critics round on BBC 2.0 plans

The Beeb’s strategy is broadly the right one, in my view.
Without embracing communities, consumer generated content and the rest of it the BBC would drift into becoming an anachronism.

The knives are out among commercial rivals and others for the BBC’s new media strategy, which was announced this week (see BBC web re-launch: MySpace for the rest of us).

Reported here on the BBC news site, and also take a look at the FT editorial here, which acknowledges that the BBC can often drive innovation because it is not constrained by commercial concerns, but says the scale f the BBC’s ambitions put it at risk of over-stretch.

The Beeb has certainly stirred up a hornet’s nest on this one, or maybe a few hornet nests.

The commercial concerns voiced int he FT are familiar ones, not unique to the issue of a new online strategy. The private sector gets nervous about expansionism, while the BBC is concerned about remaining relevant, which usually means it has move into new areas as media evolves.

As for making money out of a global site, that’s no more contentious in my view than selling Doctor Who to TV stations round the world or shipping out box-sets of Blackadder.

An expert on broadcast media once told me that the back-catalogue of BBC content was effectively a national resource belonging to the people of the UK who paid for it to be produced through their licence fees over the past 80-odd years. If the money went into lowering the licence fee (which the Beeb always pushes to raise) it might win a few more hearts and minds here, but the principle of the corporation having a commercial edge in parts is not unsound.

The Beeb’s strategy is broadly the right one, in my view.
Without embracing communities, consumer generated content and the rest of it the BBC would drift into becoming an anachronism.

Meanwhile bloggers Euan Semple and Tom Coates, both former BBC
employees feel uncomfortable about the whole thing for different
reasons and Hugh "gapingvoid" MacLeod asks why he needs it.

I understand what they’re saying, sort of. There’s a bit of "Oh, now you get it", and "YES" That’s exactly what we’ve been saying all these years… *gasp*"… and that’s fair enough. As for Mr MacLeod, I’m sure he doesn’t need it, but early-adopter uber-bloggers are sadly rare among licence-payers, and the BBC is right to think about about how it can combine this stuff

Maybe everyone is just cringing a bit at the buzzword bingo-esque language used by Ashley Highfield and Mark Thompson – also fair enough. It’s like when you were a teenager and you hear your Dad singing the praises of a band you’ve been listening to for ages to one of his mates. Makes you feel like telling them to eff off and listen to Dire Straits instead, or going back and burning all the tapes and posters and going off in search of some other noise that you hope will get on his nerves a bit.

But overall, I still feel very positive abut the ambition and direction of the BBC
online. To my mind they are making the appropriate response to the
evolution of media – how can they do anything else? To stay a
traditional broadcaster and static content producer would be
surrendering their role in British public life in the future.

I’m open to arguments against, and I’m trying to see their point of view but for now that’s my call.

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Antony Mayfield

2 responses to “Critics round on BBC 2.0 plans”

  1. Tom Coates Avatar
    Tom Coates

    I’m not going to disagree with most of the things they’re suggesting – although I work in social software and social media and used to work at the BBC and have to say that some of the user-generated stuff they’re talking about sounds pretty ropey. I do wonder about their ability to do half of the stuff they’re talking about – particularly given that (although they must seem to have an almost unlimited budget compared to many companies, they’re completely dwarfed in technical terms by organisations like Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon etc. But my main issue is not with any of that – it’s with this recurrent … well … whining … that the world’s changing so fast and we can’t keep up. I mean seriously – get over it already! Doesn’t it feel to you like an excuse? It’s like – if we claim that the world’s changing absurdly fast then we have an excuse for not having done enough to keep up. Well you shouldn’t have an excuse. The BBC has a thousand odd web and technology people – no requirement whatsoever to make money or please shareholders and years and years of some of the UK’s best people’s time. If management have only noticed the change now, then they really need to be examining why they weren’t listening before, not making bloody excuses.

  2. Antony Mayfield Avatar
    Antony Mayfield

    I hear you, Tom, but just don’t hear the whining. But then I haven’t worked there, so perhaps I’m not so sensitized to it. As a user of BBC services, and a fully piad up on eat that, I genrally do feel positive about the direction their headed in.

    But then, bureaucracies and me don’t mix very well at all – most I come close to I end up feeling pretty negtative about. And any organisation like the BBC carries elements of bureaucracy masquerading as management.

    Maybe I won’t ruin my impression by taking too close a look. Perhaps, the thing is that they are best admired at a distance. Still, admire the BBC I do.

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