Post by Teddy Bear on Oct 6, 2008 23:25:13 GMT
I have to say when I initially saw the following article in the Guardian I expected the usual preaching the BBC line on behalf of their 'masters', but it turns out to be quite insightful and worth the read for 'things to come'.
A genuine, fundamental shift in attitude is required
As its commercial rivals struggle with a collapsing economy, the [glow=red,2,300]BBC is under pressure to drop its aggressive stance and cooperate. Owen Gibson and Richard Wray report[/glow]
The BBC's director general, Mark Thompson, will go before the Trust next month to deliver his masterplan to save public service broadcasting. Just a few months ago, the corporation was arguing that the funding black hole facing its rivals was not nearly as bad as they claimed. Now it is proposing a solution to their woes. The shift is indicative of a year in which the BBC's position on the PSB debate has reversed.
The way in which Thompson's pitch is communicated and received will set the tone for the debate over the future of the BBC. For Thompson, and the BBC Trust, chaired by Sir Michael Lyons, the stakes could not be higher.
The debate is set against a context in which ITV job cuts are running into four figures as it contemplates a 20% slump in advertising and Channel 4 is slashing its headcount, programme budget and even the pilot projects designed to point the way to its future. The rest of the British media sector, from digital startups to newspaper groups, is contemplating a slump likely to deepen further into 2009.
Against that background, the BBC would not appear to be top of the list of potential casualties of the earthquakes shaking the industry. Its licence fee funding is secure until 2013. Onscreen and on air, it is in relatively rude health. Online, the iPlayer is a triumph. Around the globe, its commercial division is forging ahead with ambitious plans to roll out global "superbrands" and set up production hubs from Sydney to Hollywood.
But an increasingly wide coalition of senior political and regulatory figures believe that, if Thompson is unable to fundamentally rewire the corporation's institutional circuits and overhaul its culture, it could be storing up serious trouble. Perhaps, counter-intuitively, it could be the BBC that faces the greatest threat in three or four years' time, when the debate about the licence fee reaches a climax once again. This would especially be the case with a Tory government in power.
Despite what has been described by the BBC as a challenging licence fee settlement early last year, its overall revenue will increase by about 5% this year, as against a 5% decline for ITV, C4 and the rest of the commercial sector, according to industry estimates. Yet, for all its relative comfort, the BBC has appeared insecure and defensive in recent months as criticism has increased. "It is as though it can't understand just how bad things are outside its walls. Everything is seen through a BBC prism," said one senior broadcast rival. To its competitors, it seems ubiquitous. Everywhere they turn, it's there first.
Trinity Mirror's chief executive, Sly Bailey, was the latest to hit out last week. She said the BBC's plans for local broadband sites were "a threat to the development and diversity of the local media sector online and potentially to its print-based cousins". A lot of this rhetoric can sound like crocodile tears - like commercial radio before them, regional newspapers are as much victims of their owners' incompetence and the structural challenges of the digital age. The BBC makes a convenient scapegoat to mask their own strategic failings.
But the problem is now acute partly because the structural and technological shifts facing other public service broadcasters have so radically changed the landscape. The disconnect between the corporation and its rivals has also been reflected in the BBC's actions and the way it has presented them to the outside world. It's unlikely there would have been quite such an outcry against the aggressive expansion of BBC Worldwide had it not been trumpeted so loudly from the rooftops just as its commercial competitors were retrenching.
BBC concern has been heightened by the prospect of a Tory government and it is already moving to head off the perceived threat. Its new director of policy and strategy, John Tate, formerly ran the Opposition Policy Unit, advising the shadow cabinet, and co-wrote the 2005 Tory manifesto with David Cameron. Earlier this year, the wagons were well and truly circled as the Trust's Lyons abandoned any pretence at independent regulation to take up his sword against those who might top-slice the BBC. One minute the Trust has argued the problem is not as bad as Channel 4 and others have claimed, the next that it can provide the solution rather than Ofcom.
And the continued insistence on the BBC's "unique link" with the licence-fee payer as an argument against sharing the "digital surplus" or other assets could backfire too. Several studies - from Ofcom to the Guardian and, it is understood, internal research at the BBC and Channel 4 - show that link between the BBC and viewers is neither as strong nor as deep as it would have us believe. And that effect is only going to be exaggerated in a digital age, in which people feel more affinity with programmes and talent than channels and broadcasters.
Meanwhile, the BBC's arguments have at times appeared inconsistent. An aggressive move against top-slicing belatedly replaced by an insistence that greater partnerships could be the solution smacked of expediency rather than strategy. This uncharacteristic tactical uncertainty contrasts with the surefootedness the BBC has displayed in the past, when it countered threats to its independence with armies of strategists.
The former culture secretary Tessa Jowell once said the licence fee should act as "venture capital for the nation" and there are plenty of competitors who would like that taken more literally.
The odd thing about the BBC's aggressive PR strategy is that it seems at odds with Thompson's proclaimed instinct. Intellectually, he understands that the only way to save the BBC in the long term is to turn it inside out and weave it so tightly into the nation's broadcasting, cultural and technological fabric that it can't be unpicked. In 2004, when Thompson returned from Channel 4 to a BBC laid low by the fallout from the Hutton report, he was clutching the Building Public Value manifesto, which promised a revolutionary change in the way the corporation interacted with the outside world. It promised to make "the BBC more open and less defensive". In an ambitious nine-point plan, it proclaimed: "We need to change and have a more open attitude to what others think about us, of our business relationships, our buildings, our impact on the market and our partners."
Yet, more than four years on, relations with the outside world are worse than ever. At the point at which the BBC didn't get the licence-fee settlement it wanted, partly due to a tactical error by Thompson, it retreated into its shell.
Thompson suggested recently that discussions over closer cooperation are well advanced, but rivals say that if that's the case, no one has told them. At Ofcom and Channel 4, they are maintaining an open mind but are sceptical as to whether the BBC's proposals around sharing technology and studios, and cooperating on commercial initiatives, can deliver enough tangible benefits.
Thompson's proposals will be expanded versions of ideas already aired earlier this year, including sharing studios, equipment and expertise with regional competitors; acting as an aggregation engine for public service content from other broadcasters and institutions; exploring global commercial opportunities through BBC Worldwide; developing IPTV services to be delivered via set-top boxes; and a renewed push to help commercial radio by fundamentally rethinking DAB.
But more than all that, the BBC will have to change its attitude. As Ofcom's Philip Graf put it last week, "what to the BBC is genuinely meant as a warm embrace can feel to the receiving party like a bear hug". It will be up to Thompson, not always the most nuanced in his public pronouncements, to show that his revived partnership plan represents a genuine change rather than mere window dressing. If not, the consequences - for the BBC as much as its rivals - could be profound.
As its commercial rivals struggle with a collapsing economy, the [glow=red,2,300]BBC is under pressure to drop its aggressive stance and cooperate. Owen Gibson and Richard Wray report[/glow]
The BBC's director general, Mark Thompson, will go before the Trust next month to deliver his masterplan to save public service broadcasting. Just a few months ago, the corporation was arguing that the funding black hole facing its rivals was not nearly as bad as they claimed. Now it is proposing a solution to their woes. The shift is indicative of a year in which the BBC's position on the PSB debate has reversed.
The way in which Thompson's pitch is communicated and received will set the tone for the debate over the future of the BBC. For Thompson, and the BBC Trust, chaired by Sir Michael Lyons, the stakes could not be higher.
The debate is set against a context in which ITV job cuts are running into four figures as it contemplates a 20% slump in advertising and Channel 4 is slashing its headcount, programme budget and even the pilot projects designed to point the way to its future. The rest of the British media sector, from digital startups to newspaper groups, is contemplating a slump likely to deepen further into 2009.
Against that background, the BBC would not appear to be top of the list of potential casualties of the earthquakes shaking the industry. Its licence fee funding is secure until 2013. Onscreen and on air, it is in relatively rude health. Online, the iPlayer is a triumph. Around the globe, its commercial division is forging ahead with ambitious plans to roll out global "superbrands" and set up production hubs from Sydney to Hollywood.
But an increasingly wide coalition of senior political and regulatory figures believe that, if Thompson is unable to fundamentally rewire the corporation's institutional circuits and overhaul its culture, it could be storing up serious trouble. Perhaps, counter-intuitively, it could be the BBC that faces the greatest threat in three or four years' time, when the debate about the licence fee reaches a climax once again. This would especially be the case with a Tory government in power.
Despite what has been described by the BBC as a challenging licence fee settlement early last year, its overall revenue will increase by about 5% this year, as against a 5% decline for ITV, C4 and the rest of the commercial sector, according to industry estimates. Yet, for all its relative comfort, the BBC has appeared insecure and defensive in recent months as criticism has increased. "It is as though it can't understand just how bad things are outside its walls. Everything is seen through a BBC prism," said one senior broadcast rival. To its competitors, it seems ubiquitous. Everywhere they turn, it's there first.
Trinity Mirror's chief executive, Sly Bailey, was the latest to hit out last week. She said the BBC's plans for local broadband sites were "a threat to the development and diversity of the local media sector online and potentially to its print-based cousins". A lot of this rhetoric can sound like crocodile tears - like commercial radio before them, regional newspapers are as much victims of their owners' incompetence and the structural challenges of the digital age. The BBC makes a convenient scapegoat to mask their own strategic failings.
But the problem is now acute partly because the structural and technological shifts facing other public service broadcasters have so radically changed the landscape. The disconnect between the corporation and its rivals has also been reflected in the BBC's actions and the way it has presented them to the outside world. It's unlikely there would have been quite such an outcry against the aggressive expansion of BBC Worldwide had it not been trumpeted so loudly from the rooftops just as its commercial competitors were retrenching.
BBC concern has been heightened by the prospect of a Tory government and it is already moving to head off the perceived threat. Its new director of policy and strategy, John Tate, formerly ran the Opposition Policy Unit, advising the shadow cabinet, and co-wrote the 2005 Tory manifesto with David Cameron. Earlier this year, the wagons were well and truly circled as the Trust's Lyons abandoned any pretence at independent regulation to take up his sword against those who might top-slice the BBC. One minute the Trust has argued the problem is not as bad as Channel 4 and others have claimed, the next that it can provide the solution rather than Ofcom.
And the continued insistence on the BBC's "unique link" with the licence-fee payer as an argument against sharing the "digital surplus" or other assets could backfire too. Several studies - from Ofcom to the Guardian and, it is understood, internal research at the BBC and Channel 4 - show that link between the BBC and viewers is neither as strong nor as deep as it would have us believe. And that effect is only going to be exaggerated in a digital age, in which people feel more affinity with programmes and talent than channels and broadcasters.
Meanwhile, the BBC's arguments have at times appeared inconsistent. An aggressive move against top-slicing belatedly replaced by an insistence that greater partnerships could be the solution smacked of expediency rather than strategy. This uncharacteristic tactical uncertainty contrasts with the surefootedness the BBC has displayed in the past, when it countered threats to its independence with armies of strategists.
The former culture secretary Tessa Jowell once said the licence fee should act as "venture capital for the nation" and there are plenty of competitors who would like that taken more literally.
The odd thing about the BBC's aggressive PR strategy is that it seems at odds with Thompson's proclaimed instinct. Intellectually, he understands that the only way to save the BBC in the long term is to turn it inside out and weave it so tightly into the nation's broadcasting, cultural and technological fabric that it can't be unpicked. In 2004, when Thompson returned from Channel 4 to a BBC laid low by the fallout from the Hutton report, he was clutching the Building Public Value manifesto, which promised a revolutionary change in the way the corporation interacted with the outside world. It promised to make "the BBC more open and less defensive". In an ambitious nine-point plan, it proclaimed: "We need to change and have a more open attitude to what others think about us, of our business relationships, our buildings, our impact on the market and our partners."
Yet, more than four years on, relations with the outside world are worse than ever. At the point at which the BBC didn't get the licence-fee settlement it wanted, partly due to a tactical error by Thompson, it retreated into its shell.
Thompson suggested recently that discussions over closer cooperation are well advanced, but rivals say that if that's the case, no one has told them. At Ofcom and Channel 4, they are maintaining an open mind but are sceptical as to whether the BBC's proposals around sharing technology and studios, and cooperating on commercial initiatives, can deliver enough tangible benefits.
Thompson's proposals will be expanded versions of ideas already aired earlier this year, including sharing studios, equipment and expertise with regional competitors; acting as an aggregation engine for public service content from other broadcasters and institutions; exploring global commercial opportunities through BBC Worldwide; developing IPTV services to be delivered via set-top boxes; and a renewed push to help commercial radio by fundamentally rethinking DAB.
But more than all that, the BBC will have to change its attitude. As Ofcom's Philip Graf put it last week, "what to the BBC is genuinely meant as a warm embrace can feel to the receiving party like a bear hug". It will be up to Thompson, not always the most nuanced in his public pronouncements, to show that his revived partnership plan represents a genuine change rather than mere window dressing. If not, the consequences - for the BBC as much as its rivals - could be profound.