In a statement issued by the CIPR (disclosure: I’m a member of the CIPR social media panel) it said that it was given undertaking in May that the views of the PR industry would be heard.

We are disappointed this action has been taken without our involvement,” says Ann Mealor, Interim CEO at the CIPR. “We are writing to the ASA regarding our concerns and advocating the need for closer working relationships on this issue.”

The CIPR said that it has reservation about the planned changes to the ASA’s remit. It called for any definition of advertising to be properly scoped so as to avoid censoring online communication.

(Via @andrewgerrard and @shinykatie)

Media and marketing experts have been quick to share their views on the ASA announcement published this morning.

Opinion is polarised: consumers need to be protected and advertising standards should apply to all media yet the ASA’s approach is heavy-handed and impinges on editorial engagement.

Brew Digital’s Chris Reed is in the former camp.

“It’s been some time coming, but looks sensible, workable and financially viable – and with the advertising/search networks on board, has teeth as well.[…] The extension of the ASA’s remit means that all commercial communications, irrespective of channel, need to be legal, decent, honest and truthful.”

Marketing Week’s Russell Parsons spotlights the overlap between advertising and editorial engagement in social media.

“An ASA spokeswoman admits there will be “teething problems” and some “grey areas”, for example what is editorial and what is marketing, but adds that objections will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis using a “principles-based” approach.”

Visit 33 Digital or the Drum for overviews of the ASA’s guidelines.

Please consider donating online to UNICEF’s appeal for children in Pakistan.

Last year James Murdoch took the same stage and spent much of his lecture bashing the BBC.

This year Mr Thompson called out Sky for its ”lack of investment in original content” and suggested that the satellite operator pay retransmission fees to other broadcasters. He rounded on critics of the BBC, claiming that it was more popular than ever.

“Systematic press attacks on broadcasters, and especially on the BBC, are nothing new… but the scale and intensity of the current assaults does feel different,” he said.

He’s spot on. It is different. This is why the BBC must change or risk a rising wall of criticism from all-comers, not just other media.

The changes taking place in the UK media are nothing short of a revolution. Meanwhile media owners and hacks look enviously at the BBC with its guaranteed income year-in-year-out.

Everyone must change, including the BBC: it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of by how much and when.

Herein lies one of the fundamental issue that Thompson failed to tackle on Friday. In a multi-channel environment why should consumers pay to negotiate a media paywall when they can access BBC content for free?

Pundits reckon that the BBC will survive the next license fee negotiation. There’s no doubt that the £146.50 fee per household represents extraordinary value, but the business model is an anachronism and leaves the BBC open to attack on all fronts.

Thompson is a moderniser, no doubt, and an incredibly savvy political operator. “Radical and rapid change inside the BBC is… essential,” he said.

The BBC is being trimmed, the pension scheme is under scrutiny and Mr Thompson has suggested that the corporation could forgo planned increases to the licence fee.

But ultimately this isn’t a fight that the BBC can win. Media and technology have evolved too far since the BBC was founded in 1927. And so Thompson puts up a good fight, but inevitably his response last Friday was defensive.

It would be a brave individual that led a discussion about a funding structure beyond the licence fee but maybe that is now inevitable. But for Thompson that’s a taboo he doesn’t seem to want to go near.

Related articles:

• Mark Thompson’s case for the BBC (guardian.co.uk)
• Murdoch and the BBC: They Both Lose (newser.com)
• Stephen Glover: Thompson’s attack is more than it seems (independent.co.uk)

Here’s an example of the genre spotted by The Guardian by cricket star Kevin Pietersen after he was dropped from the England squad today.

TweetMeme developer Chris Alexander suggested that the process of spotting deleted tweets could be industrialised by storing tweets for a few hours and then comparing them against messages that are subsequently flagged as deleted. But that would break Twitter’s terms and condition according to Alexander.

Spoil sports.

I look forward to returning in time to hear BBC Director General Mark Thompson’s McTaggart Lecture. It promises to be a highlight for the media industry for 2010 given the BBC’s ongoing strategy review and the fact that James Murdoch had the gig last year.