Ex-BBC man and Edelman’s Chief Content Officer Richard Sambrook offered the quote of the evening tonight at the PRCA’s Future of Content debate.
The BBC has a unique business model he explained.
“The audience pays its license fee or goes to jail. It’s just not very transferable to other media organisations,” he quipped.
Photo: Richard Sambrook (mohamedn via Flickr).
The BBC iPad app is stunning. The navigation is slick, the video is beautiful and the audio is perfect. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a content rich app.
But why can’t you download content for offline viewing as you can with a laptop. Instead you need to be connected to 3G or wi-fi to watch video streams. I’m gutted.
BBC director general Mark Thompson’s MacTaggart lecture last Friday at the Edinburgh International Television Festival was defensive and contained few surprises. But that’s understandable.
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.
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ABCe figures released today for a clutch of BBC consumer web sites almost certainly support the view that says it’s time to cut the BBC down to size.
Top Gear, Radio Times and Good Food websites recorded ABCe figures for June 2010 reporting 108,930, 84,086 and 71,013 daily average unique browsers respectively.
These are huge figures, in relative terms, for what are special interest publications. You’d be very hard pressed to make a case that the BBC brand and television tie-ups didn’t skew the market for consumer magazines and online sites.
According to Speed media-watcher Nick Bishop:
“The BBC’s defensive strategy appears to be to limit how much its reach is cut by demonstrating its scale. Accept they’re going to lose some battles but make sure they win most.”
The BBC Trust has given the BBC the go ahead to develop apps. It had previously blocked the development following concerns over public value and competition.
Press Gazette is reporting that “the first of the new apps is expected to be made available today.”
The free BBC apps were set to be launched last April after being shown at Mobile World Congress but were blocked by the BBC’s governing body after complaints from media owners that they would distort the market.
In a statement issued this morning BBC Trustee Diane Coyle said.
“The Apps market is rapidly taking off as more people choose to get their news, sport and other online content while they’re on the move. […]we have concluded that while the Apps market is developing quickly and we will monitor the launch of BBC Apps, a public value test is not required.”
Update: Here’s the BBC News app for the iPhone and iPad.
The latest version of the BBC’s iPlayer doesn’t incorporate social networking features but they’re coming.
I don’t have a TV in my flat in London and my family has been without a TV at home in Northumberland for 4-months while we renovate our house so I’ve become an ardent user of TV over the internet services such as iPlayer.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph at The Guardian’s Changing Media Summit in March, Erik Huggers, director, BBC Future Media & Technology said that social extensions would be incorporated in iPlayer 3.0.
“We are close to launching the third version of the iPlayer in beta which will have many more social functions embedded within it,” said Mr Huggers. “People will be able to bring their Facebook friends onto the iPlayer so they can share what they are listening to or watching with each other more easily.”
In the meantime here’s what is new in version 1.5 of iPlayer:
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Almost every speaker during the last two days at the FT Digital Media & Broadcast conference has spoken of their plans to grow their digital business.
BBC Director General Mark Thompson was the exception. In his strategy review of the BBC set out yesterday he proposed that the BBC pull back its online effort. The review calls for a 25 per cent reduction in the budget for bbc.co.uk and half the number of sections on the site. Savings will be reinvested in the generation of content elsewhere within the BBC under five new editorial priorities.
Whether or not this will be sufficient to pacify critics in the commercial media sector only time will tell. John Ridding, CEO, Financial Times, said that the BBC web site hadn’t helped publishers in their bid to build revenue around news online.
James Murdoch has traditionally gone further. He has been fiercely critical of the scale of the BBC’s free-to-access new web site.
Speaking at the conference yesterday Thomson said that the proposed strategy review will “create spaces for others to fill”.
The proposal also calls for the closure of the BBC Asian Network and BBC 6. Both measures have already resulted in fierce opposition from the audience with a variety of forums, Facebook groups and petitions already in circulation.
By attempting to pacify the commercial sector with its proposals yet also keep its audience onside the BBC has created a smart leadership platform for the ensuing three-month consultation period.
The Financial Times chief media correspondent Ben Fenton has suggested yesterday that the timing of Thompson’s review is incredibly shrewd.
The three-month period of consultation on the proposal means that it has been kicked out beyond the date of the UK election meaning that the BBC charter is unlikely to be an election issue.
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There are opportunities to create value in a market whatever the macro conditions.
James May’s BBC programme Toy Stories featuring Airfix, Scalextric and Hornby has been a shot in the arm for parent company Hornby.
Two weeks ago I tweeted the following.
The shares have risen steadily from 145p to a recent high of 170p, a climb of 17 per cent. Today they are at 161p.
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The BNP’s leader Nick Griffin used the platform of BBC Question Time last night to lay bare his views. The remix genius that is Casetteboy has provided an excellent summary. Democracy is alive and well on the internet.
