BBC’s Seismic shift

Neville Hobson writes that yesterday’s announcement from the BBC represents a “seismic shift” in the way the Corporation sees its role. The World’s largest broadcaster is “re-inventing” itself for the age of participatory media.

I would not go quite so far. It seems to me that the BBC has reached a first stage - outlined by its head of interactive radio, Simon Nelson, in an interview he gave me a couple of months ago - of accepting that “on demand” is a big part of the future. In other words, the BBC will be as much an online-archive of media as a live broadcaster. People will view and listen to content in a variety of ways at a time of their choosing. There will be a massive educational resource on the BBC’s servers, and a historical, social, and above all cultural wealth that can be accessed at any time.

As Simon Nelson said, the realisation that media is for the future as well as the here and now, will effect the way the BBC makes programmes. It makes you focus on the “classic value” of what you are doing. You are not just chasing today’s ratings, but trying to create something that will be appreciated and downloaded in years to come. This is the quality that was so lacking from the BBC in the “multi-digital” era of the remote channel hopper and ten second attention span. I know that Greg Dyke was a hero at the BBC, but when he was in charge, you really did hear people question the reason for its existence all the time. You don’t hear so much of that now. It’s largely because the BBC is thinking about quality again, as well as ratings.

The second thing that is happening - but I think to a much less great extent - is a shift in the meaning of “public service” broadcasting. In the past this has always meant a service for the public. Now it is starting to include a service by the public. We’ve seen it with pictures an videos sent in by the citizen journalists. Now in some slightly unspecified way we are going to see more of it in the BBC’s online services. Next week the BBC is co-sponsoring the “Our Media” conference about participatory media. I think we are going to be hearing a lot more about “Our BBC”. But there is still a lot of figuring out of what that means. It’s something all big media organisations are going through - but it’s fair to say that the BBC is more open-minded and creative about participatory media than most,not least because it doesn’t have to work out how to make it pay.

Perhaps it’s a co-incidence, but every time the BBC’s licence fee is up for renewal, it re-invents itself for the age. When I was there, it was re-inventing itself for the multi-channel digital TV age. This sounds cynical, but perhaps it’s not a bad thing. Imagine that the NHS faced a possible cut in or total annihilation of its budget every ten years. I think it would focus its mind on value for money, and giving the public, not its employees, what they want. They might start to inform and involve the public more in decisions about their own health. If you needed to see a cancer specialist pronto, the “particpatory” NHS would make sure that you did, by hook or by crook. You would hear a lot fewer lectures about “policy”. Your GP would take care to park his brand new BMW with personalised number plates round the back of the surgery where you can’t see it. He might be willing to drive round to see you out of surgery hours, like his forebearers did 30 years ago. He wouldn’t claim to be running a “complex business” just because he employs an accountant.

Sometimes the BBC’s licence fee model backed up by a Public Service remit and a statutory Charter seems out of date, but it provides much needed discipline that is so lacking from the bottomless-pit model of publicly funded services.

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