Unexpected Media

The BBC: still no digital vision

I’ve been meaning for a while to write about a growing sense of frustration with the BBC (and, for that matter Channel 4) for their continuing failure to establish a strategy repositioning them in a way that makes sense for a public service media organisation in the emerging digital ecology. I drafted this before Mark Thompson’s recent announcement of cuts in BBC Online; the decisions he has announced recently only confirm a view that the BBC has yet to find a direction in the new media landscape.

Let me start by considering a broadcaster which does appear to have redefined its role in a digitally networked world. I have chaired a couple of panels in the last six months on which Tom Koch, who is responsible for international licensing for PBS in the States, was a speaker. The first time I heard him talk about PBS’ approach to digital media was at IBC in Amsterdam where I produced a panel to answer the question “Does TV speak digital?”

Tom proposed that PBS in general, and WGBH in Boston in particular, has adapted well to the changing landscape and was becoming fluent. He said that around 6 years ago the network had taken a strategic decision no longer to think of itself as a broadcaster but as a producer/publisher/distributor that identifies issues, subjects and themes which are of interest and generates ideas for content and services related to them.  The idea is at the centre of the development process and decisions about the appropriate media with which to engage users/an audience come later. In this context he described television as the “executive summary” of the content developed across a range of platforms.

In many cases a project will now be designed to have a 5 year life cycle. Examples of this approach include Evolution, Commanding Heights, Latin Music USA, and We Shall Remain.  PBS’ experience has demonstrated that over a period of years, the reach for these projects will easily outstrip the audience for a TV broadcast and that users will engage more deeply with the material. In some cases programmes will be broadcast at the launch of a project, in others the web proposition comes first with user response and participation providing content not just for the growing online resource but for a broadcast programme as well: Digital Nation is one such case. The longevity of these web-based projects can also make them attractive to sponsors who wish to be associated with their subject-matter or values.

One reason that PBS has been able to adopt this approach is that it is not in direct competition with the major commercial networks in the US: it has a share under 5% and sees the new platforms as providing a way of engaging more people more deeply. BBC and Channel 4, by contrast, remain ratings driven broadcasters for whom television remains the most important platform. The BBC sets out to be the dominant broadcaster in the UK and devotes immense resources to getting better share than its commercial rivals. BBC1’s success in doing so in the early part of the decade has only reinforced its focus on maintaining that position. Channel 4 may only have a relatively small share but television is the only medium that matters to its senior management. When Crossover ran a lab for the channel’s commissioning editors, one of them stated very clearly that his success in his job was only assessed on how well his shows rated with a TV audience.  As a result, although interested in experimenting with other platforms, there was no incentive to commit any of his budget to doing so.

It’s not so long ago that the BBC was further ahead in adapting to digital technology than any broadcaster in the world. I was invited to run internal creative labs there in 1999 because there was a real appetite for innovation and experimentation, for inventing new services and formats, imagining the future. There was even a department called ‘Imagineering’; although the name was unashamedly purloined from Disney, it did indicate a willingness to take a divergent approach to envisioning the future of media. This was the time that Marc Goodchild was able to exploring interactive documentary with “Walking With Beasts”, Gary Hayes was piloting non-linear narrative with X-Creatures, Sophie Walpole commissioned the BBC’s first ARG, Jamie Kane, Jon Kingsbury was re-inventing Video Nation for broadband; many seeds were planted. Many of these early trials proved to be false starts but even the projects that weren’t hits were an invaluable source of learning about the affordances and grammar of interactive and participatory media, as well as about users and how they actually used the new devices available to them.  Specialist interactive development teams were established for drama and entertainment, factual and learning, sport and news.

Ten years on and the BBC has a much more conservative view of its role in the digital era. This is in part because of external pressures, some legitimate concerns about distorting the market, and incessant attacks from commercial players taking every opportunity to clip the corporation’s wings. But although some of its retrenchment is an understandable response to criticism from outside, the BBC has made a series of structural decisions in the past five years which have trapped it in what is essentially a 20th century framework from which it will find it difficult to escape.

Two critical changes occurred early in Mark Thompson’s period as Director General: the specialist interactive teams were dissolved and, as New Media became Future Media and Technology, all editorial and commissioning control reverted firmly to television commissioners and controllers.  This re-assertion of the dominance of TV was reinforced by the decision to provide a webpage for every programme; it makes sense to do so but it also creates a fundamental structure in which ‘the programme’ can be seen as the BBC’s core product. Despite dropping the ‘tele’ in the new Vision Division, it was implicit in abolishing of the online genre teams that the real expertise and authority in drama, entertainment, documentary etc lay with the commissioners and producers in proper media like television and radio.  This reassertion of the traditional hierarchy was reinforced by the repositioning of what had been the New Media division and the replacement of Ashley Highfield, who had editorial aspirations, with Eric Huggers who did not.  And then, of course, there was the success of the iPlayer which has persuaded many people (including ex BBC1 Controller Peter Fincham) that, far from being replaced by it, TV may yet take over the web.

There is a multiplatform commissioning team staffed with people who are committed to extending what the BBC does but they have no real authority – or money. It is hard to point to any recent ‘digitally native’ BBC projects which are genuinely groundbreaking. There have been some successful cross-platform projects, such as Britain From Above, but these tend to be examples of a broadcaster staying well within its comfort zone: where there are opportunities to take a radical approach they are often fluffed. There were high hopes that last year’s Truth About Crime would the first truly integrated web and TV current affairs series for BBC1, but in the end the online component was secondary to the broadcast programmes.

In the past two or three years it is Channel 4 that has shown the most imagination in exploiting digital platforms. Embarrassing Bodies, Landshare, Battlefront, Year Dot and Routes are innovative projects which reveal a deep understanding of the specific characteristics of digital platforms. The channel has also begun to develop a new approach to commissioning better suited to the web and participatory media; they have also launched the 4iP initiative specifically to explore how public service might be re-imagined for contemporary media and their users.  The problem is that this activity remains on the fringes.

I remember being told when I was still a BBC staffer that because I had never made any television, I would never have any real credibility with the people who made the important decisions. There is little evidence that things have changed in the past five years.