I left the BBC in 2007 and there ARE some great strategists at the helm with big ideas about the future of multiplatform. Yes - admittedly, perhaps the fact there are ’strategists’ in the plural sense may be problematic, along with the push and pull between tech and content teams for budget.

However…

At any given time there are many, well considered projects and innovations happening behind closed walls as well as great stuff coming out of CBBC, Multiplatform Vision, FM+T, A&M etc et al.

The BBC couldn’t be any more audience focussed if it tried but perhaps as you stress, one of the beeb’s biggest issues is its size and therefore its inability to be nimble and take risks with public money when it has so many boxes to check. It is a truly unique beast with unique +ives as well as unique issues that present themselves on a daily basis.

Having also spent time at a commercial broadcaster - a much leaner organisation, I do see why I have at times heard sniffs of ‘embarrassingly over resourced’ when talk turns to the BBC.

And yes, whilst it would be great to throw a Doctor Who sized budget at ALL digital output - the BBC simply cannot commit equal budgets to all projects, it has to prioritise and in doing is always going to piss some people off.

Interestingly when it does act in a BIG DIGITAL way, the commercial sector gets a bee in its bonnet. I recently heard someone at a BBC session for indies question ‘isn’t it easier to ask what the BBC ISN’T working on?’

So really perhaps my point is more of a question: Can the BBC ever really win?

Whilst I do concur that some things need to change, there are so many things that don’t need fixing at all.

IMO, yes the BBC is sitting duck for ’snore, snore - it’s so rubbish why isn’t doing this/that/the other’ but at the same time, when it gets its ducks in a row, it can pull of truly sublime feats which remind us all why the BBC is and can be so great.

Rock on BBC but watch your back – times are a changing and opinion is fierce.

4.The Public Purposes
The Public Purposes of the BBC are as follows—
(a)sustaining citizenship and civil society;
(b)promoting education and learning;
(c)stimulating creativity and cultural excellence;
(d)representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities;
(e)bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK;
(f)in promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking aleading role in the switchover to digital television.

This would tend to indicate that the role and responsibility of the BBC is to use whatever media available to it to “stimulat(e) creativity… bring the UK to the world,” and to help “deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services”.

This seems like as good a time as any to mount a challenge to the leadership’s policies based on this evidence.

It’s worth comparing the PBS and BBC approach to a recent co-production:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/latinmusicusa/#/en/hom
and
http://www.bbc.co.uk/musictv/latinmusicusa/

Apart from anything else they illustrate that because they have completely different policies and technical infrastructure, there is no room for collaboration on anything but the TV shows.

The iplayer seems to have convinced large parts of the BBC that the Interweb is just ‘telly (or radio) on the computer (and iPhone)’.

While there can be no doubt that it is part of what license-fee payers should get, there is a lack of genuine invention and innovation around digital.

It is no surprise that most of the clevers in this field who were at home at the beeb 5-10 years ago have left.