BBC review

I've been reading the BBC Strategy Review.

Once you get through the management speak, the blandness of the phrasing and general poor writing, this is an appalling document.

There has been a lot of media coverage of some of these changes already, and two of the several channels currently under threat have generated much support. (For the record, in addition to Radio 6Music and the Asian Network, BBC Switch and Blast! are also targeted).

However there hasn't been enough coverage of the proposed carving up of the Web site. The BBC's online presence is to be massively reduced:-

BBC Online
The internet is now the BBC’s third core medium, joining television and radio as a critical part of the way that it meets its public purposes. Millions of people rely on BBC Online every day, particularly for news. On the web, the BBC can give the most integrated account of itself across text, audio, video and, over time, across an archive of almost everything it has broadcast since its foundation. As the internet comes to the living-room through television sets, it will become more important still—and indeed, one day, may be the only platform and delivery system that the BBC needs to fulfil its public purposes.

The internet then is not an optional extra: it is the future for the BBC, just as it is for so many other organisations. But precisely because the BBC’s online services have become so vital to delivering its purposes, they must be held to new and higher standards of distinctiveness, efficiency and openness. Under this strategy, BBC Online will create new content for the web only where it fits the five content priorities, delivers audience impact and is of demonstrably high quality and distinctiveness. The site’s quality and consistency will be improved with the closure or consolidation of half of its main sections; its efficiency stepped up; and its links to the rest of the web increased radically.

• To help ensure that this refocusing takes place, the BBC will spend 25% less on BBC Online by 2013, with a corresponding reduction in staffing levels
• The number of sections on the site (its ‘top-level directories’, in the form bbc.co.uk/sitename) will be halved by 2012, with many sites closed and others consolidated
• New investment will be in pursuit of the five content priorities only, and there will be far fewer bespoke programme websites
• BBC Online will be transformed into a window on the web with, by 2012, an external link on every page and at least double the current rate of ‘click-throughs’ to external sites.

So there we have it: riddled with inconsistent and obscurantist, but the intention is clear. A massive shrinkage of the site and a huge reduction in original content. You can go and look at some advertising instead - the BBC will provide the links. And this is the 'third core medium'?

I'm speechless. I've written before that the BBC is too small, and explained why. Those arguments still hold, of course - perhaps even more strongly now. But this new proposal for the BBC's online presence is more insidious - because in a real sense the Beeb's management are proposing to give up its stake in the future. If, indeed, it "...one day, may be the only platform and delivery system that the BBC needs to fulfil its public purposes..." then surely the plan should be to strengthen it, not to cut it off at the knees at the beginning.

Get cross. Complain. Shout at them. Please.