WordblogJournalism in a changing world

Replacement of the BBC’s governors with the BBC Trust which is also the regulator is blamed for the BBC falling behind in its bid to lead the new media revolution, according to Bobbie Johnson’s lead story in Media Guardian today. He writes:

With the Trust now the arbiter of which projects get the go-ahead - and even making retrospective decisions over whether services live or die - insiders say that innovative thinking is finding it harder to surface. And with commercial companies (including the Guardian) lobbying to try to scale back the BBC’s impact on the commercial world, the Trust is finding it difficult to balance a public service commitment against the fear of damaging the interests of industry stakeholders.

Pity he had to fall back on “insiders” but the sentiment rings true. And there is a quote from the ever-quotable Greg Dyke who told Johnson:

It’s bloody Tessa Jowell’s [media culture and sport secretary] fault - she has got a lot to answer for. They didn’t want an outside solution, Ofcom regulating the BBC, so they built it in with the BBC Trust. And Michael Grade [resigned as BBC chairman to become boss of ITV in January] did not stand up and say that this wouldn’t work, even though we all knew it wouldn’t.

The big example given is the iPlayer which was announced four years ago but was only officially sanctioned by the Trust two weeks ago.