{"id":387632,"date":"2010-03-04T06:34:20","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T11:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/futuresavvy.net\/?p=1190"},"modified":"2010-03-04T06:34:20","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T11:34:20","slug":"the-bbc-has-a-jolly-decent-go-at-leading-its-multi-stakeholder-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/387632","title":{"rendered":"The BBC has a jolly decent go at leading its multi-stakeholder future"},"content":{"rendered":"

The BBC has released a blueprint for its future, summarized in a 64-page ‘Director-General’s Report which can be downloaded here<\/a>. The gist is the corporation plans to back off from many of its more commercial offerings, particularly closing digital radio stations such as 6Music and the Asian Network, and pruning its online presence. The money saved will go to funding more original content and shoring up the quality of the offerings not pruned.
\n.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"BBC<\/a><\/p>\n

The BBC futures document is a careful and thoughtful piece of work, making bold foresight-oriented moves: saying, essentially, what are we here for? To provide quality media in the public interest. So what do we need to do\/make\/change to achieve it, that is, to deliver on our core mission, in the years ahead?
\n.<\/span>
\nTo this end, the blueprint talks about “setting new boundaries:
\n\u2022 Recognising the lead role that commercial radio plays in serving popular music to 30-50 year-old audiences, through the proposed closure of 6 Music and the refocusing of Radio 1 and Radio 2
\n\u2022 Recognising the lead role that Channel 4 and other broadcasters can play in addressing the gap in public service television for younger teenagers, through the closure of targeted teen propositions
\n\u2022 Reducing spending on programmes from abroad by 20%, from \u00a3100m today to \u00a380m in 2013, capping it thereafter at this level of 2.5p in every licence fee pound
\n\u2022 Setting a limit on what the BBC can spend on sports rights at an average of 9p in every licence fee pound
\n\u2022 Leaving room for local newspapers and others to develop in a digital world by keeping the BBC\u2019s current pattern of local services, and not launching new services in England at any more local a level than today
\n\u2022 Focusing original content on BBC Online on the (five) content priorities only, and excluding whole categories of online activity such as web search, communications and non-content related social networking.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Further in the document it talks about “a set of web-native activities that the BBC itself will not undertake, including:
\n\u2022 The BBC\u2019s search activity will be limited to its own website and associated external links; it will not do general web search for all-web content
\n\u2022 It will not run its own general communications services such as email, webmail or instant messaging
\n\u2022 It will not create stand-alone social networking sites, with any social propositions on the BBC site only there to aid engagement with BBC content. The BBC will also ensure that its social activity works with external social networks
\n\u2022 There will be no specialist content for a specialist audience, such as business-critical information in specialist fields, legal, financial (including trading tools) or other professional content.”<\/span>
\n.<\/span>
\nFrom the beeb’s perspective, it makes perfect sense. It can’t be the best at everything to everyone. That just means it will be working at the limits of its reach in many areas, against focused competitors, which dilutes its brand, and of course spending public money on commercial services already relatively well catered to.<\/p>\n


\nThe politics of engagement
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s business strategy 101, and if it were a business that would be that. But the BBC is a multi-stakeholder public service body, and therein lies the rub. Everyone has a say in its future. And different stakeholders have different ideas of what is ‘in the public interest’: many think commercial radio etc., is in their interest, so protest is mounting, particularly among younger users under banners that read ‘BBC turns it’ back on a generation’ and so on. Twitter is humming.<\/p>\n

Good multi-stakeholder future work requires engagement and consultation, and the BBC is offering a consultative process — from now until May 25 — see the page at https:\/\/consultations.external.bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

The future? Let’s not mince words that are usually minced. The future is political. That is part of the reason prediction is done so poorly — people miss the fact or extent of contention over outcomes, even ones you would think are in everyone’s interest (mitigating climate change, for example.)<\/p>\n

When there are many interested parties with different interests, and therefore contending claims on the future — different visions of the ‘ideal’ future — the flavor of the future (in total or in compromise) will belong to the interest with the stronger hand. So depending on the power of the stakeholders soon-to-be-unhappy, the BBC will be forced to bend or not. But in the hardball world of multistakeholder change, chances are the Director General has set his stall out a bit further than he need to, and will be able to ‘compromise’ to a position that is more or less the plan. Good futuring all round.<\/p>\n

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The BBC has released a blueprint for its future, summarized in a 64-page ‘Director-General’s Report which can be downloaded here. The gist is the corporation plans to back off from many of its more commercial offerings, particularly closing digital radio stations such as 6Music and the Asian Network, and pruning its online presence. The money […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5646,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-387632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5646"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}