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MUMBAI:
The BBC Trust has published a proposed strategy for the BBC,
inviting views from the public and industry on the future
direction for the corporation.
The
proposals have been drawn up by the BBC Executive following
a challenge from the BBC Trust to the Director General to
carry out a full scale review of the BBC's strategy.
The
Trust issued the challenge in July 2009 to address questions
about the scope of the BBC's activities, focusing on how the
BBC can most effectively deliver its public service mission
and meet audience needs and deliver value for money.
The
proposals will now be subject to a 12 week consultation.
BBC
DG Mark Thompson has recommended several steps including the
closure of Asian Network as a national service, and using
the resources released to serve Asian audiences better in
other ways. He has also recommended the closure of the teen
offerings, BBC Switch and Blast.
On the online front, Thompson wants the BBC to focus on five
content priorities, halving the number of sections on the
site and improving its quality by closing lower performing
sites and consolidating the rest. He also advocates spending
25 per cent less on the site per year by 2013. The aim is
to turn the site into a window on the web by providing at
least one external link on every page and doubling monthly
‘click-throughs’ to external sites.
BBC
Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons says, "The public pick
up the bill for the BBC and it is right that it constantly
evolves to meet their expectations. This strategy review is
a key part of that process. We welcome the general direction
of this report, although we will want to test it and consider
how it is delivered. We are clear it heads towards a more
disciplined and sharply focused BBC. That will mean some difficult
choices. But we will not shrink from those choices where they
are in the interests of licence fee payers. The end result
should be a BBC that is genuinely distinctive, genuinely open
and transparent and genuinely public service."
In
its original challenge to the Executive, the Trust set out
five key questions:
How
can the BBC best maintain quality and distinctiveness?
Where if necessary could its focus be narrowed and its scale
reduced?
What will a fully digital BBC look like?
Can the BBC better define the 'public space' it provides?
How can the BBC create most value from its scale?
In publishing the Executive's proposals, the Trust has stressed
that it supports the Director-General's vision of "a
BBC focused on quality content and enduring values that keeps
open a public space for all" and that it endorses the
central proposals put forward for achieving that vision.
In
its response, the Trust has also set out the areas that it
supports, those it will want to consider further and those
where longer term thinking is needed.
The
Trust will use the responses from the 12-week consultation
and its own analysis to form a final view on what the future
strategic framework for the BBC ought to be. It will aim to
provide a provisional view of its conclusions in the summer
and a final strategy in the autumn.
At
this stage, the Trust is consulting on the overall strategy
for the BBC. It is not formally considering any specific changes
to services, including for example those proposed for the
Asian Network or to 6 Music. Under its formal regulatory processes,
to make such changes, the Trust would need first to receive
applications from the BBC. It would expect the Executive to
put those forward only after the Trust has completed its own
work and set out its final view on what the BBC's future strategy
ought to be.
Any
specific changes to services would be subject to full regulatory
scrutiny, including further rounds of consultation where appropriate.
Thompson
also recommends:
•Reducing
spending on imported programmes and films by 20 per cent,
capping it thereafter at no more than 2.5p in every licence
fee pound
• Capping sports rights spending at 9p in every licence
fee pound
• Recognising the lead role commercial radio plays in
serving popular music to 30-50 year-olds
• Recognising the lead role other broadcasters play in
serving younger teenagers on TV
• Never more local: undertaking not to launch services
more local than at present in England
• Defining publicly which areas of activity BBC Online
will not undertake.
Making
the licence fee work harder means focusing the BBC’s
spending on what matters most to the public by:
•
Reducing the cost of running the BBC by a quarter: from 12p
in a licence fee pound today to under
9p by the end of the Charter in 2016
• Reducing senior management numbers, freezing pay and
suspending bonuses
• Reinvesting savings in new UK programmes serving the
five content priorities
• Striving to make every licence fee pound benefit the
wider UK economy by at least £2, and spreading that
value across the UK.
On
this strategy, a clearer BBC behaviour means:
•
Prioritising quality over quantity whenever a choice is required
• Making the BBC the most open and responsive public
institution in the UK
• Making explicit the BBC’s commitment to consider
the market impact of major decisions
• Making partnership the BBC’s ‘default setting’
for most new activities
• Ensuring the tough limits set by the BBC Trust’s
recent review of BBC Worldwide are fully implemented, with
new limits on acquisitions and a drive towards non-UK activities
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