Role of BBC in New Media - Part I the TechCrunch BBC Debate

Last night there was a debate on the BBC's role in fostering UK New Media startups, initially proposed by Techcrunch UK's Mike Butcher (here is his liveblog of the event). On the panel were:

Tom Loosemore, Ofcom and former ‘head of Web 2.0_ at the BBC
Jon Gisby, Channel 4’s first dedicated new media director
Azeem Azahar, startups angel investor, ex-BBC, original proposer of the BBC Public License
Tony Ageh, BBC New Media controller of internet
James Cridland, Head of Future Media & Technology for BBC Audio & Music Interactive
Jem Stone, Portfolio Executive, BBC new media
Chair: Steve Bowbrick, entrepreneur, Blogger on BBC policy

Mike has done a good job of summarising the speakers' talks and (will no doubt do as good a job later with) the Q&A session, so there is no point in going through that all - I thought I'd comment on some themes that came up recurrently.

Firstly, on the startup side - do your frigging homework! There is stunning naivete in some areas, and this is frankly unacceptable for a new media business that wants to succeed and work with any large companies - these areas came out last night:

Very Few people seem to understand the Rights Issue

Its actually very simple in one way - the BBC doesn't own a lot of the content rights, as that would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, the original content producers have the bulk of those rights. Its very complex in another way, as that means for any piece of media there are a horde of rightsholders to sort out - and over 50-odd years of content making thats a huge task

Materiality is not irrelevant

Based on some of the questions last night, I have to wonder about the financial acumen of some startups. This was really brought home to me with one questioner claiming that since all the TV audiences would soon go away, the BBC was dramatically underspending on its online world. The truth of course is the opposite - New Media is still a fairly small, albeit rapidly growing part of the overall media pie.

The BBC is not a charity

There were complaints that there was "no-one to talk to" at the BBC about various requirements. Sorry guys and gals, but in the world of business that's a general truth, not just the BBC. By and large the person selling the stuff has to find and seduce the buyer, not the other way round. The role of the BBC is not to dole out cash to people in startups just because they pay TV licence fees.

Do you guys "get" how big the BBC operation is? Wise up!

There was whingeing about some BBC technology being old, some being inflexible etc. We consult to media companies and Telcos and ISPs large and small, and in our view the BBC is no worse than any other player who has been going for 10 years at that scale. Of course there is legacy technology - but what startups have to realise is you (i) can't just pull a production system out because its a bit past its sell by date, and (ii) even if you do, it doesn't have to be your cherished new technology they use - in a large scale 5x9 environment there is a benefit in "tried and tested", and the "hot tech" du jour will be just another layer of sediment in the infrastructure in 2 years time anyway.

If I hear the "The BBC is ruining Commercial Startups by being Free" once more I'll thcream and thcream

Someone's got to be the 800lb Gorilla, this is a fairly benign one (look at the 25% - 50% spend on UK companies mandated in the BBC operations rules). Google and Microsoft don't do that. Google and Microsoft also effectively do their New Media work as a giveaway and make money elsewhere. Also, how many of the UK's New Media mavens got their leg up at the BBC, and have continued to use their networks to get BBC money?

However, the BBC needs to sort out its act in some key areas too:

A simple process for understanding rights options

A point well made by TIOTI's Paul Cleghorn was that he wanted a clear view of the rights T&Cs because potential funders wanted to understand and quantify the risks, and without that it's very hard to get funding. Another person noted he had the rights cleared from 5 other public broadcasters in the time it had taken to not get to a conclusion with the BBC.

I would also argue that the BBC pays too much attention to rights holders compared to other commercial entities. In a way this is due to its public service legacy and funding - if anything goes wrong there are questions in the house, wails in the newspapers etc. Nonetheless it coul probably be more robust with "small cap" rights holders to content


Get the data you do have out as easily as possible
Background data, Metadata, BT owned content, R&D research - all these things can be used to create value added services, make it easy to access them

Define a strategy for rights going forward that does not perpetuate the historic mess

There are two pieces to this:

(i) A simpler way of handling the horde of non material rights so that they cannot hold up content re-use and are cheap to settle

(ii) It may not be possible for TV rights, but for digital rights ensure that usage rules going forward are more flexible. This is non trivial, as rights law in general is not really fit for digital purpose (The argument that otherwise everybody will just pirate the stuff anyway is always an interesting one

Make it easier to find out who does what

It is a large organisation, but many similar sized commercial companies are better these days at their customer / supplier etc facing processes.

Very good discussion, handled in a good spirit, kudos to all involved. Will add links/ comments as others post up their blogs.

The really interesting bit though was the starting of the debate about "what should the BBC be in Digital Media going forward" and I want to a address that in a later post after a spot of reflection.