dinosaur dictates course of evolution

Well, well, well…

There's plenty of comment about Lord Carter's Digital Britain White Paper today. But no one seems to be mentioning the one big change that could really radically transform "digital britain" - dumping the BBC News website.

For many newspapers, this is the thought that dare not speak its name. But several of them think it privately.

In other words, no-one was mentioning it so I just thought I would, you know, put it on the agenda and everything.

Why? Well, there is a case that the BBC licence fee should not be spent on websites or any internet activity at all, that it should be restricted to broadcasting alone. There is a huge grey area about whether you need a TV licence to receive broadcasts via the internet rather than a TV set. But although the Beeb wants to reach as large an audience as possible, its main source of funding is a "TV licence" not an "computer licence".

So in what sense is “broadcasting” confined to one form of media? This like saying you can have TV or radio but not both, because only one is broadcasting.

Which brings us to the thorniest topic of all - paid content. Many newspapers would dearly love to follow Rupert Murdoch's lead and start micro-charging for content - content that costs a lot of money to produce. Heck, even this 'free' blog you're reading costs money via my salary. But some feel that it would be suicidal to start charging as long as there exists a free rival out there, namely the BBC News website.

It is of course fantastic that the internet has plenty of free content, not least via volunteer bloggers. Yet the entire online newspaper model cannot work in the long term unless somebody pays the wages of the journalists who provide the expertise/insight/contacts that the punters want to read. With ad spend unlikely to be the saviour, that 'somebody' may have to be the user. If papers micro-charge for some things and make it convenient to do so, they could provide others services for free.

Well, I already pay the wages of the journalists who produce the BBC news website and so I get what I pay for. There is your effective and efficient paid content model.

I figured that Murdoch wouldn’t be able to move towards a paid content without setting up a cartel of media owners. But if they’re reluctant to move in the face of competition from the BBC – well, this may be the start of the other shoe dropping. They could also rely on the support of other broadcasters as well, since abolishing BBC news site would free up money from the license fee they’re anxious to horn in on. I think I see an emerging strategy.

Comments

[ejh]

The BBC news website is, I should say, not only the best news website there is, but quite likely one of the best websites in the world. No wonder the free-market press wants to fuck it up.

[dsquared]

There's a bit of a hidden agenda here as well in that the free London Lite wasn't sold to Lebedev along with the Standard. And also note that Waugh is implicitly suggesting that newspaper websites operate at the very least a complex monopoly - this "follow Rupert Murdoch's lead" is exactly the sort of thing that the Competition Commission gets excited about.

[dsquared]

(I'll also trail a forthcoming review of "The Harder Path" by noting that for all anyone says about Sir John Birt, the BBC website is definitely his legacy - firstly it's built with money that he saved from the 1990s downsizing, and second he was an early and large-scale adopter. Although there are lots and lots of grounds for criticising Birtism, it ought to be recognised that there was basically one very big decision for a media executive to make in the 1990s and Birt got it right)

[john b]

...and I note with glee that Murdoch got it exactly, 100% wrong. Although he did make the right one-very-big-decision in the 1980s, which perhaps gives him a victory on points.

[ejh]

Incidentally, and I believe there's a still-running Crooked Timber thread on related issues, the internet public appears to expect content, in this day and age, to be free, almost regardless of what it is. This cuts both ways here (if you want everything to be paid for by advertising instead, it's not a great argument for the licence fee) but still, if usage of a site is substantial enough, which in this instance it is, then you'd hope people might be able to get their heads in the right position on this one.

[ajay]

And, of course, if you set that as a precedent, the next stage is "if we were prepared to shut down bbc.co.uk because it was an unfair competitor to newspapers' websites, shouldn't we shut down BBC TV because it's an unfair competitor to ITV and Sky?"

[Richard J]

I'm mildly surprised D^2 hasn't used the phrase 'talking his book up' yet, to be honest.

[Alex]

John Whittingdale MP used to go on about news.bbc.co.uk being evil when he was on the CMS select committee. It's a Maplin Sands phenomenon - floating about in the Tory id long after the argument it was originally cooked up to help in has been forgotten.

(Of course, it's wank; there have been freebie newspapers for ever, and there are still newspapers. Similarly, the existence of free-to-air TV did not prevent the emergence of Sky or the cable world.)

It's also bizarre that they wank about the World Service and hate the web site; but then, that is just another example of how technological senescence is a marker of social class in the UK.

Meanwhile, Digital Britain report. Boy, what a wet fart that is!

[jamie]

That's part of what should cause concern in a way: all anybody seems to want to talk about is the BBC, despite it not having very much to do with that. It's a sort of template for predatory instincts and senior management enrichment schemes.

[ajay]

"senior management enrichment"... you mean they could Qinetiq it?

[Richard J]

I suspect that, thanks to 30 minutes work 8 years ago, I'm bound by the OSA on that comment, ajay...

[Tom]

I fixed a leading Qinetiq manager's ADSL for him a couple of years back - does that mean I'm now an Official Secret? *puzzled*

Actually, I should have just billed them for services and retired on the proceeds, shouldn't I?

BTW Mr. Waugh has linked to this article, if you want to carry on the debate.

[jamie]

That's very good of him, though I'm not getting any traffic from that source. Hello London.

[Steve Atone]

The bizarre thing about British broadcasting at the moment is that everything but the BBC has a model that doesn't work, but the only solution that anyone in those other broadcasters has is to alter the way the BBC does business so it's more like them.

Sentanta didn't collapse because of competition from the BBC. ITV isn't a load of embarrassing rubbish because the BBC isn't. Channel Four is crap because they hired Noel Edmonds, not because the BBC didn't.