The BBC has announced that plans to cut back its website operations, originally scheduled to commence in 2012, will now commence in 2010.
The Daily Telegraph reports that the millions of web pages currently produced and maintained by the corporation extend well beyond its core business. It is reported that entertainment, music and celebrity content may be some of the first areas to be hit.
The BBC plans to publish the results of an overall strategic review ahead of the general election in a report which is likely to take a hard look at the corporation’s remit. This review, along with a cost-reduction exercise already under way means that a smaller portfolio of channels and services, including web content, is likely.
Recent years have seen aggressive investment in the BBC’s digital presence, most notably in terms of the iPlayer and the extensive range of podcasts made available each week. The fact that cuts are likely to kick in within months of the strategic review suggests that the corporation may well have over-extended itself.
I think other media providers know that their crappy content doesn’t meet the quality of the BBC. This is why they’ve put pressure on the BBC Trust via the government to force the Beeb to cut content.
Let’s be honest, the BBC doesn’t have a profit motive, or a ‘business model’. That makes it harder to compete with what they deliver editorially.
That said, great editorial destinations should have nothing to fear. The Beeb is laden in bureaucracy and inertia.
I thank you.
I, for one, welcome the fact that they do not have a profit motive, but a quality motive.
One only has to look at many of the US TV channels to see what profit motive first does.
I’d rather have the BBC any day.
I don’t really agree with the last line. Seems to me that the cost-cutting is pre-emptive of the Murdoch-sponsored Tories wielding the axe to the licence fee and hobbling the BBC.
If they show that they’re already cost-cutting in earnest then it will be harder for Murdoch to convince the public of the need for the Tory plans.