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Partnerships in practice

2011-05-03T09:22:17+00:00

It's now just over two years since the BBC announced a renewed focus on partnerships. This resulted in some healthy scepticism both inside and outside the BBC - would any of it ever happen? Won't the BBC move on to some other novel initiative when the political climate is right? Well, I'm pleased to say that we and our partners have managed to follow our fine words through with some concrete actions - just in the last couple of months we've seen the launch of Radioplayer and iPlayer Linking. Making partnerships work is a challenge for all organisations - and the size of the BBC and the regulatory constraints we have to work within add to the complexity of working with us. However, the good news is we are learning. iPlayer Linking is an example of this - it's a product with many of the same benefits as the original 'Open iPlayer' proposal but not as many of the complexities. It is a really simple idea - a new feature in BBC iPlayer that helps you find programmes from other broadcasters and on-demand content providers. Through partnerships that allow the sharing of metadata, you can now find programmes from ITV, Channel 4, S4C, Five, SeeSaw.com and MSN Video Player, directly from the BBC iPlayer website. Have a look on the left hand side of the screen in iPlayer or read more about how it works. Another recent launch, Radioplayer, is the culmination of a partnership between the BBC and commercial radio to provide easy online radio listening with very simple search and navigation. With founding partners the BBC, Global Radio, GMG Radio, Absolute Radio and RadioCentre, it lives up to its tagline, 'UK radio in one place'. Read more about it. We're not just working on technical partnerships or only with other broadcasters. A History of the World was one of the most exciting partnerships of 2010. Its foundation was a partnership between the BBC and the British Museum, but it extended to involve schools, museums and audiences across the UK. You can still listen to and download all the episodes of the radio series. Something all of these partnerships have in common, as with all the partnerships we're working on, is that they seek to bring benefits to the BBC, our partners and most importantly to our audiences. We'll continue to work away on new and exciting partnerships that support the creative sector and bring more value to licence fee payers. As we stated in Putting Quality First, partnership is now the default model for the BBC on almost any new large-scale issue - it's becoming a way of life for us. We will also keep trying to make the BBC a simpler and better partner (one of the aims of the Delivering Quality First project). You can keep up to date on our progress at the BBC's partnerships page. Adrian Ruth is the BBC Partnerships Programme Director

The BBC announced a renewed focus on partnerships with the document Public Service Partnerships
Radioplayer
iPlayer Linking
A BBC Trust press release about the original 'Open iPlayer' proposal
A post on the BBC Internet Blog about how to find programmes in iPlayer from other on-demand services
A post on the BBC Internet Blog about the launch of the Radioplayer
A History of the World: The 100 British Museum Objects
The BBC defined partnerships as the default model on almost any new large-scale issue in the BBC Strategy Review document
The BBC aims to be a simpler and better partner. You can track progress on the BBC Partnerships page

BBC Online - Adopting Product Management

2010-10-25T09:51:12+00:00

Last week, the BBC Academy launched its Product Management Development Programme to give staff an overview of the discipline and the skills it entails. At the same time, the BBC Academy published a specially-commissioned report into the state of product management in 2010. I'm delighted that the BBC as a best practice leader is playing such an important part in the adoption of a discipline which is rapidly gaining prominence in the UK media industry.

Why do we need Product Management? In March of this year the BBC announced a new strategy - Putting Quality First. I have blogged previously about the significance of this for BBC Online. Putting Quality First recognised the importance of BBC Online within the BBC's overarching strategy, and proposed we focus on doing 'fewer things better'. BBC Online started life as a flat text-publishing medium via which static web pages were delivered, before the web began to mature and the offering grew. To help us to rationalise this, we'll be introducing modern management processes to bring it all together.

By 2012 it's estimated that around 90% of UK homes will have access to our services via the web so it's important that we get this right. Product management will enable us to think more strategically about developing our online presence, and deliver a better quality and more innovative service for audiences. The pursuit of quality will be supported by better ways of working together. The report published yesterday defines the product management role as 'a multi-disciplined person who operates at the intersection of technology, design and editorial and is able to bring all of these elements together' to deliver products whose lifecycle is managed. We'll no longer build websites which are published and which sit unattended and slowly degrade; products will be managed within a life cycle. This could mean gradual addition of new features, new content, new releases, but also includes the ultimate decommissioning of a product.

How will we make this change happen? The UK is currently behind the US in its adoption of the discipline, but the BBC is lucky to have a small but solid foundation to build on. Some recent hires of practiced, multi-discipline product management experts will help us lead the charge. On top of this, I'm proud that the BBC Academy is investing in professional development to prepare existing staff for cultural change, and more broadly, our contribution to the development of a new generation of world-class product managers and an important industry standard.

I've no doubt that product management will soon be embraced by many other European media companies. In the meantime, I'd urge you to take a look at the report published last week which provides a great insight into the state of product management in 2010 via various case studies and testimonials. It concludes that we've reached a tipping point where media companies are beginning to understand the value of a product-led approach, but also that there's a skills gap in the industry, something which we hope our training initiative will begin to address.

Erik Huggers is Director of BBC Future Media & Technology

You can read more about how the BBC spotlights the role of Product Manager in the media in the press release.

BBC Online - Putting Quality First

2010-08-11T11:23:06+00:00

In March this year, the BBC announced a new strategy - Putting Quality First. These proposals, which are subject to BBC Trust approval, chart a new long-range direction for the BBC and would enable the BBC to deliver on its public purposes in the digital age. Central to this strategy is a proposal to transform BBC Online.

In its initial conclusions on strategy review, the BBC Trust said they "endorsed" the proposed budget reduction for the service, but wanted to "understand and approve the editorial changes involved".This work has now begun, so while I'm not able to outline changes in precise detail today, I hope this gives a sense of where we intend to take BBC Online as a whole.

I'm proud of what this organisation has created online. One of the first "traditional" media companies to embrace the web, I continue to be impressed with its ability to innovate and BBC websites such as News, Sport, iPlayer and others are highly valued by our audiences.

But the service as a whole has sprawled. In striving to stay relevant, we have sometimes not been clear enough about our limits and boundaries. We're getting a better sense of what BBC Online should be for and I believe it's possible to make the service better with less.

Many of you will be familiar with the headlines of the Strategy Review. By 2013, we propose a BBC Online that:

â¢ Does fewer things better, against the BBC's five editorial priorities
â¢ Has half the number of top-level directories (i.e. /sitename) down from the 400 we have today to 200
â¢ Costs 25% less (i.e. the BBC Online Service Licence for 2010/11 is Â£135m - we intend to cut spend to Â£100m)
â¢ Will send double the traffic we currently do to other websites, helping the broader UK digital economy

While it's natural that people focus on the 25% and which directories will go it's worth noting that this strategy is not called "Retreating From the Web" or "Cutting BBC Online". This is because the web is an important part of our future.

Today, around 70% of UK homes have broadband and we expect this number to rise to 90% by 2012. So in just two years the internet will have taken its place as the nation's third medium, available in almost as many homes as TV and radio.

Beyond the home computer, mobiles are already the primary point of web access for many people. With innovation from companies such as Apple, Google, Sky, Virgin, Project Canvas (in which the BBC is set to become a shareholder) and others - this may soon be true for the TV set.

As a public service media company, it's essential that we move with our audiences, but while we reach 84% of the population on TV and 73% on radio, our online reach lags behind at just 54%. Continued sprawl is not the answer; we need a focused service that gives audiences the content and services they want at their fingertips, meets our public purposes in the digital age and leaves space for others to thrive.

From building websites to managing products

The image below gives you an idea of what we are trying to achieve.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/1.jpg

BBC Online started with text-based journalism on the web - similar to the service on Ceefax. Then, as the web began to mature, new media budgets were given to the BBC's divisions to go and build websites that aimed to meet our public purposes online - but with no central strategy.

Our first major change will be a shift from "building websites" to "managing products".

First I want to explain what we consider to be a "product". It's a self-contained entity within BBC Online, which unites technology and editorial to meet a clearly defined audience need. Each product has a simple and concise proposition that's easily understood by the audience, is kept up to date, fits the overall strategy for BBC Online and has clear editorial leadership.

It's a strategic approach for the service as a whole - framed by what our audiences need from the web, rather than what we produce today for TV and radio - a change in culture for BBC Online.

Audiences will see products organised into five content areas (portfolios) supported by a common technical platform.

Powerful functionality to help audiences find great content and services

Before I talk about the proposed portfolios, a word on what's going to be common across the site.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/2.jpg

Under the current structure, people come to BBC Online from a range of different places, get what they are looking for and leave. By making other content elsewhere in the site easier to search for (or navigate to) we offer better value for money as audiences uncover interesting content and services that they may not have been looking for.

While the homepage provides an overview of what the BBC does, most people don't come through our front door. In addition to search, navigation, and consistent design, social functionality through BBC iD can harness the power of recommendation on networks outside the BBC.

Underpinning all of this, we'll have a common technology platform powering the whole service delivering economies of scale and cost-saving technologies such as programme-page automation.

The platform allows the service to be location-aware, providing the right content in the right language to users across the UK and globally. Dynamic content publishing makes it simple and cost-effective to repurpose content for use in mobile or TV applications and world-class accessibility features aim to build on the pioneering work the team has done to bring subtitles to BBC iPlayer.

Finally, the platform houses the BBC's rich archive content: video and radio programmes, the written archive, programme information and more can be stored and in time be made available through all the product portfolios. This is a major project that will take years to complete, but we are putting the building blocks in place now.

A commitment to deliver the best online journalism in the world

The first proposed product portfolio is News, Sport and Weather. BBC journalism stands for quality, impartiality, accuracy and distinctiveness - a major reason why the BBC as a whole is one of the most trusted and respected organisations in the world.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/3.jpg

News, Sport and Weather will remain a cornerstone of the BBC's web offer, partly because the immediacy of the web lends itself well to journalism. Each will remain pillars of BBC Online, delivering the best journalism in the world for the UK and in national and global editions.

As video on the web comes of age, we intend to further enrich our web journalism with audio-visual content - drawing on our strengths in broadcasting. Already we're making progress here with the recently redesigned BBC News site and the BBC News smartphone application.

But our News, Sport & Weather products need to do a better job of sending traffic elsewhere, both internally (e.g. sending sports journalism to BBC Radio 5 Live or weather forecasts to science & nature) and beyond. Already the BBC is the second biggest referrer of traffic to online newspapers, something we want to do even better.

And sport will make a major contribution to our fifth editorial priority - major events that bring the nation and communities together. We're committed to creating compelling editorial partnerships for London 2012, and beyond.

Outstanding children's content in a safe online environment

Providing outstanding children's content is another of the BBC's five editorial priorities and we will continue to deliver this in a safe, social environment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/4.jpg

As we recently announced, our FM&T product team will be joining BBC Children's in a new digital hub in Salford. The CBeebies and CBBC brands have been a huge success, and our online proposition will build stronger bridges between the two. BBC Children's will use their unique knowledge of this audience to provide links to other BBC content such as news and learning.

As children enter BBC Online through an environment familiar to them, they can quickly access a broader range of content to expand their horizons.

Knowledge & Learning to become a cornerstone of a new-look service

Despite the internet's roots as an information tool, the BBC has been a pioneer in online knowledge and learning. We have developed compelling online content for learners and teachers, and created some well-known online learning brands (such as Bitesize) in the process.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/5.jpg
This new portfolio aims to replicate the success of News, Sport & Weather. We intend to enhance informal learning by creating a mix of original and archive knowledge content, focused on key areas of BBC expertise - and create distinctive formal learning propositions for two age groups: under and over 19s.

By bringing these two important areas together, presenting them clearly and coherently, and making the content easier to find and navigate to from elsewhere in the site, we intend to make knowledge and learning another cornerstone of the reshaped BBC Online.

Bringing radio & music together in one portfolio

Our Audio & Music division has been incredibly innovative in embracing emerging digital technologies, such as podcasts, live online listening, and creating an in-depth music offer, many music events websites and rich radio network websites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/6.jpg
But BBC radio and music online remains highly fragmented and the audience doesn't move between websites as much as we'd like, or to elsewhere in BBC Online.

We intend to bring together all BBC radio and music - including network, local and nations, news, events and archive - in one coherent online package. And true to the live and interactive principles of radio, we'll focus on social media to interact with our audience in real-time.

Harnessing the passion and knowledge of BBC experts, our aim is to continue as a music tastemaker and become a hub for online music discovery - but with strong integration with Radioplayer, internal linking, and links to external music sites to broaden horizons.

A coherent TV proposition, to build on the success of BBC iPlayer

The BBC iPlayer has been a great success for the BBC, making online video consumption a mainstream activity for millions of people. At first a TV catch-up service, it's evolved into an online product for live and on-demand BBC radio and TV content.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/7.jpg
But as in radio and music, the journeys for audiences looking for video content can be confusing, with multiple entry points through automated programme pages, the archive site, bespoke channel and programme sites, drama and comedy and the BBC iPlayer itself.

We intend to create a coherent TV & BBC iPlayer proposition, pulling all these TV propositions together, optimised to help audiences find, watch, share, and interact around our TV-related output.

Not only will this new-look portfolio be richly interconnected with BBC Online's other four product portfolios, but we'll be sending traffic to services outside the BBC through the metadata partnerships announced at the launch of the new BBC iPlayer beta in May.

Broadening audiences' horizons - aiding content discovery beyond the BBC

One of the wonders of the web is its ability to inform, educate and entertain every person in the world, right down to the exact specific interests they have. It truly is a platform that can be customised for anyone.

But the BBC cannot and should not do everything.

In news, rival media outlets will take a different editorial position on the news agenda. There's an inherent public service in highlighting these other points of view.

Other cultural institutions, such as the British Museum and British Library have rich and different web content than we are able to provide, and equally, there's little value in the BBC duplicating the public service information on offer elsewhere. We can work together to create compelling public service partnerships.

Collectively, these new portfolios would combine to create a far more focussed, smaller, higher-quality BBC Online that will serve our audiences well, leave plenty of room for others and double the traffic we send externally by 2013.

Today, I've updated the BBC staff on our intentions for the service. By properly harnessing the incredible talent we have in this organisation, I believe we can make BBC Online an even better service for our audiences, and spend less in the process.

Erik Huggers is Director of BBC Future Media & Technology

BBC Strategy Review - Alan Yentob addresses the VLV conference

2010-04-29T08:14:00+00:00

"We will do our absolute best to fulfil our promise to put quality first."

This was the key message from Alan Yentob at yesterday's 27th annual VLV (Voice of the Listener and Viewer) conference

The morning event entitled 'Strictly Public Service Broadcasting - creative freedom and ambition?' focused on the BBC Strategy Review with keynote speeches from William Greswell, Controller of Strategy, BBC Vision and Alan Yentob, the BBC's Creative Director.

William began by setting out the strategy review and talking through five main themes: put quality first, do fewer things better, guarantee access to all, make the licence fee work harder and set new boundaries. He set the scene for Alan to talk about how the BBC will achieve these aims by focusing on delivering quality content. You can read Alan's speech in full here.

As soon as he came off the stage I asked Alan to summarise the key points from his speech, you can watch the video below.

Make sure you have your say on the points laid out in the strategy review on the BBC Trust's consultation site. The consultation period ends on 25th May.

Why the BBC must focus on quality content

2010-04-07T15:02:15+00:00

I am giving evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee today about the BBC's strategy review - Putting Quality First. I've spent a lot of time preparing for the session and - as part of that - I've been reminding myself about one of our key considerations in making the BBC more mission-focused: the impact on the rest of the broadcasting
industry.

For decades the UK has enjoyed higher levels of domestic media production and content spending per head than almost any other country in the world. UK audiences have grown up expecting and receiving a constant diet of extremely high-quality domestic content, whether two-hour episodes of Inspector Morse or seminal natural history like Life on Earth - all without a subscription and, on the BBC, without advertising.

While extensive high quality output available to all has been considered normal in the UK, one glance at schedules abroad shows it to be anything but in other parts of the world. In the two longest-developed broadcasting markets, the United States and Europe, very different traditions dominate. Much of European broadcasting has gone down the 'cheap and cheerful' route, with content spend focused increasingly efficiently on what drives audiences to adverts, while in the US a higher level of programme investment is maintained only through highly selective subscriber packages.

Is it inevitable we will end up going down either the European or US route? There has after all been a great deal of attention focused on the troubles facing public service broadcasting in the UK because of structural change in the industry. And the recession has increased further the pressure on budgets for original UK content.

A fact often lost in the debate is that billions of pounds of new money are flowing into the sector - it's just that this extra money isn't flowing back into domestic content production as much as it did in the past. This is primarily because commercial funding for TV is increasingly coming from subscription. Pay operators do not invest in original content at anything like the levels that advertising-funded broadcasters do, because their business model is more weighted to sports rights and films.

The BBC of course has a very different funding model which, as is so often pointed out, insulates our income against the worst of the recession. But more importantly, the security of our funding reinforces why the BBC exists and must focus on its mission to provide quality British programmes that inform, educate and entertain. And in delivering our mission, we not only serve the public and help maintain the standards which are an essential part of British broadcasting, we support the creative industry as a whole.

And that's the very purpose of Putting Quality First: to identify what more the BBC can do to enhance our commitment to high quality programming - because that's the centre of our mission and, in delivering it, we bring wider benefits to the UK's creative industry.

That's why we have pledged that in the next licence fee settlement period we will guarantee that at least 90p in every licence fee pound will be spent on the creation and delivery of content to audiences. We know this investment is essential to meet the expectations and demands of licence fee payers. That's why we have set out five editorial priorities so the public and the independent producers know what to expect from the BBC and we've capped our spending on sports rights and acquisitions from abroad. And that's why we aim to reduce spend on overheads to under 9p in every pound by the end of the Charter period in 2016 - costs reduced by a quarter from today's spend of 12p.

The BBC is committed to putting more money into content and making sure quality stays at the forefront of the BBC's output. And through this commitment to quality content, we will be doing our part to ensure that high standards survive in the future UK broadcasting market - good news or the domestic media industry, for the economy as a whole, and most
importantly, for our audiences.

John Tate,
Director of Policy and Strategy, BBC