BBC going crazy

The BBC shift in strategy was influenced by many different factors. Initially the shift was brought on by research done by Tim Davie. Davie studied about 5,000 people in panels and what he found was astounding and gave way to the shift. Davie found that nearly one quarter of 15-24 year olds don’t watch listen or read BBC at all during the week. At this present trend only 60% of people in Britain would get some form of BBC news or content each week, compared to over 81% today. This slide would invariably lead to a reduce income and reduced funds from the British government.
Fear of losing revenue and funds forced the BBC to take drastic changes in order to guarantee the survival of the media giant. If the BBC waited to change their content from being a primarily TV oriented news entity to becoming an international power house with concentration on internet content, then they would be facing near extinction in the future. The BBC chose to become a leader today as opposed to a follower five years from now.
There are many benefits to investing in online and shifting content online. Consumers today refuse to follow the rules of the media; we are entering a new era where consumers dictate what they view and when they view it. Look at the example of iTunes. Generation Y consumers said “I am not paying 15 dollars for a CD when all I like is one song.” The music industry resisted this demand, yet in the end they had no choice but to comply. What BBC is doing is mirroring the success of iTunes, except BBC isn’t waiting until consumers demand the content. By taking the initiative they will always be remembered as the first media company to do so. The young consumers will be able to choose when and where they access the content, further increasing the popularity of the BBC brand and increasing viewership of their products.
With every change there are many negative aspects. The BBC will lose a certain amount of advertising dollars as content shifts from TV to the Internet. Now this isn’t a great problem for BBC as much of its income comes from the government yet other private media outlets will struggle to follow their lead as they rely primarily on advertisers for their income. This will inevitably create a disproportionate competition between BBC and its competitors. Yet if BBC’s competitors want to be relevant, they need to worry more about content and the quality of content then on where the content is placed. Because garbage content placed on the Internet is still garbage content.
Another negative aspect of the change is the reduced staff of BBC. Reporters and journalists are being replaced with "IT" guys, thus further diluting the quality of news content and lowering the diversity of news gatherers. If BBC were to train their current “Traditional” journalist to become Internet journalist, then this would be a far better investment then simply firing experienced journalists and hiring "IT" guys.

Mohammad