The BBC is looking for a new DIrector General.
That is, the guy who runs the whole place.
How do I know they’re looking for a new head? Â They posted an ad on their website.
I briefly gave thought to applying, but Lisa said, ‘forget it’.
I think she’s right. Â I think they would probably not hire me (my chances are about the same as my playing for the NBA), but still it’s something worh thinking about.
What would I do if I were the Director General of The BBC?
The BBC is a unqiue asset. There is nothing like it anywhere in the world. Â It produces the gold standard of journalism, drama, comedy, natural history and much more. Â It also produces magazines, books, radio and has the most popular website in Europe. Â Whew. That’s a lot to manage. Â I hope they find someone good!
To me, The BBC is a vastly under-utliized asset.
It is under-utliized because it interacts with the rest of the world as a pre-Internet media company, even though it does have a website.
In the world before the web, the job of any media company, from TV to newspaper to radio was to get information ‘out there’. Â Out there, in the sense that they didn’t really know or care too much what their viewers or readers were doing – beyond watching their shows or reading their papers.
The world of the web is different. It’s not about ‘we make it, you watch it’. It’s about ‘we are all in this together’.
That’s what makes Facebook so powerful.
There is no ‘Executive Producer’ of Facebook.
There are no morning meetings at Facebook agonizing over ‘what should we post today’?
This is what made Instagram so valuable. Â The content of Instagram is not made by the Executive Producers at Instagram, nor by the professional photographers at Instagram. It is made by everyone all the time, and constantly updated second by second.
When Mark Thompson became the Director General of The BBC (the man I would be replacing…. ), he said he wanted to turn The BBC into the Google of Britain. Nice sentiment – wrong model.
The BBC used to be all about providing high quality content and information to Britain, and indeed to the world. Â That mission is still important. And now, with the web, everyone is focused on how to get that information out better – web sites, iPads, apps, iPhone. Â All fine, but it misses the bigger revolution that the Internet begets- participation.
The issue for the next decade is not ‘how to get the information out’, it’s ‘who puts the information in’. Â That is, where does the content come from?
The great opportunity for the next DG of The BBC is to create what we might call Facebook With A Purpose.
That is, tap into the vast stream of contributions from people all over the world and make The BBC the nexus of that content. This is not about a second YouTube, which is interesting but a mess. This is rather an opportunity to create a massive, global, living Wiki – made up of text, audio, video, stills, apps and everything else.
A living, growing, breathing, all-encompassing creature that takes in as well as gives out, and processes in the process (so to speak).
Look at it this way. Â The Encyclopedia Britannica is a great resource, like The BBC, but it’s out of date as soon as its publishes, and it only gets published every 10 years. Â It’s made by a tiny handful of ‘experts’ and has 300,000 entries and it costs a small fortune to publish. Â Very much like The BBC.
Wikipedia is updated every second. Â It has 3.5 million entries. It is more accurate than The Encyclopedia Britannica, and it costs next to nothing to produce.
If I were the next DG of The BBC, I would make it my business to turn The BBC into a one massive global Wiki for news, information, entertainment, sports, politics, opinion, video, photography, radio…. you name it.
I would have Britain lead the world in what I would call The Democratization of Information.
That’s a role that Britain understands well. Where do you think Magna Carta and The House of Commons came from? Â Same idea – simpler technology – chairs.
