BBC Consolidation Strategy
The BBC Trust have published a proposed strategy for the future of the BBC based on a challenge to address questions about the scope of the BBC’s activities to focus on how the BBC can most effectively deliver its public service mission and meet audience needs and deliver value for money.
This is a situation faced by many organisations and a subject covered in various units of CIM qualifications, but particularly those at Chartered Post-Graduate Diploma level. Strategic decisions should address the scope of an organisations activities, and this is exactly what the BBC have done. What is unusual is that this is a strategy proposal on which the public are being asked to comment. Commercial organisations would not normally do that because they would rather keep things confidential until fianl decisions are made> However, the nature of the BBC means that we get the chance to influence decisions, albeit in a small way.
The proposal calls for various changes – closing 6 Music and the Asian Network are the two headline items, but behind this is a vision for:
• putting quality first
• doing fewer things better
• guaranteeing access
• making the licence fee work harder
• setting new boundaries
In marketing strategy terms I see this as consolidation , removing peripheral activities to concentrate on the core strengths of the BBC with the proposal calling for priorities based on quality content production across a range of media platforms and appealing to a range of audiences. An interesting point, which again relates to the non commercial nature of the BBC is the suggestion that Radio 2 should not overlapping more than it does today with the audiences targeted by the majority of commercial radio – it is unlikely a commercial radio station would take the view to avoid overlapping Radio 2 target audiences unless it was specifically using a niche strategy!
Overall, an interesting example of strategy in action and the results of the consultation will be interesting.
The full strategy proposal document can be seen here
