The BBC starts to take baby steps…

Steve Bowbrick, blogger in residence at BBC Future Media & Technology writes: I want to learn how the BBC will adapt its magnificent, industrial-era guiding principles – Inform, Educate and Entertain – to the manufacture of tools that support learning (formal and informal), creation (for love, for fun, for profit), enterprise (encouraging entrepreneurship), participation (in … Continue reading “The BBC starts to take baby steps…”

Steve Bowbrick, blogger in residence at BBC Future Media & Technology writes:

I want to learn how the BBC will adapt its magnificent, industrial-era guiding principles – Inform, Educate and Entertain – to the manufacture of tools that support learning (formal and informal), creation (for love, for fun, for profit), enterprise (encouraging entrepreneurship), participation (in the democratic process, in society and institutions) and community (linking people, finding common ground, social coherence).

These are brave words but I really want to see how the BBC begins to actually engage with people and not just through their arcane commission process. I’d like to get a workshop together with the BBC in Belfast to not only demystify the process but also to hear what they have to say on their future relevance.

In truth I have little problem with the BBC producing materials for ‘consumption’ because there will always be an audience. But it’s going to be dwindling as time goes on and it has to be more than phone-votes and red-buttons.

I think that the BBC, and perhaps Channel 4, need to consider what they need to do to interact beyond the television set not simply by listing what they want (collaboration, removal of the ‘audience’) but also looking at all the ways they as a company can create both content and framework and enable the accessing of this content everywhere. Data is now ubiquitous, it’s about time that our public service broadcasters provided a ubiquitous service. This means richer feeds, this means open protocols and file formats. Let us consume when we want and create when we feel the need.

To misquote Mao Zedong – “Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences…”

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