SPEAKER: Afternoon.
But the first speaker it's my great pleasure to introduce
is Mark Thompson, who runs the BBC.
He's been Director-General for the past few years, and he's
been in the BBC for over 20 years, but took a brief
interlude to run Channel 4, after which they forgave him
and then they invited him back.
He has spearheaded many of the most radical digital
initiatives that have been taking place in the BBC over
the last two to three years, of which the most exciting he will
tell us about, which is being unveiled really more or less as
we speak, which is the whole of the relate of the archive of
all of the BBC material, for the whole of the
benefit of humankind.
I'd like you to welcome him.
Thank you very much.
MARK THOMPSON: So, as you've heard, I'm a traditional
broadcaster, and what we love more than anything else,
as you know, is control.
Control!
I used to be a controller.
I even have my slides up on the screen.
How do you let go?
I 'm going to talk about the BBC, but I could be talking
about any other big content player in this world.
If you've grown up with control, how do you let go, and
let your content go, to go and flourish out there, in
all the digital media.
OK.
This is one way we look at the world.
You won't be able to read all of this, but let
me give you a flavor.
Two curves, two different curves, first one, broadcast,
linear analysis, begins with traditional broadcasting, still
got plenty of time to go.
HDTV, Freeview, in some ways the [? iPhone ?]
is up there, BT Vision with it Now along this curve, we
broadcasters are still at an awful lot of control.
But look at the other curve.
Network media, nonlinear, participatory-- you can see
some of the brands up there-- YouTube, BeBo, Facebook,
and all the rest of it.
And how, culturally, and how in terms of the way you think
about your content, do you imagine a world which
has got bits of both?
This is where we are.
This is where we're heading from.
BBC made quite a good fist of Web 1.0.
There we are, this is March 2007.
UK Reach number three, Google and Amazon above us, pretty
much everyone else, and certainly the other content
players, well below us, and other bits and bobs.
AV, haven't got as much AV as we'd like, but we're streaming
quite a lot of it now, radio, since then radio's spearhead
for the BBC, one or two other broadcasters, too, 40 million
requests for on-demand radio programs per month now, 1.2
petabytes of data, if I knew what a petabyte was, I'd be
even more impressed, it's big number I'm told, 46 million
unique users outside the UK, but.
That second wave.
Much, much richer AV on the web, mobility, syndication of
content, personalization, social networks, user
engagement, it's about attitude, again about
personalization, about, particularly for an
organization like the BBC, creativity.
OK, here's another way of looking at it.
Scorecard so far.
Well, I've probably been actually bit too generous.
But there quite a few categories where we've got a
significant presence, and where our kind of net promoter index,
the number of people who use our stuff on the web and would
recommend it strongly to others, is high.
Entertainment, the subject of this afternoon's, I think you
have to say, quite a big question.
We have one or two points, but it's quite interesting how much
harder content players are finding it to really make
entertainment live in some of these new areas than some
of the other, more informational-based genres.
So this is one part of our answer, perhaps.
This is the iPlayer.
I think it's the first time we've given anyone
a flavor of the look.
A few weeks away yet, but this will be our
on-demand application.
Pretty small client, available to download for
nothing on BBC.co.uk.
And then the beginnings of opening up TV content, and
doing with TV what we've done with radio player.
But I want to say, that's only part of the story
about BBC content.
Here is that rare bird, a content player who's got
something nice to say about YouTube chat.
BBC content is already being seen, legally, illegally,
in many different ways.
And we're a content play.
We don't set much store by any proprietary technology, nor are
we obsessive about any kind of walled garden.
We want our content out there.
And here you see After the Hustle on YouTube.
We have a relationship with YouTube a few weeks old now.
We're very interested in finding lots of different
ways of getting our content across the web.
Though what I want to say is, we've got some
thoughts about this.
We're experimenting.
We're trying to see what works and what doesn't work.
We distinguish currently, and we'll see if this works,
between short-form and long-form, with a sense that
short-form content, two, three, four minutes, basically,
get it out there.
Let people use it.
If we can get the rights correct, let's let
people play with it.
But let's also make sure that the long-form experience,
complete radio-TV program experience, is something where
we're guaranteeing a high level of quality, and if we can,
environments where the branding is very clear.
We see syndication and sharing of content as being
really, really important.
We want to be a living part of the web.
We don't want to be an exclusive corner, which,
you know, in the vain hope that you can get people in
and they'll stay there.
We know the we need to work much more flexibly with
our rights holders.
Some rights we control very extensively, some we need
to work with partners.
We need to be true to the interests of rights holders,
but we need to work with them to understand that in the end,
opening the stuff up and letting people use it and play
with it is the way, in my view at least, to succeed
in this world.
And finally, we need, we showed you, 46 unique users around the
world, in my view, we're reaching 300 million or 400
million people around the world, principally
with TV and radio.
We need to revolutionize what we're doing with
our websites globally.
We have significant amounts of content.
The traditional barriers to broadcasters, typically you had
to wholesale your content, if you could, to other
broadcasters around the world, those traditional barriers are
collapsing, and there are fantastic markets open to the
BBC and other content providers around the world, we need to
think much, much more ambitiously about how we
open those markets up.
So what else?
Well, not getting locked into TV, radio, web.
We restructured the BBC to think much more
fluidly about content.
Here's one example.
What kind of visual life does radio have?
We believe actually, the visualization of radio, and if
you like, the visual soundtrack to go with radio on fixed
devices, on mobile devices, on TV and so on, is going be an
important part of the future.
Everyone here is going to talk about user creativity.
I guess here we've got Mr. [? Folkshire ?]
from the Asian network, unsigned bands, here we've got
people tagging, themselves, bits of our radio archive.
You choose it, and the more you use it, the more you label,
the more everyone can find.
Getting the public themselves to help us index, and
highlight, our archive.
Opening up our own editorial process.
This is actually, I think one of the more striking things
that we're doing at the moment.
BBC editors, there's Peter Barron from Newsnight, you've
got Nick Robinson, our political editor, in real
time, talking about their broadcasting, and starting off
very lively blog discussions.
Then there's entertainment.
Here's Dr. Who.
This is a site pretty much from today, but maybe
from back in April.
Trying to figure out of course on demand, of course being able
to run rich AV, complete episodes, soon is
going to help us.
But I think one of our central challenges right now, is how
you take this world, particularly the world of the
kind of piece of entertainment that we do well, some of the
Hollywood majors do well, high production value, built
entertainment, and giving that a broader life across problems,
big challenge for us.
And finally for me, a few of the issues.
Again, I said that these are BBC issues, but I would say for
many other content players, and the ones I talk to, many
of these knock about.
Not one of them, public service commercial I think is just the
BBC, but the others, I think, apply much more widely.
Pace.
As I said, we're a content player.
We're not trying to deliver some new, first mover,
killer technology.
That's not what we're there to do.
But we need to move as quickly as we can.
And that really gets aligned to culture.
I've talked about trying to migrate from a world of
control, we know best, we've got the mass on the hills, we
can broadcast to you whether you like it or not, to a world
which is much more interleaved with user responses,
reactions, and so forth.
What kind of organization can achieve that?
And how do you migrate?
How do you migrate the TV or radio commissioner to a point
where they are genuinely, not bolting on other media, other
platforms, as an afterthought, but really thinking about
how you can unlock things.
You'll be hearing from [? Peter Basold ?]
shortly, I think [? Enamel ?]
will be very good at getting his thinking all the way
upstream in terms of content development, and I
think that's exciting.
Branding?
Well, I think, to be honest, most of the big media
organization I talk to obsess almost too much about branding.
And have got a fantastically defensive laser wall of fears
and expectations about branding.
It needs to be thought about, how you get a kind of watermark
through what you do, and get some visibility
for what you do.
Not least because branding in the end, quite apart from
whatever other attribute it's got in terms of driving
revenue, is also in itself a form of navigation.
For the BBC, quite big issues about our public service
mission, those parts of what we do on all platforms, which are
part of what you get in the UK if you're licensee, and
what parts are properly monetized commercially.
And finally, partnerships.
I talked about wanting to be part of the web, rather than
a kind of little ivory tower inside the web.
But I would say, our experience in recent years, is often when
we've got partnerships with independent production
companies making fantastic content for us, with other
broadcasters, with other players in this space, with
rights holders, but we can generate and leverage the
maximum value out of our content.
To me, the heart of the issue for content makers and
providers in this space is how you focus on value.
Distinctive value, value you can bring.
And value which is clear-cut enough that you can really
market it, and develop it, and get it noticed in the space.
And to what extent you can use partnerships, and use the
relationships in the kind of coalitions of talent,
to really build that.
So I would say the test for success for the BBC, is not the
way you'd measure it, or would have measured it five, ten
years ago, where you'd have said, is the BBC launching lots
of new digital services, is the new real estate being chopped
up, new brands, , radio, TV channels with new numbers after
them, it's going to be much more about whether you can
build something more organic, and something that is much more
shared, shared hopefully with many of the people in his room
than a more traditional picture of what a broadcaster does.
Thank you very much.
SPEAKER: Now can I ask a question?
I mean, it's interesting how you've made the journey.
Because you were a radio-TV only, then you moved online and
became a global newspaper, in fact one of the most
well-respected and authoritative newspapers, one
of the busiest websites in the world, and I know it's been all
singing, all dancing for many years, but in fact, as we know,
almost all the traffic has actually been people going
there for your written content on that place.
So then having built a world-class newspaper, you're
now going back to your broadcasting roots, and
becoming, hopefully a major center for broadcast.
Can I ask a question about bandwidth, though?
because if, let's say, an imaginary 10% of all TV
viewing, just in this country, happens at, starting from say,
2009, streaming from your website, or [? Endemall's ?]
or someone else's.
And what is your an estimate about what that would do to
the bandwidth utilization in this country?
It would be a lot, wouldn't it?
MARK THOMPSON: Well, firstly, on your general point, the way
I think of the BBC is, literally from the from the
'20s we've had a position in certain categories.
In journalism, in information, in culture, in entertainment.
And what the BBC's done over 80 years is use the technical
means at its disposal to further that mission.
So journalism began, and we more or less invented
journalism on the radio.
With each successive technology, we tried to adapt
and develop what we do.
But the basic idea, which is bringing people news of what's
going on in the world, when they want it, where they want
it, begins in the 1920s.
So in a way, I think means and ends, the ends haven't changed
that much, the means are constantly evolving.
SPEAKER: But the newspaper was an absolute marvelous spinoff.
[? Regardless, ?]
the editorial process is there, they were writing the stories
to be read on radio and TV, they might just as
well go online.
MARK THOMPSON: But what's happening now, in my
view, is it's come home to mother, really.
I mean, the but web is heading back towards moving picture and
sound, which is what we understand best.
Now we've made a--
SPEAKER: It comes back to the bandwidth issue there.
Because, I mean, you can do some calculations which
producing quite startling figures, in terms of-- we know,
for instance, that just a two-hour video conference is
equivalent in bandwidth to me backing up 120 million
average emails.
So that's a video conference!
Not your--
MARK THOMPSON: -- there's some people, you know, believe that
there's going to be a collision of a large hadron collider in
Geneva which is going to eat the entire universe.
SPEAKER: But it is a serious point, isn't it?
I mean, it's much more efficient to broadcast
from one area to--
MARK THOMPSON: No, well, look.
Let's start with the upside, which is that what the BBC and
many other players are going to do, it seems to me, is drive a
market for faster and faster speeds and more and more
bandwidth for broadband in the UK, and that, I think,
is a good thing.
Can I guarantee that the kind of demand curve and the
bandwidth supply curve are going to perfectly match each
other in the next five or ten years, no, I can't.
But we're talking to the ISPs, and I'm talking to other
players in this field, and we're going to try and be as
intelligent and as thoughtful as we can, as we discover
what demand is.
And we've got some controls on managing demand.
But fundamentally, if you want a UK which is heading towards
where other countries already are in terms of speed and
bandwidth, I think developments slightly high up there
are good, not bad.
SPEAKER: Well, I'll make a prediction, which is that I
think that in five or six years time, if this as successful as
I hope it is, and I expect that it will be, I think it will be
extremely popular, this archive, I think we could find
at least 25% of the entire country's bandwidth connected
with your site and others related to it.
Very interesting.
Thank you.
Can I ask you one other question, because you have
a couple of minutes.
We're talking community journalism and people using
their mobile phones and capturing vivid movements.
We heard about that this morning.
And I've been waiting for a day when that I'll be able to, I
don't know, walk past the scene of some incident, capture it on
a video clip, and work it straight through as a video
clip to the BBC, and know that I'll be paid my 200 pounds
or whatever if it's shown.
I know--
MARK THOMPSON: You can do that now.
That's already available, and it's being used.
SPEAKER: Pay?
MARK THOMPSON: Well, the answer is, we sometimes pay.
We don't always pay, we sometimes pay.
SPEAKER: But you can see where I'm going here.
Because if it was a paid thing, it was just absolutely clear,
the fact that you know what the number of the phone has come
from, you know to whom that is listed, if that clip is
absorbed into the BBC systems, if it's showed on air then
there's a standard payment for each time it's screened.
And if you were to do it, psychologically you'll be
creating a contract with the british public, saying where we
feel it's appropriate to use that clip, you are recruited
from this point on as our journalist at large.
MARK THOMPSON: Sure, but to be clear, many people in this
country are very happy to uplink pictures and
video without payment.
I mean, the relationship we've got with the British public is
a slightly different one, and what's the best way
of putting it?
There's a touch of YouTube about the BBC.
People like to phone the BBC, they like to give information.
You know, we've had a program for years called Crime
Watch, where people try and solve crimes.
They don't ask to be paid, or to get rewards.
They want to help.
And of course, if somebody's got an exclusive piece of
very valuable video, we'll consider paying for it.
But what's interesting, is when we do different kinds of
experiments, we did a fantastic experiment, getting people to
use their own PCs to help effectively with a very big
calculation about global warming-- tens of thousands of
people will, for nothing, engage with that, because
they want to take part.
And in a way, not paying is less about, you know, being
incredibly mean, though I am incredibly mean.
It's mainly about recognizing, we've got a slightly different
relationship for many of the people who
use the BBC.
SPEAKER: I do understand Thank you very much, Mark,
thank you very much.
And I wish you all the best with your tremendous archive.