BBC website ‘must stop acting like a newspaper’
THE BBC should stop trying to be like a newspaper and get rid of written content on its website, the Culture Secretary has warned.
Newspapers have ‘legitimate concerns’ over the broadcaster trampling on their turf, John Whittingdale told radio 4.
He said: ‘The fact that you can access content which looks like long-form journalism on the BBC website is clearly something [newspapers] are unhappy about, and raises this question as to whether or not the BBC should be essentially entering the printed news market and that, I think, is a legitimate concern for them to express.’
The Corporation is right to have a website but should focus on online video, he added. Mr Whittingdale said: ‘There is a strong case for the BBC to look at online provision and say, “Is this simply making available the kind of provision we have traditionally done on the broadcast media – following the viewers online and providing them with the same service?”
‘That seems to me entirely sensible. But if they are going to go beyond that and provide news content that looks like newspapers – that’s where I think newspapers are entitled to express concern.’
responding to Mr Whittingdale’s comments, BBC strategy and digital chief James Purnell said the BBC was reviewing its online strategy. But he said: ‘It would be odd if [the BBC] were the only news organisation in the world not to do text online.’
Speaking on radio 4’s The Media Show, which aired yesterday, Mr Whittingdale also said the BBC should not consider the issue of the £145.50-a-year licence fee settled until after its next royal Charter – due to come into force in 2017 – has been agreed.
The comments came as a shock to BBC chiefs, who appeared convinced they had secured an inflationary increase to the licence fee during negotiations with Mr Whittingdale and Mr Osborne in July.
But Mr Whittingdale said: ‘What happened in July was not the licence-fee settlement.’
Mr Purnell said the BBC’s understanding was still that a deal had been agreed.