I'm a little late in the analysis game on the BBC's push toward a more participatory mode, but I think that's just as much a reflection of the speed of these new media as it is the circumstances in my own schedule.

On April 25th, the BBC announced that they will be, in the next six years, attempting to integrate new aspects of on-demand content and audience participation in their otherwise broadcast-centric approach:

"The plans build on opportunities created by new and emerging digital technologies and confront the challenges of seismic shifts in public expectations, lifestyle and behaviours and on building new relationships with audiences and individual households.

Ten teams have, for the past year, been exploring what the world may be like in 2012, what audiences may need and want and what the BBC needs to do about it."

What I have found most interesting, however, is the political, social, and economic relationships this move is revealing between private and state-funded industry. The AP reported that Murdoch and his underlings are raising a stink over this due to the fact that the BBC is funded by public money. This view draws from the ideology of deregulatory period in British broadcasting that saw the rise of ITV and the like. This perspective sees private entities as necessary competitors to the public entity, able to provide programming that would otherwise not be available, and able to benefit from a less rigid market structure. Thus when Murdoch thinks it isn't fair that the BBC can make this move on the back of TV license fees, he is saying that the BBC, and by extension the government, is becoming anti-competetive.

I would disagree with this view; if anything, the BBC is proving that it has benefitted from degregulation by becoming an innovator itself. Rather than stagnating in older modes of content delivery (TV, radio, low-participatory web) the BBC is taking the step that many other competetive entities - Google and Yahoo come to mind immediately - are taking. Would Murdoch call out "unfair" if it were ITV who unveiled this "Creative Future" initiative? Certainly ITV would have to raise money at the expense of its viewers through the sale of more airtime/webspace just as the BBC has to raise money at the expense of its viewers through sustenance of the licsense fee (something Britons, as I experienced in my brief few months there, are not too fond of).

So what does this really mean? People are beginning to question the public role in new web/online development. This can only be a good thing. The philosophy of these new media idealize as democratic, accessible, and user-friendly. Shouldn't more public institutions be like this? Putting public funds into the BBC to innovate should be seen along the lines of putting public funds into the DMV to innovate, become a better run organization. And though Murdoch, I'm sure, has never experienced it, those lines are no fun.