Not defending the BBC, not this time anyway

It’s a commonplace on this site that one should “defend” the BBC from unceasing, unsubtle and rather tiresome attacks from trenchant right-wingers. Very little written about the organization by either the Daily Mail, or any of its apers on the Web, has any merit. That’s true. The Beeb is worth defending: there’s something enriching about our ad-free broadcaster. Something that serves the public, that stands above the commercial white noise of modern television. Of course, the organization isn’t entirely non-commercial: BBC Worldwide makes decent profits that, at least nominally, feed back into UK public service broadcasting. So far, so uncontroversial. However, BBC Worldwide’s 2007 acquisition of travel guidebook publisher Lonely Planet did raise objections, notably from rivals like Rough Guides (owned by Penguin/Pearson) and TimeOut (whose books are published by Random House/Bertelsmann):

Time Out founder Tony Elliott says he fears that the BBC will provide Lonely Planet with “an inexhaustible fund of factual, technical and editorial information and expertise quite beyond the resources of any privately funded organisation such as Time Out”.

Complaints along these lines haven’t gone away. This week Lyn Hughes, publisher of Wanderlust, accused the BBC of deliberately targeting her long-running, independent travel magazine, undercutting ad rates and planning a launch issue of Lonely Planet Magazine to coincide with Wanderlust’s 100th:

I would question why any travel magazine would be launching at this time. Our advertisers are finding it tough. … No other magazine publisher would be launching a travel magazine at this time. They’d be completely daft. … Why is the BBC launching one at the worst possible time? I can only think they’re smug. They don’t need to make money.

She’s right at least on the emboldened point. The predictable consensus at this year’s World Travel Market, which ended yesterday, was that 2009 would be tough for the business. No sane publisher would launch a print travel mag right now. But as its 2007/8 results showed, the BBC can afford to buy increased top-line magazine sales in return for decreased profits. Further, the recently relaunched (and rather lovely) Lonely Planet website is very much a commercial concern, with click-through sales, destination advertising, custom-publishing client solutions and plenty else on offer. They announced plans yesterday to pay amateur travel bloggers for content, from February 2009, on a revenue-sharing basis using Google AdWords. There’s no doubt, surely, that BBC experience in running the world’s best news website has given LP an edge here. (Three BBC online experts were sent to LP’s Melbourne HQ immediately after the acquisition.) So, expertise gained at our expense is being used to give LP a competitive edge in the domestic market. This is the very essence of distorting that market, and dangerous territory for the BBC. So, who is it that wants to “privatize” the BBC now? Cameron and the Conservatives? Or the BBC itself? Our state-funded monolith has the freedom, via its effective sub-brand Lonely Planet, to also operate as a 100% commercial entity in the UK. Not only can’t that be right; it ultimately can’t be good for the BBC.

First published at Liberal Conspiracy.