Defending the faith

Striking the correct balance between innovation and audience reach is always a tricky proposition for the BBC, especially when you have so many licence fee payers to please as opposed to just 'entertaining viewers' for the benefit of advertisers; the latter just about sums up the main objective of the purely commercial channels. Throw in a requirement not to upset the commercial competition too much as well as keeping costs to a minimum, and the options become even more limited as a result.

It seems clearly apparent that the BBC has a long term faith in the objectives of its digital channels, though the digital TV channels in particular have proved to be controversial in terms of exactly who they serve and why. There are obviously many permutations of various services that could theoretically be offered by a BBC but aren't, eg. why isn't there a TV equivalent of the Asian Network, so it's interesting to examine the reasons why the BBC have plumped for the choices that they have made.

No matter how much of a watertight case you make for a particular service, there will always be an objection that the functions of that channel could be equally as well served by adapting another existing channel. Take BBC Four for example: it looks wonderful on paper and often proves satisfying to view when the other channels are too obsessed with makeover/reality/quiz/dumbed-down-documentary shows, but would BBC Four's output reach a much greater potential audience if shown on BBC Two instead? Plus wouldn't the overall standard of BBC Two be raised as a consequence?

Then there's the CBBC Channel, which apart from school holidays and weekends is essentially serving a miniscule audience or alternatively duplicating existing content on other BBC channels (maybe not after the analogue switchoff though), but there again wouldn't BBC Three benefit from having extra daytime broadcasting hours with a "CBBC on BBC Three" instead? There are even tougher issues as well to contend with: some people claim that too much television is bad for the under-fives, so should the BBC really be producing a dedicated CBeebies channel?

Whatever the answers are to these questions (and there are even more questions like them), the BBC shouldn't automatically claim that its digital strategy is perfect, or for that matter assume that fewer channels automatically represents less opportunity for so-called innovation. Because unless the BBC can prove without doubt that it has made the right decisions all of the time, the risk of having its autonomy undermined by other people becomes much greater.