Slashdot Mirror
BBC to Cull the Cult TV Repository
malkavian writes "The BBC has announced that it's going to be ceasing to host it's Cult TV Repository. At a meager 700,000 users per month, it was decided that this was no longer a significantly useful public resource, as the information was also available elsewhere on the net. Many people believe this to be a grievous mistake on the part of the BBC, to allow the history of their own broadcasting highlights to fragment, and possibly be lost like so much of its other content."
After getting an additional 700,000 hits from the /. in just a couple of hours crowd maybe that will make them reverse their decision.
Damn, it's just so hard to be funny at work on fridays. Sorry.
I sent an offical complaint through the BBC's internal complaints and got this reply within a couple of days. I asked about the closure and the BBC's continuing lack of sci-fi and fantasy based tv as well as expressing my disbelief that they aren't following up Doctor Who with more similar content, instead removing the section of the site that deals with most of the BBC's "cult" output that isn't Doctor Who. My Reply Thank you for your e-mail.
We recognise that the Cult website has attracted a large following. However, efficiency savings are needed to pay for new projects which will ensure that the BBC continues to offer distinctive and innovative services, so it is necessary to close this site.
As Ashley Highfield, Director of New Media, explained in December "...to meet the 10% target set out by the BBC Governors, we are announcing today a further 7.5% reduction to be achieved through lowering investment in areas where we feel this will not cause a reduction in public value...These changes build on the first steps we took in July to close those websites which we felt did not offer sufficient distinctive public value for the investment required. The savings we made in July represented 2.5% of our web output."
Furthermore, the BBC outlined in November its commitment to offer more distinctive content. We felt that many areas covered by the Cult site were already being replicated on other areas of the web. This meant there was very little distinction between the BBC and the commercial sector.
The exception to this is Dr Who, the largest of our Cult sites, which has now evolved into its own website, as an extension of the hugely successful BBC ONE TV series. We hope users will continue to visit and enjoy this site.
Regards
Sophie Walpole - Head of iD&E
And
Chris Chalton - Communications Manager, MC&A
Alas, there is a new organ grinder in charge and he's introduced proposals for a huge number of job cuts, thousands of people are to go. Mark Thompson became Director General following the resignation of Greg Dyke (over a highly public row between the BBC and the UK Government on the War in Iraq).
No matter what people thought of Greg Dyke - he wasn't actually Evil(TM) but he wasn't without a fair share of legitimate critics either - pretty much everybody, both the general public and BBC employees, hate Mark Thompson (something which on his announcement as new Dir. Gen. was fuelled by the media, who have plenty of material owning to his own past behaviour).
I rather suspect this is all to help make the BBC better suited to transition to a subscription based service (rather than a license fee funded one), though this won't be till after 2008-12, and would probably co-incide with a move to switch of analogue TV all together and go digital (so the government can go through with it's plan to sell of the valuable airspace to next generation mobile/wireless operators).