The BBC has bought Lonely Planet. Not just a single guidebook to help research a coming series, but the whole lot. Books, websites, TV shows and all, though its commercial arm, BBC Worldwide. Reuters reckons it cost about £100m, which roughly roughly equates its profits last year.

It’s a logical fit, and great news for all involved. Both organisations pride themselves on their independence, and each has a great track record in producing the best in travel content (Palin and co from the BBC, and the only guides I ever trust from LP). It gives the BBC a hefty size-ten in the door of a market it has yet to exploit. For Lonely Planet it guarantees a future free from the advances of less appropriate suitors, and sees this multi-language publisher team up with an even more linguistically talented all-media champion.

The one who will benefit the most, though, is surely the end user. Both organisations have back catalogues second to none, and reputations to match, yet of greatest interest is their complimentary, non-competing activities. The BBC’s news gathering activities could (and should) revolutionise travel writing, bringing these guides the kind of geopolitical relevance to which they have always aspired, but somehow never quite attained. Lonely Planet’s enviable knowledge of local culture, meanwhile, will enrich the BBC’s online sites, broadening the appeal of its news content by placing stories within a context that simply can’t be conveyed within a 200-word report.

The challenge will be in deciding the extent to which the two content streams should be merged, if at all. BBC Worldwide is, after all, a commercial entity charged with making a profit. It can’t do by simply giving away Lonely Planet content. It is also quite distinct from the BBC’s domestic news and broadcast services, which are funded by the license payer, or the BBC World Service, which is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

It’s early days, of course, and getting the two companies to work hand in hand, if that is indeed the plan, will take some time. It would be a missed opportunity if this was a purely financial transaction, but as a Brit who has grown up with the noble aims of the non-profit BBC it’s sometimes difficult to remember that BBC Worldwide is a semi-distinct entity with very different goals.

As such, the usual rules don’t always apply. More’s the pity.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.