Much criticism has been slung at the BBC for the size of its online presence. It’s already had to remove or freeze a lot of its best local content to give other local providers a chance to compete, yet its rivals, like ITV Local simply aren’t up to the task.
The trouble is that when the government legislates it often does so with one ear turned towards lobby groups, and those lobby groups can be so inward looking that they don’t see where the real threats lie.
In restricting what the BBC can and can’t do online, the government isn’t actually giving local rivals a chance to flourish; it’s just opening the door for more massive multinationals to further extend their reach.
The latest encroachment comes, again, from Google. Its already excellent services get better yet, as it now includes bus timetables on its maps. Not only that, but they are time-sensitive so if you search at, say, eleven in the morning, it’ll show you departures between then and noon, not busses already gone (here’s an example).
As with most Google innovations it appeared without notice or fanfare, but its arrival proves once again why the government is wrong to restrict our greatest national info-asset in the interest of ‘local’ producers.
Instead, we should allow the BBC to produce truly relevant domestic content rather than relying on Google to fill the gap. Tying its hands won’t encourage more diverse content from the UK, it’ll just let an even more homogenous entity over which it has even less control do precisely what it’s trying to prevent.
The only way in which restricting the BBC online could be right would be if the government then went on to give local producers the assets they need to compete with the likes of Google.
But that will never happen.
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