BBC online comes under government review

The government has announced the review into BBC online is officially under way, with ex-Trinity Mirror CEO Philip Graf at the helm.

The review will examine how well the Beeb's online arm has lived up to its remit, if it provides value for money and what commercial impact the net behemoth has had on the market. It will also form part of the review of the BBC's overall charter, which will be re-examined in 2006.

In launching the review, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Tessa Jowell, told an audience at the Edinburgh Television Festival that the review would be "wide-ranging" and would be "motivated by a desire to give the British people the TV, radio and new media services they deserve".

While rivals have accused BBCi of taking business from commercial enterprises, Ashley Highfield, Director of BBC New Media and Technology, told silicon.com that BBCi has a positive commercial impact.

"Two million people came onto the net as a result of the BBC. In terms of ecommerce, 65 per cent of traffic from our sites goes onto other sites, so we're actually driving ecommerce," he said, "BBCi is responsible for 15 million hours of access time and that benefits ISPs. We're having a big, positive impact."

The BBC's spend on its web arm is around £72m, a figure that Highfield believes is "very good value" at just three per cent of licence fee payers money and with a readership of over nine million.

An independent report commissioned by BBCi from KPMG concluded that while the market for content on the web was small – just £12m out of an overall market of £7.6bn – the BBC's presence in the online marketplace may have led to some sites delaying or shelving the idea of content fees.

For the future of auntie's online services, Highfield wants to put interactivity at the top of the list. Citing the example of the BBC's digital archives, he said: "I want to put some clear blue sky between us and the commercial sector. We want users to participate in content and create communities around that content."

BBCi has over two million pages and reaches 43 per cent of the population, according to the BBC's annual report.