Here I go again, off-topic and annoying the punters, but I really have to link to this article by Tom Coates. He used to work for the BBC, now he works for Yahoo. He’s writing about Ashley Highfield who has just been promoted to be in charge of the BBCs New Media operation(s). I think it’s safe to say that Mr Coates doesn’t think much of Mr Highfield. I was pleasantly surprised when I read it because I and a few of my pals have discussed several of the issues he raises and I always imagined that it was just us who thought those things. It seems not. I think there’s going to be a big fuss about this. As Euan Semple, another former BBC technology boss, says in his blog, you should read it if you care about the BBC or about new media.
However, I was talking recently to the Editor of one of the BBC’s more high-profile programmes and he didn’t seem to know about or care much about Mr Highfield and his new job and the whole reorganisation so maybe it’s not as much of a big deal as I’m imagining.
Who’s afraid of Ashley Highfield? (plasticbag.org)
Speaking of the BBC, I was asked to make a MySpace page for Rupert Murdoch yesterday. I mean, a Rupert Murdoch MySpace page for Newsnight. You can see what they did with it if you go to their site and find the programme for Friday 28 July, which is the latest programme today but won’t be in a few days time. I can’t find any way to link directly to that particular programme, one for you Ashley?
Newsnight Home Page
Let’s play 3 degrees of Ashley Highfield:
I am a Flickr contact of Kevglobal who is a Flickr contact of cubicgarden who is a Flickr contact of… Ashley Highfield!
Cubicgarden also, in this way, links Ashley Highfield, Euan Semple, Richard Sambrook and SecretSnapper.
Andrew Bowden, a Development Producer in RDT TDG CTO Management, ie he works for Ashley, has written a slightly too long explanation of “What’s the point of BBC New Media?”. Rather tellingly there is no facility on his post for leaving comments, which just about says it all for me.
I like the phrase in Andrew’s blog that goes “Greg Dyke, who coincidentally had started as Director General on the same day as myself”. I had no idea the BBC had two DGs!