In the early days of this sad affair, I attempted to directly contact all members of the BBC senior management with some remit in this area, as well as politicians, BBC complaints departments and feedback programmes, media etc. My initial communication with Helen Boaden (BBC Director of Radio) was very rapidly passed on to Andrew Scott, who replied immediately. Andrew's various replies to me were very much in the manner which became familiar when he later started appearing on the BBC blog posts, despite my urging that his team should take a more cooperative and conciliatory stance vis a vis bloggers who, at that stage, were mainly trying to help. Incidentally, Andrew's first email to me also inadvertently had Ms Boaden's forwarding message attached (17th Feb.) and it was pretty clear that she was not at all happy about what was starting to show up and wanted swift action, although I suspect she thought that an apology would be enough!
I did not directly hear from any other BBC manager until today, when I received a reply from James Purnell, former "New Labour" minister now Director, BBC Strategy and Digital. For information and comment, I copy his reply in full below since very few BBC management voices have been heard to date. It has a very familiar ring to it and, as usual, emphasis is on the "plan" rather than the actual implementation and outcomes, but we're used to that: "Thank you for contacting me and I apologise for the inconvenience that these changes have caused you. I am aware of the Audio Factory project, and the impact this has had on Internet radios and some other devices. The scope of the project was clearly much broader than these devices, and delivered significant improvements in efficiency and simplicity, as well as improvements in quality to the vast majority of our radio listeners, but I understand that will be of little consolation to you. The team defined a set of technologies that provide the right balance of improvements and compatibility for these devices. I believe that the team did make appropriate decisions on the technology solutions, given the cost constraints within which we need to operate. Certainly there was not an option of continuing with the previous technologies and the new system provides basic compatibility for as many devices as possible with enhanced services for more capable devices. It is never easy when we have to change the services which people have become used to. It is also clear that whilst the team did have a plan to try to minimise the impact on users, that did not work as intended. The plan involved communicating with manufacturers and other industry partners far enough in advance of the changes to allow the necessary modifications to be made. That early communication did provide some useful input which allowed the team to refine their plan, but did not work effectively in terms of minimising the impact on all our users, and I know that the team are reviewing why. They are also considering how they could have communicated these changes to our audience in advance. I know that Helen Boaden and Ralph Rivera are planning to review this. I know that there has been extensive discussion on our Internet Blog about this issue. This dialogue has actually resulted in some significant changes in what the team are delivering, including adding new UK only version of the backward compatible streams. There is also a great deal of ongoing discussion with manufacturers to help them take advantage of the new technology. It is definitely very important for us to help support the industry through these changes, and the team are very focused on that activity. Once again, I apologise for the inconvenience that these changes have caused. Best wishes James" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ChipMonk's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=40072 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=103311 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
