News Broadcasting
BBC reorganises to focus on digital future
MUMBAI: The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has announced organisational changes to meet the challenges and opportunities of its Creative Future vision, placing future media & technology at the heart of its strategy. Launched in April 2006, the changes have been made following consultation with senior managers across the BBC.
Creative Future is designed to deliver more value to audiences. These reforms are built on the vision that the best content should be made available on every platform at the audience’s convenience and they will simplify how programme ideas – both from in-house and independent producers – move from original concept to audiences.
The changes, due to be fully operational by April 2007, will enable 360 degree commissioning and production and ensure creative coherence and editorial leadership across all platforms and media.
They will also streamline the way funding flows across the organisation, bringing in-house production together under a single head, while reinforcing commitments made to the independent production sector through the Window of Creative Competition, informs an official release.
BBC director general Mark Thompson told staff across the organisation: “Today is about making Creative Future a reality. It’s about how we can make the BBC the most creative organisation in the world, delivering content that our audiences will simply love.
“We need a BBC ready for digital and for 360 degree multi-platform content creation, which brings different kinds of creativity together – in technology as well as content – to deliver what we need in this converging world. And we need a simpler, more open BBC with the licence-fee flowing down simple, direct lines to the right people, a simpler structure, clearer responsibilities and fewer layers.”
Thompson stressed it was not about more large scale efficiencies and redundancies, but about making the BBC more creative and efficient. A three year value for money efficiency programme is already underway to deliver savings of £355m a year by 2008 to reinvest in to content.
The new organisation chart places marketing communications and audiences at its centre, which will be led by Tim Davie, is designated as a creative division, putting audiences at the heart of the BBC and working ever closer with content areas and future Media & Technology to bring audience insights to the creative process.
A new future media and technology division (FM&T) will be led by Ashley Highfield and will concentrate on emerging technologies, playing a leading role in finding and developing new ways for audiences to find and use content. Technology resources will be centralised and prioritised in FM&T and three new FM&T controllers will be based in the three main content areas – Journalism, BBC Vision and Audio and Music.
FM&T will manage all new media platforms and gateways like bbc.co.uk, the emerging i-player and web 2.0, as well as metadata, search and navigation and BBC Information & Archives which is vital to opening up the BBC’s archives.
The multi-media journalism group, led by Deputy Director-General Mark Byford, will now also include BBC Sport along with BBC News, Global News and Nations & Regions.
The creation of an Audio & Music group, led by Jenny Abramsky, will deliver not just network radio but audio content for all platforms from on-demand in the home to podcasts and mobile phones. This group will also lead on music across all media, including TV, for the whole BBC, informs the release.
BBC Television, Factual & Learning and Drama, Entertainment & Children’s come together in a new group, BBC Vision, led by Jana Bennett.
This group will be responsible for in-house multimedia production, commissioning and audio visual services, including the TV channel portfolio, and digital services like High Definition and Interactive.
Multimedia, 360 degree production, under a single Production Head, will be more closely aligned to – while still physically separate from – the 360 degree commissioning teams. Commissioning will be grouped under four controllers of: Fiction (drama, comedy, BBC Film and programme acquisitions), Entertainment, Knowledge (including all factual and Learning) and Children’s.
Funding for multimedia content provision will move to the new vision and audio & music groups, allowing 360 degree commissioning and a one stop shop for all producers, including independents.
The Production Head for BBC Vision, reporting directly to Jana Bennett, will also have an overview of network production outside London through the controller of network production Anne Morrison.
BBC creative director Alan Yentob will ensure that the Creative Future recommendations are implemented across all content and services. He will chair both the Creative Training Board and Creative Network as well as chairing the board of BBC Films and a new Arts Network which will pull together arts programme-makers from across the BBC. He also continues to lead BBC Talent and to present Imagine.
The Window of Creative Competition (WOCC). Clear safeguards are in place to build confidence in commissioning and the WOCC now that production and commissioning are in the same BBC Vision group.
There will be a new commissioning compliance role in BBC Operations with a direct line to the director general and the new BBC Trust will also keep the changes under review to ensure they do not prejudice the WOCC.
BBC Worldwide CEO John Smith will concentrate on his ambitious development strategy for Worldwide, on course to treble profits, and to lead the sale BBC Resources Ltd in 2007. Over the next six months he will relinquish all responsibilities to the public service side of the BBC.
Caroline Thomson, currently BBC director of strategy, becomes COO for the BBC, with overall responsibility for strategy, policy, distribution, property, legal and business continuity, in a new BBC Operations division.
The reorganisation does not affect BBC Finance, led by Zarin Patel, which is already undergoing transformational change. Procurement will however, move into Finance.
BBC People already has a major change programme underway and is largely unaffected by the reorganisation. The new director of BBC People, Steve Kelly, joins the BBC from BT in the near future.
News Broadcasting
Newsrooms rethink AI, trust and revenue models
Editors and tech leaders debate tools, deepfakes and viability.
MUMBAI: If yesterday’s newsroom ran on caffeine and chaos, tomorrow’s may well run on code but with a human still holding the pen. At the 22nd edition of the Video Broadcast and Broadband Tech Summit hosted by IndianTelevision.com, some of the sharpest minds in Indian media gathered to examine how artificial intelligence, automation and shifting audience behaviour are reshaping journalism. The session, titled The Newsroom of Tomorrow Tools, Trust, and Business Viability In Focus, did not descend into techno-utopian hype. Instead, it wrestled with a more uncomfortable question: how do you stay relevant, credible and profitable when the audience is changing faster than the headline cycle?
The panel featured Govindraj Ethiraj, Editor of The Core, Dr Nilesh Khare, COO of Sakal Media Group; Prakaran Tiwari, Chief Executive Producer at NDTV Profit; Manoj Padmanabhan, Head of Business Media and Entertainment at AWS; Neeraj Mishra, Key Account Manager at Vizrt and session chair; and Mayuresh Konnur, Bilingual Correspondent at Collective Newsroom, publisher for BBC in India.
Govindraj Ethiraj set the tone with a frank assessment. “The reason people do not consume as much news through us is because they are consuming news through other sources they trust more,” he said. In a fragmented ecosystem flooded with content, trust has become the real differentiator.
Yet AI is undeniably transforming workflows. Ethiraj admitted he now uses AI tools to proofread his own articles. “Sometimes it is scary how much it picks, but it helps,” he said. What once required layers of sub-editing can now be assisted by machines trained to flag errors, inconsistencies and structural weaknesses.
He pointed to how newsroom roles have evolved. The desk editor, widely advertised over the last 15 years, barely existed in its current form before the internet boom. As digital publishing accelerated, tasks such as curating listicles, ranking stories and optimising headlines became specialised functions. Now, many of those responsibilities can be performed or at least supported by AI systems. The disruption is not hypothetical; it is operational.
Dr Nilesh Khare approached the issue from both a business and technological standpoint. Sakal Media Group is developing its own large language model, built on 60 years of text and photo archives. The goal is independence. “We won’t need to depend on other platforms to develop ours,” he said, underscoring the strategic value of proprietary data.
For Khare, AI represents opportunity as much as anxiety. It can help expand content across geographies and languages, particularly in bridging North and South Indian markets. It can streamline production and reduce costs. He did not shy away from the implications. “As a journalist I feel bad but as a content producer I feel good that we will require less manpower,” he said, articulating a tension many in the room recognised but few openly admit.
He also highlighted how audience behaviour is evolving. Today, a retail investor can follow a stock using Gemini or GPT instead of toggling between multiple news channels. News is no longer consumed linearly; it is queried, personalised and synthesised. The newsroom must therefore produce content that survives not just on screens but within AI-generated summaries.
Prakaran Tiwari offered a more philosophical reflection. “AI has developed itself and adapted on the basis of how news is consumed. It’s all about giving a perspective,” he said. In his view, the competitive edge will not lie in speed alone but in interpretation. Facts are increasingly commoditised; context is not.
He also suggested that formats are fluid. While short-form video dominates social feeds, long-form audio is resurging. Govindraj Ethiraj noted that in the United States the 2024 election was described as the “podcast election”, reflecting how audiences are investing time in deeper, long-form discussions. The newsroom of tomorrow must cater to both scrolling and sustained listening.
Manoj Padmanabhan of AWS reframed the debate. Technology, he argued, is not an existential threat but an amplifier. “The power is given to the human journalist with all this technology in their hand, with it acting as a support or assistant to deliver the correct and relevant news to the people,” he said.
The traditional divide between a “normal” newsroom and a “digital” newsroom is fading. “It will not be two newsrooms,” he said. “It will be one newsroom.” In that integrated environment, the storyteller remains central. AI may assist with research, editing and distribution, but editorial judgement remains human.
Neeraj Mishra of Vizrt echoed the assistive narrative. India, he said, is a market of organised chaos, where news broadcasters are pushing ever-increasing volumes of content. AI will help manage scale. It is not here to replace people but to assist them.
Production barriers are already collapsing. “You don’t need a green screen to produce content now,” Mishra observed, hinting at virtual production tools and real-time rendering technologies. And this, he said, is only the beginning. In a cost-conscious market like India, AI adoption in both B to B and B to C segments is likely to rise sharply. The skills are available, he argued, the real question is whether organisations are willing to invest.
If opportunity was one half of the conversation, risk was the other. Mayuresh Konnur warned that fake news is now being peddled with alarming ease using AI tools. Deepfakes, synthetic audio and fabricated visuals can damage credibility overnight. Several journalists, he said, have already faced instances where manipulated content was circulated in their name.
“Eventually it becomes a question of how authentic you are in the market,” Konnur noted. In a crowded information economy, credibility is the ultimate moat. Regulations and clear guidelines, he argued, are necessary to curb misuse without stifling innovation.
Mishra added a note of caution against overuse. “AI should not be everywhere. It has to be used optimally,” he said. The value lies not in blanket automation but in strategic integration.
One of the most resonant metaphors came from Padmanabhan. AI, he suggested, is like a brush in a human hand. Powerful, versatile, transformative but inert without the artist. It cannot survive without the human touch.
Konnur distilled the session’s core takeaway, AI is inevitable, but the art of storytelling will never disappear.
In a media landscape defined by speed, shrinking attention spans and intense competition, the newsroom of tomorrow is not simply a technological upgrade. It is a recalibration. Between efficiency and ethics. Between automation and authenticity. Between reducing manpower and retaining meaning.
The algorithms may write cleaner copy and generate sharper graphics. They may even predict what audiences want before audiences know it themselves. But the enduring task remains unchanged to tell stories that inform, interrogate and inspire.
And for that, the human newsroom is still very much open for business.
