Puffbox

More positive cashflow for the BBC’s Ashley Highfield. Media Guardian reports that following today’s announcement of BBC restructuring, the new head of Future Media and Technology ‘will see his budget soar from £250m to almost £400m with the task of speeding up the digitising of 1.4 million-plus hours of TV and audio content.’

But as the article on the Beeb’s own news website points out, Highfield’s empire ‘will lose the responsibility for creating websites for BBC programmes, as funding for these will now go directly to programme producers.’ I think that’s a significant, albeit inevitable move. Further evidence that online production really isn’t that specialised any more. Further reinforcement of the notion that everything is ‘just content’.

Meanwhile, Ashley and co can concentrate on a predominantly technical area which remains complicated: video delivery. With Sky offering me unlimited use of a 16MB broadband line for £10 a month, it’s time to really deliver on the promise of the multimedia revolution.