Media Week

In response to the Digital Britain report, BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons - the man charged with ensuring the BBC provides ‘good value for all UK citizens' - was forthright in his defence of Auntie hanging on to its cash in the face of diverting licence fee money to commercial organisations to help pay for regional news services.

At the time, one could have been left feeling quietly confident that our dues were safe in the hands of a well-regulated body. After all, umpty billion quid to save the banking system aside, why should tax-payers bail out commercial organisations just because profits have hit the buffers?

The release of the BBC's top executives' salaries and expenses has cast a rather large shadow over the idea our money is indeed in safe hands, however. A shadow made larger still by reports over this weekend's excessive spend on coverage of Glastonbury.

407 BBC staff managed to make it along to the festival, said the Sunday Times, including a clutch of senior executives, at a cost to the licence fee payer of an estimated £1.5m.

Sir Michael also attended Glastonbury, at our expense naturally, though I'm certain he was to busy checking we were getting value for money to enjoy himself too much.

The BBC has argued the case for its staffing levels, but excesses in coverage were plain to see. There was no need for Gaby Logan's Sunday morning Five Live show to be broadcast from the event, for one. Her Dizzee Rascal interview proving just why she should be kept as far away from music and its nefarious propagators as is humanly possible.

Meanwhile, the person(s) employed to protect the BBC's output by vetoing what artists The Guardian could and couldn't film from its Lounge stage would have been better employed keeping an eye on how much booze the presenters appeared to be imbibing between broadcasts.

I happen to think coverage of Glastonbury is important, and given its niche attraction is best served by the Beeb. Why shouldn't we celebrate something uniquely British and world renowned?

As for the expenses 'scandal', while one could be forgiven for wondering why internal meetings warranted quite so much in the way of refreshments, I don't begrudge top executives the odd business lunch or Brucey his Champagne.

But if it wishes to hang on to any shred of credibility in the argument against top-slicing, and maintain its largely agreeable relationship with the fee-paying public, decisions regarding what in the current climate constitutes excess, with regard to coverage and general expenditure, are going to need much closer scrutiny.

And if Sir Michael and senior BBC execs, very well-paid from the public purse, want to be seen as whiter than white, they would be well-advised to steer clear of muddy fields.

497 days is a long time in politics. An exceedingly long time based on Harold Wilson's time scale. But it is the length of time it has taken for the media industry to lose not one Secretary of State, but two.

James Purnell was parachuted out of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and in to the work and pensions brief to take over from the disgraced Peter Hain on 24 January, 2008.

As it happened, within the time it took Media Week to interview the then secretary of state and subsequently publish the article. Thank you Harold.

But while our timing issue was merely annoying, the current decision to flip Andy Burnham over to health and drop Ben Bradshaw into the media hot seat just ten days before the Digital Britain report is due to be published seems extraordinary. But then, we are living through extraordinary times.

Political pundits suggest if the Prime Minister survives the week, he will most likely survive until Spring next year, by which time a general election must be called. Sadly, many media companies looking to the Digital Britain report to provide a few crumbs of comfort may not be so fortunate in the survival stakes.

When Media Week interviewed communications minister Lord Stephen Carter, who is leading the Digital Britain consultation and will deliver the final report some time around 16 June, it garnered industry opinion on the interim results put out at the time.

Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey noted "the crushing lack of understanding of the urgency required for changes to merger regulations in the local and regional media sector".

Andrew Harrison, chief executive of RadioCentre emphasised the need for "legislative reform from government as an urgent priority".

And Carolyn McCall, chief executive of Guardian Media Group, stated she was pleased the pressures faced by regional media operations had "rightly moved up the Government's agenda".

But realistically, how high up the Government's agenda can Digital Britain now be?

Ben Bradshaw will no doubt be being briefed to within an inch of his life, and Carter, as an excellent operator and with his media background, is widely viewed as the right choice to deliver the plan - though how much more appealing the ITV job must look right now to him, one can only speculate.

But when your bosses are fighting for their own and the Government's future, while desperately putting together emergency legislative reform of Parliament itself, dealing with regulations surrounding media ownership and advertising would understandably take second place.

While Gordon Brown's future is looking as shaky as a number of media operations, the fact he has outlived many thousands of unfortunate commercial, creative and editorial staff who have already lost their jobs underlines the need to make good the early promise of the Digital Britain report.

In his speech at the release of the Digital Britain interim results, Brown described the event at the British Library as "what I believe is one of the most important conferences we will hold this year".

While one can only hope he meant what he said - and securing the future of the country's commercial and creative media industries is more important than who happens to be pushing through the paperwork - it is difficult to see how any reform will take place before a general election is fought and, likely, a new set of hands gets its chance to meddle.

In technology, the only constant is exponential change. It is remarkable, therefore, to consider that one of its key sectors, search, has changed little during the past 10 years.

While it has evolved to cope with multimedia content and improved as algorithms have become more powerful, the presentation of a list of links to relevant web pages against a keyword search has been the de facto setting since market-leader Google came to public prominence at the turn of the Millennium. Perhaps the main reason comes down to the old adage: "If it ain't broke..."

In its short history, Google has become a powerhouse, with an 85% UK market share and a market cap of $132bn. Meanwhile, Microsoft, arguably the most successful technology company ever incorporated, lies a distant third in the search market (4% UK share) and has consistently failed to dent Google's ubiquitous dominance. But it is from this also-ran position that Microsoft has reinvented its offering with Bing, what it terms a "decision engine".

A quicker route to the information required to make the right choice sounds compelling and market reaction has been relatively positive. But, paradoxically for a search engine, its appearance asks as many questions as it answers.

If it succeeds in giving consumers the right information from more generic search terms, will this drive up the cost of keywords? Microsoft currently says only that it will be monitoring the situation.

Does its approach of categorising information mean the well-honed SEO and analysis skills within agencies will also need to adapt? And can anyone really hope to gain meaningful share from Google through innovation alone? Let's not forget it has become so big because it's so good.

To have an overly dominant player in any market is not desirable. It is widely hoped, therefore, that the talent Microsoft undoubtedly possesses has finally been put to good use in the search market. But will we soon be Binging rather than Googling?

Microsoft will count on the $100m marketing campaign giving Bing a good start and a few extra points this year would be viewed as a success. But history suggests, to achieve its stated aim of being a strong second, a $20bn deal with Yahoo may yet prove more cost effective.