"The Business"

Towards the end of yesterday's Public Accounts Committee hearing on the failure of the Digital Media Initiative at the BBC, former DG Mark Thompson knew he was home free - PR adviser Ed Williams (CEO Edelman UK) had given him an encouraging nod - and he began to muse almost lyrically about what might have been.

DMI might have put all in-house BBC tv production on one set of tools. The archive thing was misleading - a mega-archive is way down the line, and how many archive programmes does the BBC make anyway ? The prize of one set of tools was immense, in terms of reducing training costs, support costs - and common sense.

The "business" is always bolshy. In network radio, office reel-to-reel Ferrograph tape recorders were gradually replaced with Studers in the 1980s. People hid Ferrographs for years - you couldn't get parts to maintain them, but hey, we loved them - and arguments raged (in Newsbeat) about which was the faster editing machine. We ignored the Studer improvements  - it gave accurate timings on faster spooling - and the confusion of new staff, who found they had to learn two ways of lacing tape up and cutting.

In network radio now, the business has kept bits of Pro-Tools and SADiE in the face of VCS Dira. You can't possibly do craft work any other way, my dear. I like to see my work, so I carry a hard drive round, don't you know ?

In television, favourite software for various tasks is a badge of honour amongst production staff. The more niche the better. It means I'm the only one who can use this terminal. And nobody asks me to train new staff. But people love my work, and ask for me specially...

Imagine the counter staff at, say, haberdashery in John Lewis, hanging on to the till they loved. Imagine Sainsbury's having different stock control systems in Maidstone and Montrose. Imagine a news editor demanding Adler-typed Roneo'd running orders in the face of ENPS and photocopiers (they just smell nicer).

The reality that the PAC, normally hot on procurement benefits, missed yesterday is that the BBC is soldiering on with different systems in Glasgow, Salford, Bristol, Cardiff and London - with all the consequent multiplying of costs in licences,training and support.  It needs strong leadership of the business to bring it to a cost-effective solution, not letting a thousand flowers flourish. Interestingly, Erik Huggers did a bit of that in his time at the BBC - making a decision that, online at least, there would be one way of posting video. And he decided that 28 different content management systems was probably too many. The business squealed at both moves, but he was right.