Changing the way the BBC works

Will he be an Icon of the 21st Century ?  The BBC is betting the bank on something called Content Production Workflows to save the organisation millions in the next few years - and the man in charge is Robin Pembrooke.

Fresh from the Sulzberger Executive Leadership Proramme at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (on top of a BA in Economic and Social History from York) Robin was appointed Director CPW in October, and is now engaged in recruiting lieutenants. 

"We’re here for the Creators of all output across Radio, TV and Online; designing, developing and acquiring the services and systems they need to make exceptional content. We want to make the way they work simpler, more productive, and more informed.

In a changing technology and competitive landscape we’re here to help BBC Creators change the way they work, keep up with new competition, and create new BBC services that will ensure people continue to value what we do.

That means radically changing the way we plan, create and publish content; using technology to automate where appropriate, and using data to help make better decisions about how we focus our resources."

Anyone detecting whiffs of the Digital Media Initiative will probably get their heads bitten off. Yet the systems will rely on the modern logician's favourite buzz word, metadata. Regular readers will know that this blogger is more than unconvinced. A comprehensive entry across all possible topics might lead a Newsbeat producer to a World Tonight archive clip on, say, the Middle East - but the likelihood of it being used again on air is extremely low, and the exercise saves no-one money. News makes very few archive shows; Content likes them even less (though BBC4 relies on them).

The content, in Google search, IS the metadata. Get on with something else that really will save money.