Do we really need a tech boss at the BBC? Back to Terra Firma 1 year on…
A year ago this week, I platformed a play of mine called Back to Terra Firma at a cool new writing theatre called Theatre503, in Battersea. Although the play had been gestating for years, (it’s my maturing Millennial play) it popped-out as a topical version of a future UK, where people opt into the tech immersion, stress and danger of two sprawling cities (Northtown/Southtown), or choose exile in vast, cooperative farmlands with fewer resources but less man-made pressure. It also features a boy who, having been radicalised online, struggles to accept the safety of a foster home or a healthy relationship with a female role-model.
Given this anniversary, it is fascinating to me that the last few weeks have drawn those of us following factual content into a whirlpool of stories about the dangers of the online world, from social media and device addiction, to the dogmatic brainwashing of misinformation in ‘The Manosphere,’ one man’s loss of money and agency due to reliance on his AI partner, and so much more…the list, like the internet, is inexhaustible.
Sitting pertly adjacent to this was the BBC’s announcement that it has a new Director General or ‘boss,’ not from a journalism/broadcasting background, but from big tech ~ Google. This raises an important existential question for the BBC and the license-fee-payer. In a world where the health of individuals and communities is eroded by tech platforms built for profit, can a tech boss act ‘in the public interest’ at the helm of our public service broadcaster?
On the face of it, Matt Brittin CBE, who started in March, has three pressing jobs – firstly, he is charged with protecting the continuity of the BBC’s Royal Charter, which is due for revision at the end of 2027. Secondly, he needs to suffer the slings and arrows of staving off Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit about a creative edit. Thirdly, as a figurehead heralding a new age, he is duty-bound to give the organisation a face-lift, which will rest somewhere on a scale of deep structural change and public optics.
You can see why the BBC’s Board has chosen Brittin from his well curated LinkedIn profile – he is a true corporate Gen-Xer – he likes innovation, tech for good, travelling and riding bikes in India during his Garden Leave ‘Gap Year,’ and according to Katie Razall’s gathering on the subject, is considered an all-round nice guy by ex-colleagues. Scroll down a bit further, and the story is one of a Chartered Surveyor, turned McKinsey Consultant, turned Trinity Mirror Salesman and finally – high-profile aligner of corporate needs and international social value for Google EMEA. So, from this we could expect a reliable combination of institutional conformism, work ethic, sales spin and the kind of deadpan political diplomacy that only corporate executives can muster (it’s an underrated skill). All things we need from Auntie Beeb, however dull.
In locking-down the renewal of the Royal Charter Gap-Year Matt will need to ensure that the organisation not only meets its mandate for ‘enhanced impartiality’ in a ‘digital-first’ news landscape, but that it also holds true to the public service provider’s existing code of conduct. The impetus to ‘clean house’ before the Dec’ 2027 deadline is surely prompting a host of ‘transformation’ directives – from reassessing contracts of top-tier talent to ‘rooting out the weeds.’ It does not feel coincidental that the historic allegations of sexual misconduct against Scott Mills were revisited, with the surfacing of ‘new information’ in recent weeks…resulting in his firing. This might be read as a symbolic statement of intention as well as a punitive measure.
But what of Brittin’s special knowledge of non-broadcast media consumption and how this benefits Auntie’s survival?
Yes, Auntie is publicly funded but she also has a commercial arm in BBC Studios and its post-production services…shows are sold globally and the strategic ambition is to double the Studio’s size’ by 2028. Established trade-offs exist between the investments made in developing digital platforms such as Brit-Box and striving to compete for audiences that are fast swimming towards streaming platforms. The BBC needs to keep up to compete.
According to The National Audit Office, Auntie is also falling behind in creating ‘new IP.’ Cue: a search-engine and short-form savvy executive ready to reimagine traditional formats into YouTube shaped hearts and minds, and international products. He and the rest of Aunty’s constituent parts will need to push audiences to new content too, which aside from ‘IRL’ and browser ads’ will mean an increased attentiveness to social media and its growing eco-system of spaces from Tik-Tok to Telegram.
Last month’s landmark judgement by a court in Los Angeles, that Meta and Google intentionally built addictive platforms that harmed a young woman’s health, has been welcomed by 1,600 plaintiffs struggling with their children’s unhealthy relationships to social media, and in some cases, mourning their lives. Mark Zuckerberg’s comment that he regretted not making faster progress in the identification of under 13s on platforms like Instagram, focalises the problem – that in a world of supply and demand, the risks of mobile media have been created and rolled out disproportionately faster than the safeguards needed to protect individual and societal wellbeing.
I’m bandying the term ‘mobile media’ to underline the highly visible changes mobile phones have made to our social fabric. As a London native of seven years, I sometimes muse over the lost opportunities for future relationships and human connection that commuters have traded in for screentime. If there is a ‘loneliness epidemic’ we all know why. The Australian Government has wrestled the wild crocodile, so to speak, with a ban on social media use for children under sixteen to ‘protect the mental health and wellbeing of Australian children and teens.’ But while institutions and governments cannot be made wholly responsible for individuals’ interactions, it is becoming more painfully clear that ‘in the public interest’ each have a weighty role to play.
As the publicly owned bastion of British culture since 1922, the BBC surely has more responsibility than most to make online wellbeing and safety a lynchpin of its mandates to educate and inform, not only as a corporate side-project but as a guiding principle of its digital expansion and partnerships. Given the complexities of the world wide web, perhaps a tech boss is just the person to untangle it.
TF
