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Established organizations regularly fail in their strategic responses to large-scale environmental transformations. In this chapter, the authors analyze the case of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) successful response to digitization of the broadcasting industry. The authors identify two main forms of strategic response – establishing external collaborations and developing internal competencies – which were driven by recurrent cycles of renewal of the BBC’s Royal Charter. The authors conceptualize this process as “temporary incorporation,” an effective driver of strategic responsiveness not yet been discussed in the literature. This discussion relates temporary incorporation to the previous work on strategic change.

On this Wednesday evening it will come as no surprise to you when I say that the BBC is on the air. Indeed, it would come as something of a shock, if I were to tell you that it is not! You will immediately think of BBC‐1 where Magic Roundabout is about to cast its spell. Or Radio 4 where William Hard‐castle is bringing listeners PM Reports; or Choral Evensong on Radio 3; or contrasting music on Radios 1 and 2. And then there's BBC Local Radio—in London with a programme about Local Government. But many of you, perhaps, would not immediately think of the BBC's External Services, nearly all of which are broadcast on short wave, the BBC World Service broadcasting in English for 24 hours a day and further services in 39 foreign languages on the air at different times of day and night. At this moment, for example, programmes are being broadcast from London in Maltese, Finnish, Roumanian, Persian, Arabic and German, while various World Service transmitters are carrying two separate programmes: a regional service for Africa and the mainstream for the rest of the world.

A survey was carried out of users, and potential users of the BBC Scotland Information Research Library services. Two postal questionnaires were sent out in the summer of 1995 to more than 100 individuals and organisations in Scotland. Based upon a 50% response rate, various conclusions could be drawn. Internal respondents were very satisfied with the services they currently received, but were, unsurprisingly, unwilling to pay significant sums to receive the services. There is some potential interest from outside the BBC in the Library's Events Guide. The exercise was undertaken both to assess the potential market for the Events Guide and to raise awareness generally of the Library's services. The results provide valuable pointers to how the BBC Scotland library services can develop, and, in time, the survey may turn out to have been a valuable marketing tool in its own right.

The purpose of this paper is to explore young people's views, both positive and negative, about BBC services, and to investigate their preferred means of accessing news.

This paper reports recent research for the BBC conducted in November 2007 by the Regional Audience Council for BBC London, as part of a study covering all of England on behalf of the Audience Council England which advises the BBC Trust. Data were gathered from questionnaires and focus groups. The sample comprised 42 young adults.

Results show respondents were most interested in discussing television content, delivery, and BBC services. Secondary topics raised included the image/reputation of the BBC, scheduling matters and presentation issues. Findings indicated that although modes of access may be changing, television remains the preferred means of accessing news within this group.

Differences regarding social variables in the respondents are not considered in the analysis.

Knowledge of the preferences of discrete audience groupings is becoming increasingly important to broadcasters as “mass” audiences fragment and more opportunities to view are offered. This paper offers insight on the preferences of the youth market.

This paper makes a contribution by updating and contributing to the debates about young people's media consumption within the context of today's competitive multi‐media environment.

Television has long been cited by viewers as their primary and most trusted source of news, especially in relation to news of national and international affairs. Aims to explore the issue of trust in the television news.

The paper combines narrative and analysis. Questions whether public trust in the BBC was damaged by the Hutton inquiry: would the BBC's reputation as the nation's premier news service be tarnished in the longer‐term and had public trust in journalism been severely compromised.

Events that followed the transmission of a report about the veracity of the government's case for going to war carried by a BBC radio news broadcast on 29 May 2003 called into question the Corporation's competence as a reliable news provider. The story alleged that an informed source had told BBC correspondent Andrew Gilligan that the government had exaggerated the immediacy of dangers posed to the west by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The source who was eventually exposed was a Ministry of Defence expert on Iraq, Dr David Kelly, who later killed himself. The Prime Minister ordered a public inquiry into Dr Kelly's death, led by Lord Hutton, who severely criticised the competence of the BBC's senior management and the quality of its journalism practices. These conclusions prompted the resignation of the Corporation's Chairman and Director General. Hutton's findings had wider implications for the future governance of the BBC and invoked far‐reaching questions about the trust that the public could place in journalism. The evidence indicates that while the public felt that the BBC had been culpable for failing to launch its own internal inquiry into the Gilligan report, the public perceived this incident as a one‐off aberration rather than as being symptomatic of some wider malaise. Indeed, the Hutton inquiry had impacted more upon public trust in the government and led people to question the independence of the Hutton inquiry.

While trust in journalists is far from universal, the public differentiate among journalists in terms of the news organisations they work for. Among these, the BBC remains one of the most widely trusted.

An exploration of the issue of trust in the television news following the Dr David Kelly/Andrew Gilligan report on “The Today Programme” and subsequent Hutton enquiry.

The BBC is now 52 years old. It is a simple statement of fact that since the setting up of the British Broadcasting Company in November 1922 and its successor, the British Broadcasting Corporation in January 1927, everyone of any importance in almost any part of the national life has had something to do with the BBC. Kings, queens, archbishops, prime ministers, statesmen, professors, poets, painters, economists, ecologists, even eccentrics, all have appeared in BBC programmes. Many of them have given their services to the BBC in other ways, whether as members of successive boards of governors, or of the many advisory councils or committees that help to guide the development of BBC policies. Or yet again, the BBC has relationships to varying degrees of formality with other organizations. The most important of these is, of course, with the British Government. This was of particular importance during the Second World War, when the BBC was also in close contact with the governments of other countries, particularly with governments in exile and operating as best they could from London or nearby. Underlying all is the business of running the BBC itself: appointing the staff, relationships with unions, planning programmes, formulating policies.

Academic interest in managing diversity is now developing from conceptual analyses to practical examples. However, the conceptual relationship between managing diversity and equal opportunities remains rather blurred. Perhaps investigation of managing diversity in practice may help bring greater focus to the relationship. This article seeks to bring further insight into the debate on managing diversity in terms of its link with equal opportunities and key dimensions in practice. On the basis of consideration of theoretical perspectives and dimensions of managing diversity, a practical development of managing diversity is discussed in a longitudinal case study of a proactive diversity initiative in BBC Scotland.

Media power plays a role in determining which news is told, who is listened to and how subject matter is treated, resulting in some stories being reported in depth while others remain cursory and opaque. This chapter examines how domestic violence and abuse (DVA) is reported in mainstream and social media encompassing newspapers, television and digital platforms. In the United Kingdom, newspapers have freedom to convey particular views on subjects such as DVA as, unlike radio and television broadcasting, they are not required to be impartial (Reeves, 2015).

The gendered way DVA is represented in the UK media has been a long-standing concern. Previous research into newspaper representations of DVA, including our own (Lloyd & Ramon, 2017), found evidence of victim blaming and sexualising violence against women. This current study assesses whether there is continuity with earlier research regarding how victims of DVA, predominantly women, are portrayed as provoking their own abuse and, in cases of femicide, their characters denigrated by some in the media with impunity (Soothill & Walby, 1991). The chapter examines how certain narratives on DVA are constructed and privileged in sections of the media while others are marginalised or silenced. With the rise in digital media, the chapter analyses the changing patterns of news media consumption in the UK and how social media users are responding to DVA cases reported in the news. Through discourse analysis of language and images, the potential messages projected to media consumers are considered, together with consumer dialogue and interaction articulated via online and social media platforms.

Presents an history of the Written Archives at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), stating that the Written Archives constitute the working papers of the Corporation from 1922 to the 1980s. Looks at present developments and how this will be managed into the twenty‐first century.