BBC destined to shrink at 'accelerating rate'

I took part in an OFCOM (govt. Office of Communications) consultation on the future of UK public sector broadcasting in 2003-4, shortly before Youtube was born.

My suggestion was for the BBC to expand their definition of 'public sector broadcasting' to include facilitating the means of video distribution for communities ... kinda like Youtube in fact. The idea didn't resonate and was not mentioned in the report.

Around that time I also attended a meeting with some BBC bods, we were trying to promote Guerilla TV, a truly innovative and grass roots network that placed media servers and access points at strategic network nodes like universities (broadband was very sparse in those days). Nothing happened, opportunity missed.

To be fair, the BBC did accomplish some good stuff in those times too, notably Ashley Highfield and his team working on iPlayer, etc. But I've always thought the BBC made a strategic blunder by not doing more to enable grass roots content.