16 February 2009

BBC and Microsoft: Joined at the Hip?

Not another one?

Microsoft's UK online services group GM Sharon Baylay is becoming the BBC's director of marketing, comms and audiences, succeeding Tim Davie, who became audio and music director last year.

Why doesn't Microsoft just take over the BBC and be done with it?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is she simply a marketing droid though or maybe head marketing droid? It seems that such people cannot directly impact the BBCs trend towards softie tech solutions, as previous moves from MS to the Beeb have, but maybe that's shoddy thinking on my part. What can this person do in the position she now has?

Glyn Moody said...

Spread the MS gospel...

Anonymous said...

To quote Mark "To Be Honest" Thomson, BBC's Director General:

[transcript]
To be honest ... to be honest, people feared that the BBC might be planning a sort of cosy and exclusive relationship with Microsoft.
[/transcript]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sfQk9NXlns [00:01:53]

No kidding.

How many Voles has the MSBBC been infested with now?

Glyn Moody said...

To be honest...I'd not seen that quotation: thanks.

Anonymous said...

the head of bbc fm&t, erik huggers is ex-microsoft but is no fan of ms technologies. he actually wanted to make everything java instead. he was convinced to back down cos most stuff is a mix of perl and java and java is so damn fat. gets development done real quick tho.

and everyone here hates the contiki iplayer. the flash iplayer kicked its a*se every way you can think of. no one here takes silverlight seriously either.

Glyn Moody said...

Interesting - it's always hard to tell from the outside what's really going on. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Actually, Huggers is just the tip of the iceberg. The MSBBC's entire technology division was taken over by Siemens (a Windows shop) in 2004:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/01/bbc_technology/

Then of course there was the infamous half-hour Vista advert, which the MSBBC gave Microsoft for free:

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/02/03/beeb-slammed-for-fawning-to-bill-gates

Here's a couple of "interesting" quotes fom Max Flint, the presenter:

[quote]
Tonight on The Money Programme, I'm on my way to the launch of one of the world's biggest products...
[/quote]

Hmm. No impartiality there then.

[quote]
It'll generate billions in sales, and pretty soon most of us will be using it.
[/quote]

... hopes Microsoft's new business partner, the MSBBC.

But this final quote is the clincher:

quote]
But Microsoft doesn't need to worry too much if people are put off by the cost of an upgrade. Vista will be pre-installed on almost all new computers, so they'll get the big sales anyway.

That's the genius of Bill Gates' business.
[/quote]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6340000/newsid_6348300/6348391.stm

There you have it, straight from the horse's mouth. The MSBBC thinks Microsoft's unethical monopoly is "genius".

Well we should expect as much,I mean they even gave Bill Gates his own column on the MSBBC's Website:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/14/bill_gates_bbc_secrets/

Anonymous said...

Not at all! The Beeb uses a system called Ingex to capture and store all its HD data - this is running Linux. They also maintain a Linux based "Whiteboard" system, who's name unfortunately escapes me right now.

Glyn Moody said...

Thanks for the info (and apologies for the delay in posting).