The Bookseller.com

2nd December 2008

« Headlines

BBC Worldwide goes on defensive

27.08.08 Victoria Gallagher

BBC Worldwide has defended itself after Time Out founder Tony Elliott launched a vigorous attack on the organisation at the Edinburgh Television Festival last weekend. Elliott said BBC Worldwide was "out of control", after last year buying a controlling stake in rival travel publisher Lonely Planet.

But Jennie Allen, corporate affairs director at BBC Worldwide, denied that the organisation was acting unfairly, saying that BBC Worldwide was "very very very carefully controlled". She said: "We’re no different from any other brand, we need to abide by competitive law. We can’t do anything that would affect our competitors, unfairly have an impact or distort a view."

In his speech, Elliott, described how "pissed off" he was when he heard about the acquisition in October last year. He said "I genuinely think BBC Worldwide is out of control—a kind of rogue BBC operating worldwide and not properly controlled by the BBC Trust—developing activities way beyond its original remit of generating spin-off income from exploitation of content and formats from the UK broadcaster’s activity." He added: "Clearly the BBC’s plan now is to build up the Lonely Planet brand to the exclusion of any other information source."

Elliott said that attempts to get the Office of Fair Trading to investigate had been rebuffed, but he called on anyone concerned to respond to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee's investigation into the BBC's commercial operations. "This is clearly a major event and I urge everyone to do something," Elliott said. Allen said: "If the OFT thought there was a case they would do something."

Asked about the speech, Elliot told The Bookseller: "I'm just trying to make sure the right questions are asked, and that the right people pay attention. If you poke around enough, you find that there are a lot of people concerned. I don't expect that the BBC can dump Lonely Planet overnight, but this is incredibly serious for travel publishers."

Blog: Tony Elliott's speech

Lonely Planet BBC Worldwide Home Victoria Gallagher Time Out Tony Elliott Edinburgh Television Festival