BBC website: what the changes will mean for PR

The BBC’s website regularly feature in the lists of the ten most popular websites in the UK – and are usually the only ones in the top ten from a British organisation. So the BBC’s plans to refocus and shrink its web presence are likely to be widely felt.

The 79 page strategy document ranges over all of the BBC’s operations but specially on the web it proposes cutting BBC Online’s budget by 25% by 2013. It says:

• There will be more prominence for audiovisual content, BBC original journalism, and expertise and analysis from correspondents and editors
• The BBC news archive will be made much more widely available to the British public, opening up a unique national resource
• In local online, the BBC will focus on its core editorial areas of news, sport, weather, travel and local knowledge, and improve the quality of its existing websites… [and]
• Transforming itself into a window on the web, guiding audiences to the best of the internet as well as partnering with external providers.

In other words, expect a greater preference for stories which provide pictures or sound, bad news stories to hang around online more prominently and for longer, for stories with local angles to have great prominence and for quality stories on reputable sites to receive a traffic boost via BBC links.

None of those changes will alter PR overnight, but they will have an important impact on the environment in which we operate.