The BBC Trust published its review of the corporation’s online activities in May 2008. Much of the press coverage went to one number, a £36m overspend but the report was broadly positive: the Trust called bbc.co.uk an “excellent service that is highly valued by users and makes a strong contribution to delivering the BBC’s public purposes”.
The conditions attached were sharper. It was “essential that the service remains distinctive”, and the Trust would not approve new investments without further scrutiny, and not until confident that improved management controls were in place to ensure better financial accountability and editorial and managerial oversight.
The detail on the news website was strong. BBC news online was the most used area of bbc.co.uk and still growing: in the last three months of 2007 it reached about 6.7 million UK users each week, up 18 per cent on the same period in 2006. Licence fee payers rated it highly for accuracy, impartiality, range and ease of use, and the Trust recorded a high level of trust in it.
On demographics the finding cut both ways. The online and mobile news services had a higher proportion of 16-to-34-year-old users than most of the BBC’s television or radio news services, so the site was helping reach younger adults — but less well-off audiences remained better served by television and radio news. The Trust also found encouraging evidence that BBC News was thinking carefully about how it managed user-generated content and other participation, and encouraged it to continue given the importance of the corporation’s distinctive journalism values.