Keating: TV needs to take publishing role

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Roly Keating, soon to be the BBC's first director of archivecontent, has described the area he is moving into as a"long-standing obsession" and believes the industry should adoptmore of a publishing model in the future. Speaking to Broadcast following his appointment this week, theoutgoing BBC2 controller said he has been fascinated by thepotential of the archive since the mid-1990s, when he set up UKTV.

He said that, at the time, multichannel offered a new route tomaximise and monetise back catalogues but that today the internetand on-demand were changing the landscape even more profoundly."The industry has to accept we're moving closer to something like apublishing model. From the point of broadcast, we'll have to figureout how to manage an extended and very, very long- term life forour shows.
 
"Even leaving aside the commercial potential, the public valueopportunity is just astonishing now as we begin to think about thepotential of the knowledge strategy and how people engage withprogrammes."  Keating said it was a hugely complex area, but one gainingmomentum. He added that his job would be to pull the disparateparts of the BBC together to unite audiences with programmes.

Looking back at his four-year tenure of BBC2, Keating said: "It wasnever about a revolution but piece by piece, putting things back inthe mix that make the channel what it ought to be, across allgenres." He said he was particularly proud of making the channel home tosome of the best talent such as Andrew Marr and Stephen Fry, butthat it grew new talent such as Simon Amstell and Bruce Parry. BBC4 controller Janice Hadlow is strongly tipped to take over.Keating hit back at suggestions that his successor would have toinject more identity and personality into the channel.