BBC Boss Tells Staff He Will Use Data To Build “Sat Nav Around Bias”

EXCLUSIVE: The BBC‘s new director general has revealed that he plans to use data to improve impartiality, and has warned that iPlayer is not doing a good enough job of showcasing the corporation’s content.

In his first address to staff on his second day in office, former Google executive Matt Brittin said that he wanted to use data to build a “sat nav around bias,” according to audio from the all-hands meeting obtained by Deadline.

He said the BBC could deploy technology to analyse its news and content to establish patterns in output. Brittin said this could mean assessing how often the BBC uses certain words, or analysing the types of contributors appearing across its programming.

He did not expand on how the technology would be built, but it will likely lead to speculation that the BBC could use AI to achieve his aim of mining data. Brittin is a vocal proponent of artificial intelligence, and his experience at Google was attractive to the BBC’s board when recruiting for Tim Davie’s successor.

“Stories and data together are the way to understand the world,” Brittin said. “[This is] not to audit people, but as a kind of sat nav around bias or sat nav around these topics … So that’s where I think I’d try to complement our brilliant expert teams.”

The comments are interesting because Brittin has not put impartiality at the forefront of his agenda after being unveiled as director general. He did not explicitly reference impartiality in his three priorities for the BBC, which was a break from his predecessor Davie, who put the issue front and center in his first days in the job.

Brittin was speaking after a tumultuous year for the BBC, which has been roiled by repeated editorial crises over the war in Gaza and Donald Trump. The latter remains a live issue, with the BBC locked in a legal battle with the U.S. president after a Panorama film botched an edit of Trump’s January 6 speech.

Speaking to Radio 4 Today show presenter Anna Foster in Salford, Brittin joked that he had spoken to four former director generals in preparation for the role, and the most “polite” description they had for the job was that it is “quite a handful.”

iPlayer Not Doing “Good Enough Job”

Elsewhere in his address, which was streamed live for BBC staff around the country, he had a frank assessment of the UK broadcaster’s streaming and online services.

“Our products, so iPlayer, Sport, and Sounds, aren’t doing a good enough job for the content that we’re all making,” he told employees. “That’s no criticism of the teams. We’ve just funded content at the expense of the platform, and so we need those products to work better.”

Brittin spoke about his own experience of using iPlayer. He noted that after watching breakout comedy hit Small Prophets, he would have liked iPlayer to recommend Detectorists, another series written by Mackenzie Crook. Brittin added that when he went to watch Silent Witness, he was served the very first episode by iPlayer, rather than the latest season.

A BBC insider said: “He was very keen to stress he wasn’t criticising teams or individuals, it was a frank assessment from an outsider coming into the organisation, and no doubt reflects the views of some of the audience. He laid down the challenge for improvement and that should be welcomed.”

Brittin suggested that the BBC could start pushing more investment into its products, though acknowledged that it was “smart” that the corporation had prioritised content spend in recent years.

“We’ve spent quite a lot of money, including cash reserves, to try to make the content offer as big as possible coming into this charter. That’s one of the reasons we haven’t got the money we need to sustain the size and shape of the organization,” the DG added, nodding to the £500M ($675M) of savings the BBC needs to make.

YouTube Deal

Brittin said he was pleased that the BBC had struck a deal with YouTube to make more of its output available on the platform.

“It’s quite helpful to me that the deal with YouTube was announced. I spent 18 years trying to convince the BBC that it should be on YouTube. Then I stopped working in technology, and then it signed a deal with YouTube, and I started working at the BBC, so it’s nothing to do with me,” he joked.

“We might say, ‘What are we doing in giving away our content?’ Look, that game is over. We’re not giving away our content, we’re putting it in front of audiences that deserve to see it, and we need to figure out the right way to do that. And with other broadcasters, we can push for those platforms to give prominence and to respect public service broadcasting, and also the fight against fakery in our news business.”

Brittin told staff that he has already held talks with the government over charter renewal and funding, but said he would not be negotiating in public. “Ideally, you need to be in a situation where the people who consume [BBC content] continue to pay [the licence fee] and there are lots of mechanics in that,” he said.

Brittin added that he would appoint a deputy director general from within the BBC, with Rhodri Talfan Davies — who briefly served as interim DG — widely seen as the candidate to beat.