Here’s the text of an open letter to the BBC Trust signed by 15 digital indies and published by Broadcast Magazine on 21 May 2010. It’s our response to the BBC’s Strategic Review … particularly its approach to digital media.

We’ll let it speak for itself.

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In March, the BBC announced a Strategic Review of its activities, currently under consideration by the BBC Trust.

The BBC has, over the last 20 years, been instrumental in ensuring the vibrancy of the UK’s media production sector. Our production companies have in turn helped make the UK into the leading exporter of broadcast formats and world leaders in the creative exploration of media, to the great benefit of our economy. The BBC has done this in a way entirely consistent with its own chartered Public Purposes and we count ourselves among its most ardent supporters — both for the economic benefits it has brought the private sector and its provision of public service content.

Television will remain a hugely important part of the UK’s media consumption. However, the increasing popularity of intrinsically non-linear services and products delivered via the internet to mobile devices, computers and game consoles offer their audiences something entirely different from that of television; it is a fact that big-budget linear “programmes” are decreasingly important in the nation’s overall mix of media consumption — which the Review acknowledges.

However, the current Review’s vision of the BBC’s ‘Digital Future’ is a simple one in which linear “programmes” are delivered on multiple platforms (with a special emphasis on connected televisions) and the internet exists merely to support this. The language used to describe the internet’s role is uniformly that of “showcasing” or “guiding” users to “the best of the BBC’s output.” Its only comment on comedy (one of the BBC’s proposed core “5 priorities”) is to reduce the number of websites, investing only in supporting high-quality “shows”.

The Review calls for a 25% reduction in the online budget, when it is currently only the size of Radio 4 or BBC Three. There is almost no language whatsoever about how the BBC will back, explore or commission media conceived for interactive platforms.

We believe the BBC is therefore fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of future media at a critical point — it is not about putting TV on the web or the web on TV — and is profoundly underestimating the potential of interactive media to achieve the BBC’s chartered Public Purposes (which include sustaining civil society and promoting creativity and education in a globally connected world).

We believe the Strategic Review, if implemented in its current form, risks leaving the British public with no interactive media created primarily with public value in mind. At a time when tomorrow’s winners and losers are being decided, the Review would also see the removal of a source of research and investment in the next generation of formats and content — a sector in which the UK currently enjoys a position of global leadership.

Both will result in a poorer UK.

We urge the Trust to reconsider this area of the Strategic Review.

Paul Bennun, Somethin’ Else

Dan Hon, Six to Start

Alex Fleetwood, Hide and Seek

Phil Stuart, Preloaded

James Kirkham, Holler

Tassos Stevens, Coney

Mike Bennett, Oil Studios

Andy Bell, Mint Digital

Gez O’Brien, Stardotstar

Toby Barnes, Mudlark

Piero Frescobaldi, Unit9

Vassillios Alexiou, Less Rain

Jim McNiven, Kerb

Darrell Wilkins, Creative Director, Specialmoves

Juliet Tzabar, Plug-in Media Ltd