Thirty Years of Managerial Change at the BBC

The recent attempts of the BBC to become more accountable and cost-efficient are examined in the context of the McKinsey reforms of 1968 to 1972. They, too, set out to achieve improved resource management, 25 years before the similar initiative known as 'Producer Choice'. The BBC has entered the digital age and is poised to launch even more new services around the world. Few doubt that this would have been possible without Producer Choice, but the change programme did not realize its full intentions and the BBC still has organizational difficulties when trying to meet the strategic challenges it has set itself. It needs to do this if it is going to survive the current shift to new forms of delivery mechanisms in the 21st century.