Managing Change in Broadcast Organisations: BBC Producer Choice Twenty Years on

Abstract

In 1993, the BBC introduced Producer Choice, a radical organisational change initiative driven largely by external political factors and implemented in a climate of internal opposition and resistance to change. The primary criticisms of the initiative are that it eroded the BBC’s craft base and damaged its ability to compete with the private sector, but it is also credited with saving the BBC in its current form. This paper examines the political background to the introduction of Producer Choice and analyses the drivers for change within the paradigm of Porter’s Five Forces Model. The planning, implementation and the management of resistance to change are discussed within the theoretical framework of change management literature.