BBC Suspends £150m BBC Jam Education Site

March 18th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

The BBC suspended operation of its £150m children’s education site, BBC Jam, last week after complaints were made to the European Commission that the site unfairly effects the commercial market for similar content. The site, which provides free educational content for children in the 5-to-16 age group, will no longer be accessible from Tuesday.

Although I think that the BBC does waste a lot of taxpayers money, it still excels in certain areas and one of those is providing educational content. In fact part of the BBC’s charter is to promote education and learning. Although I’m a big believer in the Thatcherite policies of encouraging competition, I think this is going one step too far as surely setting up services like BBC Jam is one of the reasons why the BBC still exists?

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Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University, and currently runs the Portal and online operations for one of the largest ISPs in the UK. He also writes for Windows 7 News.

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There Are 4 Responses So Far. »

  1. #1

    Comment by Peter Evans on 20 March 2007:

    Not only has the BBC has suspended its ‘BBC Jam’ Digital Curriculum service but from the end of March the production of the educational TV programmes that BBC Jam was intended to replace will also cease and the staff associated with them will be made redundant. It was hoped that they would be resettled over in the hitherto expanding BBC Jam service, but not now, so it looks as if these key staff will be lost to the BBC. More serious is that the suspension of BBC Jam and the stopping of school TV production means that the BBC now makes no formal education provision at all for children and schools. Time to make a fuss.

  2. #2

    Comment by Everton on 20 March 2007:

    how many people are affected? I’ve been made redundant twice so I know it’s not nice, although I feel on my feet the 2nd time

  3. #3

    Comment by Peter Evans on 20 March 2007:

    As the BBC Digital Curriculum has built up over the past few years, the BBC’s TV provision was has been wound down, such that, somewhat embarrassingly, the BBC now finds itself offerring neither. Over this time many people who made these highly regarded TV and radio programmes have either taken voluntary redundancy or moved over to work on BBC Jam. About 20 staff remain who are now faced with compulsory redundancies. This seems particularly short-sighted when the BBC is just about to embark on a wide-ranging review of their formal education provision for children, which could well need the TV production skills these people have.

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