Will Wyatt's report has garnered plenty of attention, understandably, for what it had to say about the conduct of the most senior BBC executives involved in the Crowngate fiasco. In the detail, however, is more than a hint that a very serious structural issue urgently needs to be addressed.
And whilst it cannot simply excuse those individuals directly involved, the role of the so-called marketing, communications and audiences (MC&A) directorate is the one most obviously open to question.
The Wyatt report details a string of instances in the course of the preparation of the BBC1 launch tape and the subsequent handling of events that point to the failure of MC&A. For a start, the fact that the programme's producers were not consulted - and not allowed to see how their material was to be used in the launch tape. It turned out this was a policy only apparently varied for Jane Tranter, the controller of fiction.
Then none of the publicists for the series had seen either the launch tape or any material from the programmes; and the sign-off for the presentation by Peter Fincham didn't involve anyone working on or with any direct knowledge of the series. Neither was anyone involved invited to the press show.
And then to cap it all, no one appears to have realised the significance or sensitivity of the material they were dealing with. The last paragraph of Wyatt's report makes a pointed reference to "cultural rifts between marketers, producers and commissioners", which almost certainly seriously understates the issues arising from what must count as a complete and catastrophic failure of the MC&A. So how has it happened?
Predictably perhaps, given that it concerns the BBC, there is history here. In a nutshell, since Greg Dyke became director general "marketing" has replaced corporate affairs and the marketer's writ runs virtually unopposed.
In keeping with the greater focus on audiences in the commissioning process and the professionalisation of the marketing and promotion of BBC channels, the whole organisation is now "marketing-led". It has become very good at the promotion of its output but less sure of its corporate positioning.
Rather as with pennies and pounds, provided enough people watch the programmes it is assumed that corporately the BBC will look after itself. And if the BBC were a purely commercial organisation that made baked beans or widgets that might be true. But it isn't and it doesn't and as the events of last week demonstrate this urgently needs fixing.
Interestingly this isn't just a problem for the BBC. Take a wander down to Horseferry Road and you can see yet more evidence of what can happen when the marketers start to dominate the way an organisation thinks. Channel 4's apparent belief that audience figures alone delivered invulnerability in the court of public and political opinion has ended up damaging them too.
In a curious pre-echo of the BBC's failure to see the significance of Crowngate, C4 failed to grasp the Celebrity Big Brother racism issue before being overwhelmed by a storm of public protest. And in that case too, whatever the actions of those directly involved, ultimately misjudgments by those at the very top were found to be the key to what went wrong.
