Les Hinton, Paul Dacre and Murdoch MacLennan are hopping mad. And not with each other. These three chiefs of rival newspaper groups are angry about the future plans of an old, familiar enemy - the BBC.
This powerful trio of executives from News International, Associated Newspapers and the Telegraph Group respectively have fired off a submission to the review of the BBC white paper complaining about the corporation's plans to "build a digital empire", or as they see it, be a sneaky little copycat.
In the main, they are upset about the "dominance being handed to an unaccountable BBC" by the government, that they believe will lead to the development of BBC versions of services they already provide.
The troika, joined by David Elstein, of the Commercial Radio Companies Association and David Newell of the Newspaper Society, which represents regional newspapers, think that it's unfair of the BBC to be such a copycat.
What seems to have aroused their ire is the BBC Creative Future policy, unveiled late April, where the BBC said it would resdesign its website to "exploit" existing technologies such as Flickr, YouTube, Technorati and Wikipedia - in line with its new digital mantra of share, find and play.
News International is most annoyed about the BBC's willingness to develop a version of its MySpace.com, while members of the Newspaper Society are angry on behalf of their members that the BBC's ambitions to use digital to boost its local content will damage their own local newspaper websites, such as the Cumbrian News & Star's excellent local offering.
Are the media barons right to believe BBC.co.uk will crush MySpace.com, and newsandstar.co.uk, for that matter?
