91Èȱ¬

Triple Olympic gold-medallist Sir Chris Hoy outside the London 2012 Velo Park construction site

You won't be surprised here at IBC when I say that I'm personally a fan of digital technology - and the innovation, the choice and the improved quality it's brought with it. That's what I'm going to concentrate on today, particularly in the way we can all use the 2012 Olympics as a flagship event of the fully-digital era. But I also want to factor in . I'm one of the generation that grew up with television as an unprecedented window on the world, as a medium that educated and informed as well as entertained. And in the 91Èȱ¬ we still want radio, television and to be forces for good: the public investment in us means we need to deliver clear and demonstrable benefits for our audiences and for society as a whole. So contributing to what we want to be a brilliantly successful Olympic Games - and securing - is a challenge we relish.

It's more important than ever precisely because we're at this historic moment when the world will become digital. ; and London and most of the rest of the UK will have - unleashing opportunities that are limitless. But there are risks too if what we end up is just 'stuff': a torrent of digital chaff that suffocates the aspiration to excellence which I saw on television and heard on radio when I was growing up. And what I want to emphasise today is the chance we have to use the Olympic Games both as a showcase for the digital universe and as a reminder about why the tested values still have their place too.

Now, in 2003 I gave a lecture in which I said that the the brilliance of the technology of the digital age hadn't then matched the content it was spreading. That was a view I don't shirk from, because clearly didn't mean that having 100 times as many channels led to viewers getting programming that was 100 times better. It still remains a challenge to ensure that , comedy and have proper funding; that ; and that we enable creativity.

But two things have changed in the past six years. The first is that we've used digital technology to offer - exploiting the multichannel potential of single events. If you have something good, offer even more and make it even better. ; and viewers had been stuck with or our decision on . What we now do - through the red button on interactive TV or on our website - is make as much as possible available to people so they call the shots not us.

91Èȱ¬ camera at the 1948 London Olympic Games

The second is, of course, - providing the connection between individuals and groups, but also . It's produced , and ; and most of us in the media have accommodated much - and - as part of our daily business. If it's content people want to talk about, we can now enable it and share the benefits. For some companies it's , which is great; while for us it's something that can expand and illuminate our provision of content.

Putting these two big developments together and adding them to our core operations has been a success. In the 91Èȱ¬ we had a review of our output three years ago that was ; and one of the things we identified was the chance to make big events bigger. That means everything from building documentaries and entertainment programming around - and encouraging people to participate - to using all our platforms and services to help our audiences enjoy the major landmarks. At its best it's a 3x3 play: that we offer content on tv, on radio and online. And we also serve audiences globally - through 91Èȱ¬ World Service and ; nationally; and locally on our .

We've done this as a strategy. It's been public at every stage, and it has been about serving audiences. They get top-quality content free-to-air on the platform that suits them at a time that's convenient - but within experiences that are shared as widely as possible across the population, in direct contrast to the pay model. : 42 million people, three quarters of the population, watching on television; new audience highs for our website; more video consumed by the end of the first day in Beijing than in the whole of Athens 2004; and more video streaming in total than anywhere else in Europe. Audiences showed massive levels of appreciation for the service they got; and that included opinion-formers too. The Conservative-leaning Daily Telegraph that Labour's culture secretary was "rightly proud" of the 91Èȱ¬'s coverage of Beijing.

So in London in 2012 it's simple: we'll try to do even better. I'm going to sketch out some of the headlines of how we hope to do that, but I should underline at this stage it's not something we can do on our own. This will involve partnerships most obviously with the , many UK public institutions and with stakeholders like , and the host broadcasters at . It will also involve working with this industry and many of the people here today to harness the best ideas. You may have seen that about his opposition to what he called 'state' involvement in digital media:

"The problem with the UK is that it is unhappy in every way: it's the Addams family of world media."

We want to cheer James up and suggest his pessimism is unfounded - that a 91Èȱ¬ can and does work with the private sector, and is a guarantor of innovation and supporter of enterprise. Here, then, are some examples of what we as an industry could aim to do for the London Olympics.

First, we have challenges we've set ourselves that are objectives for the 91Èȱ¬. In the era of analogue scarcity we sometimes covered only a few hundred hours of the 5,000 hours of sport available at an Olympic Games. By Beijing we delivered more than half of all the content - about 2,700 hours. For London we want to offer our audience the whole lot: every hour of every sport taking place across the Olympic venues , interactive tv and our . Don't think this will be easy: there are significant pressures on the infrastructure - not just our own but the UK networks, so we'll be working with . However, this would represent a massive shift of power from us to our audiences with unprecedented choice and the ability, if you want it, to create your own video Olympics. ; but if all you want is , that's what you'll be able to choose.

And there's mobile. In Beijing we were hemmed in by logistical constraints and by worries about , but for London we're already collaborating with the mobile industry to offer unprecedented richness of content for people on the move. Not just the key action, where we hold the mobile rights within the UK, but a range of information services that can get the results speedily to your mobile device or navigate you to the event itself or to the nearest pub for a cooling drink. All, of course, with the opportunity to tell us what you think , message boards and blogs - adding new levels of interactivity and audience involvement.

Audiences will be able to get more information than ever before, too. More data, more choices of statistics that again move the selection from the broadcasters to the consumers - just as we hope people will be able to find and share and edit some of the content themselves too, within the appropriate rights management systems.

But then there are challenges for the wider industry and our partnerships. We could, and I believe should, capture some of the Games . Nobody would expect the Games of 2012 to be comprehensively in 3D because the technology will be nothing like widespread enough; but it would be a shame not to have any images of London that were part of an experiment with what will be one of the next big waves of change. for a relatively short period. Not to have that at all in 3D would be, at the very least, a major gap in the archive.

Spectators watch a large screen in 3-D spectacles

Similarly, Super HD. There won't be a set in your living room by 2012, but there could be a limited number of - and could give a major creative boost to technologists and people thinking of the content of tomorrow. Both 3D and ; but now's the time to start examining seriously whether there are answers that could make 2012 even more of a landmark year.

Now, the professional broadcasting of the Olympic Games has long been a showcase for innovation and expertise: Beijing and , and we will be enthusiastic supporters of the next generation of digital coverage. But the unique opportunity for us in London is that these Games are in our own country, and we can achieve wider benefits than from just the sport. The kind of 3x3 tv/radio/online, global/national/local coverage I mentioned earlier , to , to and to . We'll showcase the ; we'll offer every angle on the major news developments; and we'll use our global reach to connect the world to London and take London's story around the world. Our founding fathers decided that the slogan of the 91Èȱ¬ would be 'nation shall speak peace unto nation' and there's the most obvious of all links to the aims of the Olympic movement. It fits too with , and we'll be unveiling programming between now and 2012 that will be our contribution to that mission.

And it's worth just underlining here that it wouldn't be good enough for the 91Èȱ¬ just to broadcast these Games to the UK. The measure of success is not simply whether we beat the 42 million who watched Beijing. It's about a range of measures which are demanding. I've mentioned our need to demonstrate that partnerships work and that we support the wider creative industries. We also need to show that we've driven digital take-up even faster within the UK, that , between those who leap at it and those who need assistance. It means , enabling employment through , making sure there are the greatest range of social benefits too. We should be held to account for whether as a result of the great sporting festival being held here.

The 91Èȱ¬ crest outside Broadcasting House

I say this not because I'm in favour of - or, heaven forfend, . But we all recognise that we live in a vibrant, culturally diverse, increasingly independent and consumer-oriented society - almost all of which is a benefit. Yet within that we should celebrate the opportunities of the things that bring us together: the moments when we have connections with each other and with millions in our own country and billions around the world.

There's a gloomier view that the digital world means we have to lose the best of what has served us well: that the and and are obsolescent, that is irrelevant, that truckloads of . And it's right that paternalism is pretty much dead: the adult-child model of broadcasting, the impervious view that 'we know best', has gone and that's no bad thing. But what we need to do is ensure that the excitement of the new era is matched by content for grown-ups, material that fosters citizenship and involvement as well as instant gratification. That means we in the 91Èȱ¬ have to continue to shape new visions for public service broadcasting in the same way that businesses are reinventing themselves in a time of structural change and recession. It means embracing the possibilities of 2012 as a year, and all the potential of the Olympics - and it requires us to look beyond them too. Because the ultimate test is whether we bequeath a legacy for 2013, 2014 and beyond: a more connected Britain, a sporting inspiration for the wider world, stronger creative industries, a technological and digital dividend.

Now let me finish by being honest that there is a divide here, and I'm unrepentant about it, between those who believe - and people and, crucially, is accountable. In setting ourselves public targets for 2012 we expect to be judged by the public too. They - the widest swathe of the population and our audiences around the world - will ultimately decide whether we've succeeded or failed. I'm very happy to have that jury in place, and I hope as many of you as possible will join us to ensure that we meet their expectations.