The BBC, Britain's mammoth public-service broadcaster, has long been a cause for complaint among its competitors in television, radio and educational and magazine publishers. Newspapers, meanwhile, have been protected from it because they published in a different medium. That's no longer the case. The internet has brought the BBC and newspapers in direct competition—and the BBC looks like coming off best. The improbable success online of Britain's lumbering giant of a public-service broadcaster is largely down to John Birt, a former director-general who "got" the internet before any of the other big men of British media. He launched the corporation's online operations in 1998, saying that the BBC would be a trusted guide for people bewildered by the variety of online services.
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