The BBC shut down Action Network on 30 April 2008, five years after launching it as BBC iCan. The project had been presented at the time as a real change for public service broadcasting, because it asked audiences to get involved in politics rather than watch it happen.
The farewell note gave the official reason: the pace of innovation in online democracy meant campaigners could now reach a wider range of web tools, with more control, outside Action Network. BBC News editor Peter Horrocks put the same argument more bluntly in a speech, saying the whole web was out there for anyone with a special interest to pursue a cause easily, and that the BBC did not have to host the general conversation. He also gave the unofficial reason: investment had been withdrawn “because the level of involvement in it compared to the cost was inappropriate”.
The cost came out through a Freedom of Information request filed by Tom Steinberg, of the civic projects behind WhatDoTheyKnow. From 2003 to 2006 the BBC had spent more than £1.3 million on Action Network.
Doubts had attached to the project from the start, when critics asked whether a public broadcaster should be hosting grassroots campaigns at all. The corporation promised two new initiatives to replace it without saying what they were, and the expectation at the time was that they would lean on linking out to other people’s blogs and websites — the BBC’s own version of networked journalism, arrived at by way of a failed platform.