The Bookseller.com

1st December 2008

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Wheeler hits back at criticism

08.09.08 Victoria Arnstein

Tony Wheeler, co-founder of Lonely Planet, has launched a ferocious response to criticism of BBC Worldwide's majority ownership in the travel guide publisher. Lonely Planet has made the headlines several times in the last couple of months, with Time Out founder Tony Elliott most recently attacking BBC Worldwide’s involvement in the company at the Edinburgh Television Festival.

Elliott’s plea to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for an investigation has been rebuffed, but the Publishers Association is now set to make a submission to the Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee into the commercial operations of the BBC.

Hitting back at Elliott’s claims, Wheeler said: "It is a little bit of sour grapes on his part." He added that when Pearson bought Rough Guides, he thought: "Oh shit, this is terrible. [I thought] they have DK already and now they have Rough Guides and they distributed Time Out at the time. I thought they have the whole empire and ‘oh, this is unfair’, but I’m not a British company so I couldn’t go and complain to the OFT about it."

Wheeler added that he thought BBC Worldwide had a very good case to defend its position, saying that the commercial arm of the BBC is contracted to raise money for the channel. "You either say that is your mandate and run with it or that is your mandate and we will tie one hand behind your back," he said.

Refuting further claims that Lonely Planet—particularly travel editor and media spokesperson Tom Hall — has been given too much air time on the BBC since the channel took a majority stake in the company, Wheeler added: "If you were to look at where Tom’s name has popped up over five years, he would have been on just as many BBC programmes 12 months ago as he is today—I don’t think that would have changed one little bit."

Wheeler is in the UK promoting his book, The Lonely Planet Story, Once While TravellingThe Bookseller (Crimson). An in-depth interview with Wheeler will appear in a later issue of The Bookseller.

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