Above all, Birt is credited with preparing the organisation for the new landscape shaped by digitalisation – preparations that were "far in advance of the BBC’s terrestrial rivals", according to the academic Georgina Born. At the 1996 Edinburgh Television Festival, Birt said that without the resources to prepare for the digital age, the BBC would be "history". Birt asserted that the changes made the BBC more agile, more competitive and allowed it to expand beyond its traditional broadcasting services, but remaining licence-fee funded. He was one of the driving forces behind the launch of continuous news output and he took much money from traditional services to fund the 24-hour news channel and advance on the internet. However, such ventures were criticised by many as being clearly detrimental to BBC core programming.