Thursday, July 14, 2016

Plus or minus ?

Has BBC Studioworks (nee BBC Studios and Post Production),  a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC, made a profit or a loss in 2015/16 ?

It's hard to tell from the Annual Report. Sales were down, from £29m to £22m over the year, and yet "in the year ended 31 March 2016, the company returned an underlying operating profit of £1.3 million, representing profit growth of 33% since 2014/15 on the same basis."

But, we are told, these figures exclude the closure of the company's Digital Media Services operation - closures aren't usually 'free' or 'cheap', and last year the report noted investment in equipment which presumably had to be sold off. And the figures don't include unspecified contributions to the BBC Pension Scheme deficit. Mmmm. Sir Philip Green didn't like mentioning that sort of thing either, did he ?

BBC S&PP has previous on entertaining exclusions from its figures. I particularly liked this construction from last year's Annual Report. "The company was cash positive from its underlying operations for the year when the result was adjusted to exclude non-cash items like depreciation (which is currently high due to the investment associated with its recent relocation)."

Next year, presumably, cash positive again, when it excludes equipping three newly re-furbished studios at Television Centre ?

2 comments:

  1. Two "newly re-furbished studios at Television Centre" - TC2 will not be equipped (allegedly)

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