By the minute

BBC Board member for England Sir Robbie Gibb has been on the road again, this time chairing a meeting of his Board sub-committee at the offices of BBC Radio Lancashire, on Friday 24th September, entertainingly from 1430 to 1700, when the radio station is on 'shared content' with BBC Radio Cumbria. 

I wonder if the minutes are Gibb-endorsed. They read like bullet points: "Live listening to BBC Local Radio is just above target in the second quarter of 2024 but still significantly down on the year. "

Jason Horton reported in his role as Director of Production for BBC Local; in the minutes, he's described as Director England, a post which closed in December 2022. Maybe Robbie missed that....

No two brains are the same

The BBC has quietly launched revised diversity targets, including for the first time, attempting to ascertain how many of its staff might be neuro-divergent. 

Here's the official sit-rep:

In 2021 we committed to be a modern 50:20:12 organisation, that's 50% women and 50% men, 20% from a Black, Asian or minority ethnic background, and 12% disabled staff, by March 2026.

In 2022 we said 25% staff will come from working class backgrounds by 2027.

Our last audited figures from the Annual Report and Accounts 2024 show our workforce is made up of:

50.1% women
49% women leaders
17% Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff 
14.4% Black, Asian and minority ethnic leaders 
9.4% disabled staff 
7.9% disabled leaders 
21.1% working-class staff
19.3% working-class leaders

It is right that we always review our plans and as part of this next phase of our strategy we will align our plans to the new Charter period, aiming to meet all our goals by 2027.

Additionally, to align with industry best practice and to give more visibility to our neurodivergent staff, from 2025/26 we will measure the percentage of colleagues who are disabled, as well as those who are deaf and/or neurodivergent. This means our 12% disability target will be replaced by a new goal of 14% that measures the combined total of deaf, disabled and/or neurodivergent staff. 

And there's a new staff group for the neuro-divergent, called BBC Enigma. Executive sponsor is Rhodri Talfan Davies, who will be respecting everyone's communication preferences. 

ENTITLEMENT

I'm sure many felt a warm glow at the news that the BBC's John Shield is joining Global PR firm Teneo as a Senior Managing Director - an elevation surely reflecting his illustrious eleven-year career with Auntie. 

It seems, however that there are quite a few Senior Managing Directors at Teneo - they've announced a dozen since 2023, on top of those already on board. 

Meanwhile the BBC has advertised for a a Director of External Communications; John's title was simply Director of Communications. Surely he can't have qualified for redundancy ?

Straight talking

The cancellation of BBC Scotland soap River City needed a little more transparency from the start. The BBC release said simply viewing figures had drifted down. A narrative emerged that it was reaching 500k viewers a week. That probably wasn't true since 2002. The launch episode was around 750k, but within three weeks average weekly viewing was down to 450k. 

Clearly the cancellation strategy - to promise to spend the annual cost of River City, at £9m, on new drama, had been planned for the best part of a year.  But if they'd also been frank, that weekly reach for the two transmissions is running at c200k, the case would have been cast-iron.

Triumvirate

BBC DG Tim Davie has been pushing the organogram envelope with his new appointments to the full BBC Executive. In his missive to staff he boldly says  "There will be no reporting line changes as a result of these appointments."   Yet Director of Product Storm Fagan steps up alongside her boss COO Leigh Tavaziva. And, CCO Officer Kerris Bright takes responsibility for "BBC-wide data strategy" , while Storm cops "group-wide" responsibility for data platforms. 

Clear as mud. 

Nonetheless the trio of Bright, Curbishley and Fagan are clearly marked out to provide Tim with some Big Ideas, and fast.... 

More than meets the eye

BBC DG Tim Davie has finally found his Transformer after a seven month search. Korn Ferry, waving a Board-level-specially-sanctioned package, have brought him John Curbishley, a Brit who's been working in New York since 2003, after completion of a Harvard MBA.  

He will be Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer with a seat on the executive board,  starting in April.

John, 50, has a degree in law from Oxford University, where he also served as treasurer to the Oxford Union - repaid with a donation over £10k last year. His wife, Louise, also went to Oxford and Harvard, and is CFO of MEMX.   Her university interests were the Oxford Air Squadron, Tae Kwon Do, and College Rowing. They live in an apartment near Hudson Square.

John's first period with the BBC was in Corporate Strategy, from 1999 to 2001, the change from John Birt to Greg Dyke, when Carolyn Fairbairn was running the department.  

John's subsequent life experiences include a spell with a company that puts tv screens and ads in doctors' waiting rooms; he helped himself out of a job last year with work transforming Paramount Global, previously known as Viacom CBS. 

Guesswork

The BBC's Political Editor used to set the tone for wider coverage. 

This extract, from a piece published three hours ago, is commendable. 

I am very aware at moments like this that we have an imperfect picture of what is to come.

It is incumbent on reporters to be responsible, and clear about what we don't know, so as not to cause unnecessary alarm.

There is a danger in under or over emphasising particular elements which may or may not happen or may, perhaps more likely, contain mitigations or nuances that we are not currently aware of.

Nonetheless, Chris Mason continues with his thoughts over 650 words. Elsewhere, two BBC journalists are editing a live blog, with, so far, contributions from five BBC journalists. And seven hours ago, Faisal Islam published an In Depth piece running to 2,200 words. Preview 'journalism', built on positioning by the Government, and fuelled by quotes from MPs with clear agendas. Could we manage with less of it ? 

The clicky headline

BBC Studios is advertising for a number of Senior Curation Editors to shape bbc.com and the BBC app on a daily basis 'for global audiences' from Washington. They will work to Lead Curation Editor, Laura Norkin, a graduate of Penn State, who has previously 'shaped' for US offerings Mothership, Glamour and InStyle. 

She describes herself as "A seasoned editorial executive who's helmed site relaunches and editorial teams of two to 20+, established and taught journalistic best practices to a global editorial department of 50+, established content sharing partnerships, and mastered the art of the clicky headline, Laura Norkin is a storyteller who’s fluent in SEO and Spanish, and in sync with the lifestyle news cycle."

Disclosure

Whatever the terms of Liz Green's financial settlement with the BBC over l'affaire Belfield, she's been very frank with her version of what did and didn't happen in an interview with the Times, unpaywalled today. 

Her tale of a lack of executive support, from around 2010 to 2019, is revealing about managers working for DG Mark Thompson in the English Regions, as they were then.  

Bills

BBC News management have decided to avoid an uncomfortable three-week examination of their HR practices, with a settlement agreed with News Channel presenters Martine Croxall, Annita McVeigh, Karin Giannone and Kasia Madera. 

The tribunal was due to start on Monday, and it would be fun to catch sight of the witness list for the BBC side. 

So some fee costs of this three-year dispute have been 'saved', but the BBC's side's expenditure so far will be pretty impressive. The four made their formal claim in June 2023; there has been at least one preliminary hearing, and last year there was a full hearing about whether they were allowed to bring claims for 'equal pay', as well as their employment discrimination case, having all been involved in a number of prior equal pay settlements from 2014. At that stage, the four didn't have legal representation and wrote simply: 

"Between us, we've had seven equal pay settlements; we have not been paid equally with our male comparator since Feb 2020 .... We believe the gap in pensionable pay was around £36k a year in Feb 2023". 

The 'male comparator' as far as they were concerned, was Matthew Amroliwala. The equal pay issue was resolved against the four presenters - they couldn't argue that every pay day was an opportunity to re-open issues prior to March 2023. 

The papers feature a number of BBC management sherpas, since departed; the lawyers for the BBC were Baker McKenzie, and the barrister was Jessie Devereux.