Confused ?

I'm not sure who does Tim Davie's grid, but in the week of another big shove of the begging bowl in the faces of The Treasury, FCO and DCMS, BBC News is telling domestic staff who won't be needed beyond March 2025. 

Tim thinks the taxpayer in general should fund World Service, to protect and even develop its journalism in areas where the Russians and Chinese are taking the lead. However, in domestic journalism, the licence fee payer can make do without local radio in the afternoons and weekends, without a Newsnight that reports as well as debates, and with a news website rich in "Well I never, some dashcam stuff..." and One Show clips. And then there's BBC Studios, funding US journalists in the USA..... Think it through, Tim. 

Dippy

Quite a dip for BBC News in the monthly figures from BARB - the channel reached 8.5m over September, compared with 10.9m in August, and down on 8.9m last September.  Sky News was down to 7.1m, from 8.7m in August and unchanged from 7.1m a year ago

GB News reached 3.2m over the month, down from 3.77m in August, and compared with 2.8m a year ago.   

To the printers

There'll be a number of BBC staff looking to change their calling cards, after the revelation that DG Tim Davie has decided to ban the use of the word 'talent'. 

Speaking to Nick Robinson on Radio 4's Today programme this morning, Tim opined “We often refer to people like yourself as ‘talent’ but I’ve kind of banned that. You’re a presenter, I’m a leader of an organization, and we’re here to serve.”

A little prowl round existing job titles reveals: 

Head of Talent Acquisition - News
Director of Talent and Skills, BBC Commissioning
Football Talent Lead
Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Talent & D&I
Senior Talent Acquisition Business Partner - Executive Search 

Senior International Talent Acquisition Advisor

And then there are whole departments: "TalentWorks is a content label within @bbcstudios aimed at identifying forward thinking talent with whom it can partner."

New fees ?

Former BBC acting chair Dame Elan Closs Stephens delivered a speech to a Prix Italia audience in Turin last week.  She's presumably reasonably in touch with BBC thinking, and this part of her talk suggests maybe it's time to raise some funds for public service broadcasting from those who profit from broadband infrastructure... 

Public service broadcasters pay a heavy price for universality - for the ability to talk to all wherever they are. That price is the necessity to ride two horses – to transmit on terrestrial transmitters in order to reach everyone and to distribute on digital platforms. Some of those digital platforms are not open to everyone either through cost or through problems of the infrastructure. But our old-fashioned transmitters reach out to society as a whole. And they are an expense.

Streamers have no such obligations. They are free to provide a digital only service. And that digital only service is an entertainment library without the heavy cost of live breaking news - a very costly undertaking born by public service broadcasters in the UK. Surely the time has come for some of the cost of our terrestrial infrastructure and even the costs of our broadband infrastructure to be shared industry wide. Let me expand. National broadcasters have always contributed to the cost of national infrastructure from terrestrial radio transmitters to digital multiplexes. The UK Government has paid substantial sums to try to reach the last 5% of digital broadband exclusion. Yet, as far as I am aware, there is no levy towards the national infrastructure from those who profit from it the most. Governments in the UK and Europe have to re-assess the ideas of a completely free market – a free market that is weighted heavily in one direction. It’s time to understand the value of our national broadcasters and to provide a level field of competition.

Exclusive

The BBC has got into a habit of keeping some of its biggest audience podcasts locked into BBC Sounds for weeks, before making them available to other platforms. The obvious ambition is to drive more people into downloading the BBC Sounds app; the figure of weekly users seems to be a Big KPI on Mr Davie's dashboard. 

Does it make sense as a long-term strategy ? Former Beeboid James Cridland patrols the global public service horizon in this post, and says, firmly, No.

I've been fumbling for some sort of analogy here. If the parallel were to be magazines, could you imagine BBC Publishing trying to set up a chain of dedicated high street shops, selling only BBC magazines, and making them available via WHSmith, Menzies and independent newsagents a month later ? 

If you're not always on the big platforms, don't you have to work much much harder at discoverability ? Well, not if you're Auntie, where peaktime advertising is free. Yet the BBC is also keen on making money from the pre-roll ads that come on other platforms.  This enormous anomaly ought to come to light in any serious review of the BBC's scope and funding. Remember, at the moment, you don't need a licence fee to listen to BBC Radio or BBC Sounds. 

The BBC has yet to align and articulate its Great Podcast Surge with underlying mission statements and values more detailed than 'reaching more people'.  The BBC's other big driver is 'reaching underserved audiences'. Ofcom's podcast survey of 2024 shows 32% of regular podcast listeners are ABC1, compared with 17% C2DE, suggesting the BBC is once again 'super-serving' an existing audience.

All change

No 'inquiry' type lawyer to lead the BBC's latest workplace culture review - instead they've lighted on a change consultant, presumably in the hope of embedding some real change that clearly didn't follow the Dame Janet Smith post-Savile Review, published in 2016. Hang on a moment - there was also the Respect At Work Review of 2013, er, with research and recommendations from Change Associates, who have been, er, appointed to lead this latest piece of chin-stroking.  

The man in charge at Change Associates is Grahame Russell, 61, who formed the company in 2010. The company website cites with Respect At Work Review with pride: "His work on the BBC's Respect at Work Review following the Savile scandal attracted positive comments from staff, unions, and the independent chair. Grahame believes in the benefits of leveraging the talents of freelance consultants and then harnessing the value of a truly connected team."

The Change Associates 2013 report is stark, e.g. "We heard from a number of people about how they fear being the one that gets picked on (and in some cases targeted) today. During interviews multiple members of staff in different parts of the BBC reported being bullied by a ‘known bully’ . These individuals create a climate of anxiety and participants described how they live in fear that it will be their turn to be verbally abused today. People used very emotive language to describe how over time this affects their ability to do their job, as they actively avoid discussion for fear of confrontation and are reluctant to challenge any decision put forward. Comments were made that in some teams, the only common bond they have is ‘the fear of the one who calls the shots.’ People also cited the fact that they were ashamed about how this made them behave – when they feel relief that it’s someone else’s turn, they keep their head down and squirm and then are full of shame at how they have just watched their
colleague take a verbal beating. Such public displays are most often conducted by senior staff, managers, programme makers or others who are sufficiently confident of their position and reputation to give such a performance. They have learned the signals of authority and power it can send. Visible behaviour such as this has, by definition, a public impact. It intensifies the pressure on the victim and acts as a warning to others."

If I were Change Associates, I'd just re-submit the 2013 report - nothing has changed in 10 years. Its recommendations were accepted by the whole Executive Board, then led by Tony Hall, and at that time including Tim Davie as CEO Worldwide, Rhodri Talfan Davies as Director of Wales, and David Jordan as Director of Editorial Policy.

• Grahame was brought up in Nottingham, went to Bilborough Sixth Form College, studied economics at Leeds, and later got an MBA from Warwick.  He joined Commercial Union as a trainee, then moved into Ford Motor Company’s finance and leasing arm; then worked as HR Director of UCB pharmaceuticals in Sutton. In 1999 he moved into Organisation and Development consulting, and eventually joined KPMG. As well as Change, Grahame also set up a technology consulting firm called Preos. He lives in East Grinstead, and is currently Chair of the East Grinstead Business Association. 

Not really live

The decision to take Question Time to the United States was an odd-one for an apparently cash-strapped organisation. Fiona Bruce revelled in it, and told us so in The Spectator. It looks like they recorded an hour and a half, then cut it back to an hour. In the puffs for the programme, this clearly taped programme was streamed 'live'; I think I'd have preferred the publicists to stick at streamed

"Audiences in the U.S. can access the BBC News channel on cable TV, as a livestream on the newly relaunched BBC.com and BBC app, and as a live 24-7 stream on major FAST platforms, including Pluto TV, Samsung TV Plus, Xumo Play, VIZIO WatchFree+, Sling Freestream and Plex. Question Time US election special will also be available to watch for subscribers of Britbox in North America and other territories. The programme will be available to watch live on the BBC North America news pages."

I've scoured social media for punter reviews...

 

@BBCOne did a Horrific “Question Time” in Philadelphia, moderator had no control. Maybe BBCOne should mind their own Political scene. Asshats!

— Don Cubler (@DCubler) October 10, 2024

She's got the formula

The BBC's Chief Customer Officer Kerris Bright has her feet under the table, and explains, in this podcast, how she's got the commissioners of content to focus on light users of the BBC. Explains why we're not getting a new Shakespeare cycle, losing drama on Radio 3, and face endless antiques and quiz shows; a formula for dumbing down.

Money saving expert ?

Did Keir and Sue really plan out the first twelve months ?  Anyone beginning to feel that expectations-about-The-Budget are being managed ?  Talk of a 'two-stage' defence review emerges this week; today, a longer review of shorter prison sentences; both with a blurring consequence for five-year capital spending.   "Invest, invest, invest" shouts Rachel. "How much, how much, how much ?" and "Where from, etc" we politely murmur.

"Watch live" ?

Without being over-ghoulish, I was looking forward to BBC News coverage of Hurricane Milton overnight, with at least 60 staff now working across the United States. When I hit the 'watch live' button on the News website at 2.30am this morning, I got, without time-stamp, bits of Newsnight, and the Merlyn Thomas misinformation package from the 10. 

Elsewhere, I learned Milton had lost speed at landfall near Siesta Key; that preceding tornados, spinning off from the main vortex, had done real damage to a residential park near St Lucie, with hundreds of police, firemen and others searching crumpled buildings before Milton arrived. 

This re-running of old stuff is unhelpful; just after 9am we got an overnight wrap package made in London, which still talked about 1m cut off from electricity, and others waiting for Milton. At that time, the electricity was lost to 2.6m - and Milton was heading out to sea across the Atlantic. 

Transparency ?