How news works

The London Evening Standard (Editor: George Osborne) makes front page space for news of a £50k donation to the paper's homeless charity from Deliveroo.

Deliveroo's VP of Global Comms and Policy is former Newsnight producer and Osborne personal stylist, Thea Rogers. 

Collector

C'est M Farage ce soir sur le plancher de M Neil.

Will Andrew make an on-air entreaty to the Prime Minister so that he can get his full complement of stickers for GE 2019?

Yes, I helped

The BBC's festive content-lite festive trailer #XmasLife seems to have required an enormous number of people to deliver, with credits longer than a movie. Did they really all do something ?

Credits
BBC Creative

Justin Bairamian, Director of BBC Creative
Helen Rhodes, Executive Creative Director
Michael Tsim, Creative
Rachel Miles, Creative
James Wood, Head of Production
Liz Dolan, Producer
Dan Robinson, Production Manager
Georgie Williams, Production Co-ordinator
John Trevor, Project Manager
Michael Lean, Head of Planning
Jenny Double, Senior Planner
Ashley Temple, Creative Director, Digital & Innovation
Laurence Honderick, Head of Design
Luke Carpenter, Design
Will Jarvis, Design
Janina Petrylaite, Design
Molly Davies, Design
Craig Dolan, Design
Andrea Stragapede, Design
Pedro Ramos, Design
George Fletcher, Design
Imroz Brar, Design
Peter Baynton, Design
James Nolan, Design
Alex Griggs, Design
Ed Linfoot, Design
Jamie Jones, Design
Paul Ruska, Design
Alex Dray, Design
Carlos Faria, Design
Teddy Hall, Design
Josceline Fention, Design
Kevin O’shea, Design

BBC Marketing & Audiences
Kerris Bright, Chief Customer Officer
Sarah Fuller, Director, Marketing & Audiences
Chris Hooper, Head of Marketing
Rhion Leadbitter, Marketing Manager
Alice Gleeson, Marketing Executive
Jemima Lobb, New Talent Apprentice
Richard Lally, Social Media Manager
Andrea Taylor, Media Portfolio Lead
Toni Gregory, Media Scheduler
Oscar Evans, Assistant Media Scheduler

Production Company: Iconoclast

Ernest Desumblia, Director
Anna Smith Tenser & Guy Rolfe, Executive Producers
Jane Lloyd, Producer
Benji Edwards, 1st Assistant Director
Ben Todd, Director Of Photography
Buki Ebiesuwa, Costume Designer
Zoe Koperski, Production Designer
Hannah Birkett, Casting Director
Post Production: Savage

Daniela Borges, Post Producer

Music: Native Music (Dan Neal)

Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc., Original Song
Some Voices, Choir

All talk

Is anything going on at TalkRadio ?  Afternoon presenter Matthew Wright clearly thought his contract, running til this month, was not to be renewed, but arrived at work yesterday to be rewarded with a new deal.

Is it to be rebranded Times Radio ?  We now know that Renaissance Media Man and Times Literary Supplement Editor Stig Abell is conducting a review. The programme editor of TalkRadio is Dennie Morris.

Happy birthday @EamonnHolmes! pic.twitter.com/OXrAP1RbMZ

— Dennie Morris (@DennieMorris) December 3, 2019

Musicality

The BBC has problems attracting 16-34 year-olds to its TV channels. Seeing in the New Year on BBC1

Craig David, 38

and on BBC2

Melanie, 72

Pauline Black, 66

Ruby Turner, 61

Jools Holland, 61

Eddi Reader, 60

Rick Astley, 53

Kelly Jones, 45

La Roux, 37

Yolanda Brown, 37

Brittany Howard, 31

Portland, 31, 27, 27

Tom Walker, 28

Stormzy, 26

Fran-tic

BBC News boss Fran Unsworth appeals to the The Prime Minister in The Guardian today, rather than via the usual channels.

"We’re as disappointed as our audiences that the prime minister, unlike all his fellow leaders, has not yet confirmed a date for his Andrew Neil interview. The logistics of pinning down party leaders is highly complex; if we had to wait for confirmation of the date and time of every interview by every party before anyone appeared anywhere, hardly anything would get on air. But let’s be clear: we’ll clear our schedules and we’re ready at any time, and any place, for a half-hour interview in which Neil scrutinises Boris Johnson."

Question Time

The Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, Roger Mosey has gone early with his by-now-recorded appearance as an Oxford alumnus in the traditional festive run of All Grown-Up University Challenge. (Readers, the score shown is before they faced questions.)

Don't tell anyone in Cambridge. But this could be one of the Christmas comedy highlights... #UniversityChallenge pic.twitter.com/Y0V51BMlbS

— Roger Mosey (@rogermosey) December 3, 2019

There's a very BBC feel to this Wadham squad. Mr Mosey made it to Editorial Director; Mr Freedland was once a Today reporter, and currently presents The Long Game on Radio 4; Anne McElvoy is hardly ever off Radio 4 for long, and would like to run the BBC; Professor Tom Solomon has been on Woman's Hour and Great Lives, and would like to do more through his agents, Knight Ayton. 

They are a-changing

Change is in the air for TalkRadio, one of Rebekah Brooks' newest playthings. She paid £220m in June 2016 to acquire The Wireless Group, but there's still little sign of a return on that investment; weekly reach at TalkRadio has edged up from around 300k to 400k; Virgin Radio shot up to 1.3m with the arrival of Chris Evans, but seems stuck at that level. 

Matthew Wright, formerly of Channel 5, won't be part of Talk Radio's schedule in the New Year. Insiders say the station is about to be rebranded as Times Radio. Perhaps this means the Radio-2-without-records feel is on the way out, with half an eye on the US appetite for more serious podcasts.

Will Rebekah want someone more cerebral than Eamonn Holmes ?

Brinkmanship

Just gone 11 of the clock, and no billing details for tonight's Andrew Neil Interview, still sitting in the BBC1 schedules at 7pm.

Will we get 40 minutes of Farage? It's preceded by a Brexit Party PEB. 

Return of the Mac

Many who tuned in for last night's Panorama will be unfamiliar with the work of chubby, lugubrious reporter, Darragh MacIntyre. No relation to the smaller, chubby, comedian Michael, nor a distant cousin of Kim Bodnia, who plays Villanelle's minder, he is in fact the older brother of former BBC News pin-up boy Donal.

Darragh, from County Kildare, graduated in history and politics at University College Dublin. He worked as a reporter in New York, London and Belfast, and then as the Ireland producer for BBC national news. After a career break in north-west Donegal, Darragh returned to Northern Ireland - and broadcasting - in 2002. He's been ploughing away on Spotlight, the Northern Ireland current affairs show ever since.

Last night he was well supported by a large production team, perhaps spending a little of the likely overseas sales in advance. He made the most of a rainy Florida, bought-in night time shots of New York, and dark London mews streets, with odd close-ups of door handles.  Very noir.

Many, however, would have played the email from Prince Andrew to Ghislaine Maxwell, asking about Virginia Roberts, higher in the narrative.