D listed

BBC Entertainment have unveiled their contribution to the current savings target - by axing Blankety Blank, Live at the Apollo and Celebrity Mastermind.  The logic must be that they can be replaced in schedules by something cheaper, or perhaps just more repeats. 

Another driver might be the risk of a report to some sort of media Trading Standards body for misuse of 'celebrity'.   This was the cast list for the 2025/6 series. Clive has already recorded the 2026/7 series - will it be any better ? 

Maryam Moshiri
Chesney Hawkes
Desiree Burch
Danny Robins

Sally Ann Matthews
Yinka Bokinni
Felicity Ward
Michael Bradley

Gareth Malone
Gamba Cole
Yewande Biala
Lucy Beaumont

Will Best
Laura Smyth
Nikita Kuzmin
Jayne Wisener
Matt Edmondson
Sonnaz Nooranvary
Lewis Goodall

Dean Franklin
Chloe Petts
Ashley John-Baptiste
Robyn Cowen

Iwan Thomas
Sophie Aldred
Mobeen Azhar
Ashley James

Tia Kofi
Lauren Patel
Josh Jones
Izzie Balmer

Charlotte Hawkins
Stephen Bailey
Ekow Quartey
Belles Berry

Colson Smith
Nadia Jae
Grace Campbell
Joel M

Alexander Dragonetti
Janine Harouni
Laura Davies
Greg McHugh

JB Gill
Susie McCabe
Lucy Shepherd
Richie Anderson 

James Cracknell
Jen Brister
Craig Rowe
Bradley Riches

Stuart Pearce
Gemma Cairney
Axel Blake
Phil Dunning

The cancellation is also a loss to out-of-London, with all episodes recorded in Belfast.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Craig Rowe (@craigrowetv)

Not quite global

A tweet from the BBC's Ione Wells (St Pauls, Marlborough and Keble, Oxford) "Some news: I’m moving to Washington this autumn to become a BBC North America Correspondent.

I’ll have been the BBC’s last South America correspondent as my post is closing in the cuts."

This is where I just don't get the BBC's Global Strategy.  Can you zoom to the top in the USA's news providers without a correspondent in South America ?  I thought that Hispanics and Latinos made up 1 in 5 of the US population. Do leaders like Jonathan Munro and Richard Burgess actually believe South America is unimportant ?

 

Capital days

5Live seems to have found a reasonably elegant way of shuffing presenters, with Rachel Burden effectively swapping with Naga Munchetty at the end of this year. I have a suspicion that there's some money-saving ahead, with Naga being lined up with a slightly less expensive male host than Rick Edwards. 

And the move is less Salford-positive than Andy Burnham or Lisa Nandy might like. Naga will be allowed to stay in London for two of her five days a week. So that's Naga, Nicky Campbell and Matt Chorley all with London dispensations. 

Consultants

From a Freedom of Information enquiry to the BBC:

Please provide the name of every external consultancy or advisory firm paid more than £50,000 in the financial year 2024–25 for work unrelated to broadcast production or technology infrastructure, and state the total amount paid to each.

By way of context, please note the BBC has traditionally used consultancies on an ad hoc basis when external expertise and experience are required for specific projects. However, in April 2026 the BBC announced the introduction of immediate cost control measures across the corporation, including cutting management consultancy spend, as part of savings required over the next three years. 

Playground stuff

I really hope the next Director of BBC News has a different view on the use of the word 'exclusive'. It arrived with Munro/Turness/McAndrew, and today has been liberally applied to Laura Kuenssberg's interview with Andy Burnham. Perish the thought that a new Prime Minister might grant an early interview to a national broadcaster without much rugged application of dogged journalism. Of course, we as licence payers are being excluded from hearing the full interview until 6.00am Monday on iPlayer, whilst the newsgathering controllers graciously drop clips here and there. 

Maybe we can 'Verify' just how 'exclusive' it is....

EXCLUSIVE: Prime Minister @andyburnham speaks to the Manchester Evening News following historic first day at Number 10 North https://t.co/om6LGhguxt

— Manchester News MEN (@MENnewsdesk) July 25, 2026

Karma ?

The BBC has shown pretty much wall-to-wall live coverage of every Commonwealth Games hosted in the UK since 1970.  Until now. 

Back in December, the BBC said it was 'unable to match' the bid from TNT Sports to cover the shortened Glasgow games. TNT Sports said it would show more than 600 hours of live coverage in a "re-imagining" of the games, featuring ten sports and six para sports.  So TNT Sports 2 is 'live' from 8:30am to 10:30pm, and the Games are also streaming on HBO Max.  

In May it was announced that Channel 5 had won the competitive tender to run the daily highlights show  at 10:30pm.  'Live coverage' is also available on BBC Alba every evening from 5.30pm. And there's around two hours each evening on S4C. 

Some viewers complained that the entry of the athletes in last night's opening ceremony coverage on 5 was interrupted by a large wodge of adverts; presumably BBC Studios weren't able to copyright the police phone box that delivered King 'Dr' Charles to the OVO stadium.  The ceremony averaged 800k viewers on Channel 5, plus another 50k on TNTSports2; no figures ever seem to come out for BBC Alba. 

In July 2022, the opening ceremony in Birmingham, featuring Duran Duran, Tony Iommi and a 10m tall mechanised bull, was watched by an average of 4.6m across three and a half hours. 

iPlayer behaviours

Some interesting factoids from Jake Kanter in Deadline, who seems to have got hold of a transcript of the latest session between BBC executives and staff. 

It features the thoughts of Chief Customer Officer, Kerris Bright, normally out of the spotlight, but recently claiming some part in the recent Romesh Raganathan 'humble-brag' promo. 

She says, of compelling licence payers to input real details to unlock iPlayer “The vast majority of evasion is not on iPlayer. The vast majority of people that are watching iPlayer are people that are paying their TV license, and so to put a gate in front of iPlayer, the data today says that you actually would make it a very difficult experience for people that are paying for the license.”

“As we go into the future, more of an IPTV world, audiences changing behavior, new ways of creating experiences that maybe aren’t so full of friction for audiences … that might absolutely be an opportunity for us, depending on the funding model."

So are the evaders on old-fashioned Freeview ?

Online assistance

A valued reader has spotted a change to one of the BBC's 'Sign In' screens - the offer to 'continue with Google' seems to have arrived not long after the acquisition of a new DG..... 

What price reputation ?

Magistrate Judge Enjolique Lett is powering ahead in Trump v BBC. The President's lawyers tried to have her removed from the case, because her past role in another one of his lawsuits "creates an appearance of impropriety."  She considered - and decided not to recuse herself. 

Yesterday at a hearing about 'discovery' of documents sought by both sides, she granted a motion by the BBC's legal team to compel the release of financial records held by the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust, which he created to manage his businesses while he is President.  “All of President Trump’s brand, properties and businesses are impugned or said to have been impugned. Reputational, economic damages, all of that is now at issue in this case”, she said. 

Donald's lawyer, however, is already trying to shift the goalposts away from 'money', saying his position has 'evolved' into seeking recompense simply for the damage to his 'reputation'.   The deadline for all documents is October 20th. 

Still at it

Sir Robbie Gibb still can't tell the difference between being a BBC executive and a BBC Non-Executive Director.  He chairs the England sub-committee of the BBC Board, and from the minutes of their latest meeting, he's pretty much sure he's in charge of business.