Oranges are not the only....

Many people have enjoyed, and are still enjoying the Tangerinegate hoax - a made-up tale of Gordon Brown chucking said fruit into an industrial-scale laminator in anger during a works visit. Comedian/actor Robert Popper, posing as a shocked employee, made the call to LBC, where the eager phone-in host was Andrew Pierce. He must have been more suspicious than he sounds on the audio - the story made it into the Telegraph, Andrew's former paper, but not The Daily Mail, his current main employer.







The FT blogged about it, but have since admitted they were hoaxed.

Women

There's a mini-brou-ha-ha over at Iain Dale's blog, on the decision to have an all-women audience (not panel) for Question Time on March 11 - the week of International Women's Day.

I understand Sky News is considering an all-female presentation line-up for the day itself - Monday March 8, and wonder if the same sort of intellectual debate will follow....

Who'll really put quality first ?

If "Putting Quality First" is a public consultation exercise by the BBC, there has to be some room for manouevre in it; some genuine options that licence payers can influence. But, in the end, the licence fee in 2013 will be set by politicians - and may be less than it is now, not just frozen as the document assumes.

Ed Vaizey, shadow culture minister, is reported to have described proposals to close 6Music and the Asian Network, and cut back the BBC website as "intelligent and sensible". However, in the past, his preferred headline-grabber has been to auction off Radio 1, which he believes would raise £100m - not an option put forward by the BBC. Meanwhile, a reminder that politics in this feverish time has an occasional pork-barrel feel - the top item in Mr Vaizey's blog, in an election run-up, is still his campaign to re-open Wantage Road Station.

A hurried public debate in the middle of a General Election campaign is not the way to reshape one of this country's most valuable and prized assets - and I don't mean a railway station.

Quick quick...

"I was born with two left feet and no sense of rhythm, so the idea that I'd become one of Britain's 'Dance Champions' would be on the extreme end of improbability. But it's happened, and this week I was among the delegates at a Dance Summit in the City of London alongside the likes of Arlene Phillips, Lisa Snowdon, Angela Rippon and Mark Foster"

More shapes and moves from the BBC's Roger Mosey on his blog.

Name dropping

Twitter accounts believed to have been phished so far...

Harriet Harman (MP)
Ed Miliband (MP)

Nick Higham (BBC)
Pods and Blogs (5Live programme)

Matt Wells (The Guardian)
Cory Doctorow (new media guru)

Intel UK
The Press Complaints Commission

Programme error

Something odd happened in The Guardian's summary of the NAO report on BBC building projects - I think there's a typo in here somewhere... or maybe not.

"The BBC said the Pacific Quays development allowed it to "meet its strong commitment to investing in, and commissioning more problems from Scotland"

Hat-tip to Tim.

Now trending

A day to watch the BBC and #save6music race up the trend charts on Twitter.

The Times says the forthcoming BBC strategic review prepared by Mark Thompson will shut 6Music and the Asian Network, cut spending on US programming by a quarter, cut website spending and staffing by a quarter, close youth services like BBC Switch and Blast!, and cap spending on broadcast rights for sports events of 8.5 per cent of the licence fee, or about £300 million. It's all based on an assumption that the licence fee will be frozen in 2013 - probably a good bet, whatever party's in power.

The timing is interesting - there's a certain amount of redistribution of funds in the plan reported by The Times, toward "quality" tv programming. So it may be that there are options to be considered by the BBC Trust, and a leak leading to a firestorm may be useful to various parties.

Richard Bacon, presenter on 5Live and 6Music, has 1,325,397 followers on Twitter and is urging them to include #save6music in everything they write. Here's one of his overnight Tweets "Here's my strongest and final comment of the night: proposing the closure of 6music is naive and confuses the very proposition of the BBC". Phil Jupitus has 61,754 followers - his last tweet, at 0034, reads "drinking tequila...#save6music". More knowingly, an earlier post said he thought a final decision on 6Music was not for a couple of weeks.

At time of writing 0930 Friday, #save6music is at number 5 in this site's calculation of trends

Matched, not made

The spaces where Britain's architects used to display and discuss their drawings, detailed models, schemes successful and unsuccessful, seem to be making way for trousseaus and confetti. Building Design reports that Rob Wilson, exhibitions curator at the Royal Institute of British Architects is taking redundancy, as is talks curator Tamara Horbacka.

RIBA's headquarters, at the top of Portland Place, are now a "venue", licensed for weddings, with a deputy venue manager in Lisa Lightfoot.

Regional paywalls - addendum

Add: Overall Johnston Press tops the league of regional newspaper websites in the UK - latest figures, for the last six months of 2009 show its various components (including the Northumberland Gazette) attracting 6.9m unique users a month - up 11.6 per cent.

Regional paywalls

No news yet (that I can find) from the Johnston Press on its three-month paywall experiment with a handful of weeklies, including the Northumberland Gazette. Circulation of hard copies for the Gazette stood at 9917 for the six months reported in August last year; in the latest figures, issued today, the Gazette isn't listed in the top 300 - where the lowest circulation figure quoted is 5959. Let's hope 4,000 readers or more have decided to subscribe online.

Stats via Press Gazette.

Admitting error

The full BBC Trust report on Panorama's programme "What next for Craig ?" is a chilling tale of process, with an bleak end result - the journalism was flawed.

Three years of to-ing and fro-ing, and two long investigations - by the internal Editorial Complaints Unit, (which found the complaint was justified, but clearly wasn't going to do as much as the terrier-like challenger wanted) and the Trust's Editorial Standards Committee (which itself seemed to wobble before it got down to business). There will apparently be a follow-up report on why the whole thing took so long...

Insufficient Diana stories

How Do, media site for the North West, says Express Newspapers are to close their dwindling operation in Manchester, and leave only one journalist in the North of England - somewhere in Yorkshire.

On the A3 near Hurtmore this morning

TV gongs

Sky News will be pleased with the RTS news awards, handed out at The Hilton late into last night. News Channel of the Year, awards for Alex Crawford as TV Journalist of the Year, and Stuart Ramsay for work in Pakistan, and an innovation award for their interactive site for tributes to British soldiers.

Panorama (in the bad books of the BBC Trust) won for "What Happened to Baby P ?), and for work by Paul Kenyon and Tamanna Rahman. Channel 4 got a gong for coverage of G20 policing. And the BBC picked up News Programme of the Year for the Ten O'Clock News.

Conversation topics

The Daily Telegraph has found that Andrew Rawnsley entertained Jeremy Heywood, top civil servant at Number 1o, to a meal on 17th September 2009. If the claim date is the right date, then dinner might have been on, because the boss, Gordon Brown, was off on the Eurostar to an EU leaders meeting in Brussels.

Topics in the news that week ? Journalists trying to make Gordon Brown say the word "cuts" in relation to Labour. Topics in the air ? The blogosphere was bouncing round with suggestions that Gordon was on medication, and the rumours of tantrums were on the boil. Mervyn King wasn't, probably, making things easier, by saying he wasn't sure quantitative easing was working.

Fast track civil servant Jeremy Heywood, now in his late forties, worked under Chancellors Ken Clarke, Norman Lamont and Gordon Brown. He became Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1999 , and was described as as 'indispensable'. Then he got a taste of the private sector as a managing director at Morgan Stanley, but was persuaded into the Cabinet Office in 2007 by Gordon Brown, who picked him again as Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister in 2008. (Here's a little insight into the basic workings of Jeremy's world from last year. )

It would be interesting to know how today's early morning catch-up with the Prime Minister went....

Where the London Plane meets the Bald Cypress

If sometimes you think British architects can get a little flowery with their prose, try the Yanks.

"As a pure geometry, the cubic form is an ancient signifier of solidity, strength and permanence, all qualities of our democracy

Its surface is given form through the interface between a faceted external solar shading and collection system and the blast resistant glazing.

This crystal-like ethylene-tetrafluroethylene (ETFE) scrim has been optimized to shade interiors from east, west and south sun while admitting daylight and framing large open view portals to the outside. Its pattern visually fragments the façade while it intercepts unwanted solar gain and transforms it into energy by means of thin film photovoltaics positioned in the ETFE foils. The design of this scrim works vertically, horizontally and diagonally to eliminate directionality from the building's massing. The scrim also renders the largely transparent façades visible to migratory birds to discourage bird-strikes".

Yes, it's a square building. There's plenty more from Kieran Timberlake Architects here, celebrating their win in the design competition for a new US Embassy at Nine Elms.

I went to a marvellous party

Not with Nounou and Nada and Nell, but Henry Kelly, Tony Hall and Heather Osborne. As a celebration of the life of Alastair Osborne, the Grade II-listed Council Chamber at Broadcasting House was renamed "The Osborne" for the night. Nearly a hundred top-quality friends and family were gathered, and entertained by memories of a top-quality bloke.

Hey nonny nonny

No Ofcom rules on product placement, sponsorship etc in the world of blogging (yet ?), so here's a shameless plug for No 1 daughter - a singer.

She was part of the English Voices contribution to this first recording of some 1950's works by Ralph Vaughan Williams - taking some of the very few solo lines. So this review ("The solo parts are astonishingly accomplished") is very welcome.

Try before you buy - it won't be to everyone's taste, having been written for Women's Insitute choirs !

I mean...

Excellent piece in Wired about how the Google search algorithms were, and are being, developed; it also explains neatly how Bing is trying to be different.

Author Steven Levy talks Google "fellow", Amit Singhal about the key issue - meaning

A rock is a rock. It’s also a stone, and it could be a boulder. Spell it “rokc” and it’s still a rock. But put “little” in front of it and it’s the capital of Arkansas. Which is not an ark. Unless Noah is around. “The holy grail of search is to understand what the user wants,” Singhal says. “Then you are not matching words; you are actually trying to match meaning.”

Dignity

Ashley Cole's relationships with women may not be a problem for Chelsea FC, but mess with a serious PR professional, and he's in trouble. (The Times)

Steve Atkins joined Chelsea in 2008 as Head of Media, from his role as Deputy Press Secretary at the British Embassy in Washington. There he was fielding questions on Iraq detainees, Afghanistan, the Royal Family, Tony Blair - and made regular appearances on American networks. At Stamford Bridge, Steve is making it clear he wrote to advise an American friend of Ashley's on how to deal with the press on the understanding that their relationship was platonic. Now this has been exposed as a fib, a fine for lying to the management seems to be on the way.

Will there be other offences to be taken into account ? Is the club's reputation more or less important than Steve Atkins' ? Is Steve on the right wavelength for this job ?

Forewarned

The drama, the tension, the secrets of the envelope. If, last night in the Royal Opera House, you had something discreet tuned to the Radio 4 Ten O'Clock bulletin, you could have nudged the big winners very knowingly...

Hat-tip to Clive.

Method acting

Former colleague John Dee - who championed good and innovative office design at the BBC - has got a bit peeved with the posturing of Auntie's on-screen newsreaders and reporters. I commend his doctorate level analysis of their mannerisms. The only one he's missed is the simple "Mambo" position. One hand across stomach, the other arm extended to the side, palm forward. Used for pointless emphasis, or "Look, this is easy, I'm clever - and you're stupid".

Trust house

The Sunday Times warms us up for a week of BBC building news, with an account of money spent on new accommodation for the BBC Trust in Great Portland Street. The main complaint of the Thunderer seems to be "How dare they sign an eight year lease when the Trust is going to be closed down ?"

I'm no expert, but the rental, at around £275,000 a year seems reasonable value for the size in central London. And I suspect somebody else might rent it if the Trust's 60-odd staff were shown the door by a Conservative government.

Deed poll

Telling footnote at the end of a press release this week from the London Olympics team:

Note to Editors:

1. The North Greenwich Arena is known to the public as the 02. At Games-time and for all Games-related matters, it will be referred to as the North Greenwich Arena. This is to accommodate the International Olympic Committee’s clean venues policy and LOCOG’s partnership agreement with BT.

This is unpleasant news for O2; great news for sign makers; and clearly ends confusion with the non-existent South Greenwich Area during the London Olympics. Hat-tip to norock on Twitter.

What to expect...

Observer relaunch mash-up.

Attraction ?

I've never wanted to go to Bluewater, and I'm not sure the new events and exhibition centre announced by owners Lend Lease will make much difference. It should be ready in 2011.

It's planned to cover 55,000 sq ft - but 43,000 of that will be given over to catering. Property Week notes "it'll be smaller than the likes of Excel". Yep, that'll be right. Architects are Denton Corker Marshall.

Pulse taking

Yougov and The Sun have teamed up to provide regular "state of the parties" polls four days a week from now on, promising seven days a week in the final month before a General Election. It would surprise me if some broadcast news organisation didn't try a real-time running poll online during the campaign, as Sky News did taking the temperature in leader's speeches at the party conferences.

Friday music -19 Feburary 2010

John Mayer with his song "Gravity" at Crossroads 2007 in Chicago (highlights of the whole festival rotating on Sky Arts).

Less comment

No clues as to the prices paid, but Talksport has clearly outbid BBC for some Premier League commentaries from next season. No longer a rush for Sports Report at 1700 on Saturdays - the 1730 commentary's on the commercial opposition. And Controller Adrian Van Klaveren will have to find more to fill those long Sundays, with Talksport winning the 1.30pm kick-offs. In all the BBC's lost around a third of its previously held live commentaries.

Still, goal flashes and reports are still ok - and after all, Sky Sports News passes a pleasant Saturday afternoon with neither live tv pictures or "live" commentary. So maybe all is not lost..

Identity crisis

In a bizarre post, the people at MediaCity UK (part of the Peel Group, who are expert at everything) are asking readers help them create a "brand" for the development. Pardon ?

Neighbours, please

Aaargh - after the recession empties the office to the south of our house, another company moves on - and the studio/offices to the north are now available to let. To nice, quiet, friendly, post-taking tenants please. More details at Drivers & Norris.

News on small Apple

There's a nice Flash demo of how the BBC News iPhone app ought to work here -two pars down. Neat ideas, its own look and feel, video properly at the top (not yet constrained by the design police I mentioned yesterday).

However I will be surprised if it's as responsive in real life as the demo... We'll have to wait til April.

Time out

Stats from the US say Facebook has now overtaken Yahoo in terms of number of unique visitors per month, at 133.6 million - a million and a half ahead of Yahoo.

But the story (for US advertisers) starts a year ago, when Facebook edged ahead of both Google and Yahoo in terms of monthly "attention" (time spent on Facebook.com as a percentage of all time spent online each month). In the graph below, Facebook is the blue line. All from Compete.

Age range

If you're Mark Thomspon, you wait ages for an older woman, then two come along at once. Fiona Armstrong and Julia Somerville started this week on the BBC's News Channel, mornings and afternoons. No suggestion that the younger mums may have taken half-term off.

Julia was welcomed back by the now-traditional News Channel greeting of spelling your name wrong. This from just after 3pm on Monday.

Digital clanking

When you hear all those clanking cowbells as Olympic ski-ers swerve to a halt at the end of their donwhill/slalom/jump etc, it's possible that the posh people in the watching crowd may not actually have real bells. They may be just shaking their iPhones, with a 99cent app called Cowbell2010. More than 12,000 downloards already. From the WSJ.

Look and feel

"We've developed a highlight colour palette for non-branded areas of the site, or areas where the BBC masterbrand talks directly to the audience (eg the BBC homepage, search, some of our genre areas). Each colour has a tonal range to be used in contrast or in unison with each other".

Hope it makes Birtspeak. The BBC never moves fast once it has decided something's a "design issue". Since Autumn last year it has been working on a new overarching set of design rules for all its websites - and now, they are, apparently, close to rolling out. And while contending sites have been through two or three makeovers in the same time, and got moving pictures into pole position in their offerings, below is the new look for a "news story".




















Wow. Exits, pulse racing, to buy an iPad...

For full details of the process and outcome read this post by Bronwyn van der Merwe, Head of Design and User Experience, Central Team, BBC FM&T, who's pretty convinced it's money well spent. " To me, this new visual language is exciting and refreshing. It feels timeless, yet very of the moment. I hope you agree".

Wiped out

Charlie Brooker's Newswipe will be on many newsroom computer screens this morning. The last completely new episode of the current series focussed on "going live". A number of BBC, ITN and Sky correspondents and reporters feature in pointless preview clips, but the real derision should be saved for the planning teams that set up these sequences; the on-air editors who cut to empty podiums as if they hadn't got a preview screen; and the editors at the top of these organisations (with a capital "E") who seem oblivious to how daft it all looks.

Thistle ? I dream of Thistles....

The Northern Echo suggests Mark Thompson ought to have considered a Travelodge room.

In the detail

A post on the excellent Skyscraper City suggests there's havering at MediaCityUK over the content that might be available on the giant screen that is part of the development's planning application - and the best technology to make it work. Big screens, and the crowds they occasionally attract, have been become a bigger and bigger issue for the BBC and local councils over recent years.

The image in this artist's impression also suggests something that will work well in daylight - and that's hard to achieve in the thin and delicate way the drawing suggests.

Content about content

Richard Sambrook (disclosure: a former boss of mine at the BBC) is joining international (51 offices around the world) PR (public relations, not proportional representation) giant (3,200 staff) Edelman, the trading name of a private company, Daniel J Edelman Incorporated.

He's going to be (a ?) global vice-chairman, a member of the executive board and the company's first head of content. Richard puts his take on what he'll be doing, and why here. Edelman offer a "traditional" press release here, but of course, we live in a new media world - and Richard runs through his job interview later in this video.

Two's Company

The BBC Trust review of BBC Radio 2's current performance sets challenges for Controller Bob Shennan. He's required to be more ambitious (=less popular, = more speech) in daytime, and not let the average age of his audience fall below 50.

That's good news for those evening shows beloved of the over 65s - Big Band Special, The Organist Entertains, Friday Night is Music Night, Listen to the Band, Alan Titchmarsh, Melodies for You, The David Jacobs Collection - and maybe even Russell Davies. And less good news for a Controller with a preference (at least at 5Live) for bringing in younger showbiz names. Who also might find that his newest daytime presenter, Chris Evans, attracts a younger audience.

And he's also warned to do it all more efficiently. (=cheaper.)

Vows

Family values and marriage vows are in the air more than usual, with Valentine's Day and an election year. So opportunist radio presenter and "prankster" Steve Penk has found a church prepared to ordain him, and very soon, I'm afraid, there'll be a live on-air marriage. From Radio Today.

Pay GPS

The Sunday Telegraph's enquiry about BBC salaries over £100,000 will start some furtive conversations at Auntie next week. 275 unnamed people are on the list (in additional to the 107 named big cheeses whose pay packages the BBC now regularly declares) They are listed by division, and if you were playing percentages, Vision is the one you'd join for money, with around a third of the posts. There are also an astonishing number of Controllers, not just in Vision - a job title more regularly associated by the public with Thomas The Tank Engine.

And, I'm sure, there's the odd individual one that can now be tracked down by a more specific title, with insider knowledge. Which will be the conversation starter.

Felicitous names for felines

The rather bouncy Sally Bercow, Mrs Speaker, has set up a Twitter poll to decide the name of the new family cat. It's not a free vote - you can only choose between Betty, Hansard, Harriet, Order or Tweetie.

Ideally all names of cats should make the owners sound daft when they try to call them in - so I'm rather pleased that Order is (Saturday 1630) in the lead, with the poll closing tomorrow.

We currently have two cats, and Mrs Rogers only sounds daft when she has to call them both in. Bebop and Lula.

Gong results

So only one gong for Peel as Developer/Investor of the Year at the North West Property Week Awards. Development of the Year went to Liverpool One, Phase 2, not MediaCity; and Occupier of the Year was The Co-operative Group, not the BBC.

Friday music - 12 February 2010

Maze featuring Frankie Beverly.

Get with the project

Peter Horrocks' exhortation to BBC journalists to (I paraphrase) embrace the opportunities of social media, enjoy it, or leave, is bouncing around meejah blogs, tweets and more. One commenter on the thread in The Guardian is reminded of a pithier change mantra in BBC News' past, accredited to Chris Cramer. Scroll down to Headitorial.

Reward

Doodling with maths - and I'm not sure it means much - I discover that the total remuneration the BBC currently gives to ex-Microsoft big cheeses (technology boss Erik Huggers, his deputy John Linwood and marketing supremo Sharon Baylay) is £831,800. Not far from the £834,000 total package 0f Mark Thompson.

Plant food

More "evidence" that the flourishing flowers of new media production at the BBC will be less well fed in the years ahead. The Guardian reports Jana Bennett apparently softening the blow for staff in BBC Vision.

Grape nuts

Some oenophiles I know will be pleased. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the 2009 pinot noir crop in California was a record for the state, up nearly 50% on the previous year. But will it be any good ?

Olympic timings

It may take only nine minutes to get from King's Cross to Stratford in 2012 - but it looks like it'll take time to get beyond that, if the Winter Olympics in Vancouver are any guide. The Seattle Times reports that 15,000 people are providing security.

"People going to an Olympic event are advised to prepare as they would to board a flight. Banned items include weapons, spray cans, air horns, pepper spray, glass containers and food and beverage purchased outside the venue.

The Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) advises spectators to arrive early. City venues will open two hours before events, and mountain venues will open three hours before events.

Spectators will walk through metal detectors and everything they carry will be subject to X-ray screening. If you want to move through security checkpoints more rapidly, carry as little as possible.

In its "Know before you go" guide, VANOC says spectators who carry no bag, or with a small bag (up to 6 inches by 6 inches by 12 inches) will move through an express line, while those with larger bags will go through the standard line".

Gongs galore

Tomorrow sees the handing out of Property Week's Northwest 2010 awards. Candidates for Occupier of the Year include the BBC - technically, I don't think they've occupied anything yet apart from their existing space in Oxford Road. Development of the Year includes a nomination for MediaCityUK, and developer/investor of the year could be Peel Media. Let's see.

High pressure

Design Week reports that the Met Office has completed appointments of a new roster of firms on its design and creative services framework. The contracts run for three years. Still no sign of where we are in tender process for the BBC weather contract, where the Met Office is thought to be up against the New Zealand-based company Metra. April is getting closer...

Trends

The BBC's top management expenses for July, August and September went up by 8%. The spin, at least to the Guardian, was that the quarter saw increased spending on flights, because of the Los Angeles' screenings. (If the forthcoming strategic, sorry, creative review does, as has been suggested, cut the £100m spent on American programming, then the coming summer will be less busy.)

Fluctuations by quarter are one thing; I suspect the accountants, and BBC staff in general, would have liked to seen this line on a steady downward curve, like everything else.

The family silver ?

The break-up of the Guardian Media Group's assets in Manchester leaves some loose ends. Paid Content (owners GMG) has the clearest view.

The deal apparently only gives Rusbridger £7.4m in readies to secure the mothership - the rest of the price goes down as cost avoided, with Trinity Mirror buying out a long-term printing contract of £37.4m, because it already has its own presses. The GMG staff involved will move from Manchester (and a number of outlying offices in Rochdale, Eccles and Ashton-under-Lyme) to Oldham; and pretty quick - the lease on Scott Place ends in six months. There's still a question mark over Channel M's future, (cumulative losses £14m) based in studios at the Urbis exhibition centre, which is due to become a football museum; and Radio Today muses over current relationships between the Manchester Evening News and Smooth, Real and Rock radio stations in the northwest.

Sic transit....

The world and New York would lose much of its magic if this....















.....were ever to replace this...

Let's talk quality

The debate about BBC HD picture quality seems to be back on. Andy Quested is patiently answering questions here. Danielle Nagler ("Hello, I've been absent for a little while") is taking the artistic line on drama productions here.

A room with a view

A late afternoon trot round the course for the BBC at the Public Accounts Committee. Messrs Thompson, Mosey and Davie stay silent on talent costs at outside broadcasts, without quite denying that one presenter at one event was paid 20% of the total budget. Conciliatory Trustee Jeremy Peat offers to write privately to the Committee about the issue - let's hope that stays safer in the Commons than MPs' expense claims. That's all in the Telegraph.

The Guardian picks up on discussions about the cost of building a studio with a view at Euro 2008, for "editorial reasons". Mr Thompson says the BBC would have had to spend £200k anyway - it was only £50k extra for the view, and the BBC tried to tell the NAO but....

That's slightly different to the line taken by Roger Mosey in his blog, who didn't raise the "extra" issue - but said a studio without a view would have been more expensive !

BBC Sport are on their own again for the World Cup in South Africa, choosing to host from a glass box with a view of Table Mountain. The "editorial reasons" clearly don't include the experts actually going to many matches. Unless, of course England progress beyond the quarter finals, when I'll bet they want to be closer to the action.

Toothkind

Planning change at MediaCityUK - Peel Media are asking for one less shop, to be replaced by 156m2 of dental surgery.

Luke sharp

Luke Johnson, outgoing Chairman of Channel 4, manages to be much more acerbic in print than in interviews. Here's the kernel of his thoughts on "negotiating" with the BBC, from a farewell piece in the Media Guardian.

"I failed to properly understand that the BBC is the single most influential lobbying organisation in Britain. Whether it is backbench MPs on BBC local radio, print journalists on its payroll, ministers on the Today programme, tickets to the Proms or Wimbledon or Glastonbury, when its £3.5bn 'jacuzzi of cash' is threatened, the entire machine dedicates itself to seeing off any rival – rather like Doctor Who and the Daleks joining forces to destroy the ultimate enemy. The favours are gently called in, the army of public affairs staff get to work, and self-preservation on steroids kicks in."

Taking on Google ?

Facebook and world dominance ? More people are using it to "find" news, reports The Editors Weblog. It's working on its own email system, says Techcrunch. And it's already the most popular "app" on most UK phones.

Saving six

Radio Today points to a Save BBC 6Music Facebook campaign. 29,688 members at 0700 Monday.

Lording it

Delighted for Tony Hall, who's been made a peer by the House of Lords Appointments Commission.
I fully expect most of the BBC's intake of news trainees in 1973 to merit similar recognition. Eventually.

Tony's been decisive recently; having accepted the hot potato of delivering a Cultural Olympiad for London, he's re-designed the brief, saying the title "lacked clarity", but asserting the decision won't mean less spending on the Arts in and around 2012. We await the new title with interest.

Committee rules

There's an increasing rhythm to the BBC's appearances before the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons. The National Audit Office publishes a report; the press pick on odds and ends of extravagance; the BBC and Trust declare nothing was wrong, and even if it was, changes have already been implemented; then the whole things start again with the appearance of Execs and Trustees for a public grilling - quite often exacerbated by the MPs delight in the agenda set by the newspapers. Mark D'Arcy thinks that's what'll happen with Monday's discussion on outside broadcasts.

Meanwhile an enquiry under Freedom of Information points, perhaps, to an unusually large number of BBC staff attending conferences run by the NAO.

Friend request

Pretty lukewarm "support" for the BBC's Asian Network in this report of "Coventry Conversations" at the Journalism.co.uk site.

Swings and roundabouts

The Salford Star has got upset at plans to improve two roundabouts near MediaCityUK. (I first spotted this story in Private Eye, sadly still not available online). It twins it with an assertion that it's currently impossible to get a direct bus from most of Salford to the development - a gap probably not spotted by BBC visitors in taxis.

Let's (not) talk

In the my younger days, the debate about quality in broadcasting was focussed on DAB, and whether it delivered digital sound better than/worse than a CD. The compromise was to declare it "near-CD-quality" (except, of course, when they squeeze the bandwith for 5Live).

Now the debate is about the quality of pictures delivered by the BBC's HD tv channel. 5 times more clarity than standard definition - or "more grain than my breakfast cereal" ?

Or at least there used to be a debate. Head of HDTV Danielle Nagler bravely blogged on the topic, and got her boffins to explain exactly what the BBC was doing to all those pixels. But after more than 1,200 comments, some of them apparently abusive, BBC blog policeman Nick Reynolds has, somewhat wearily (and rather early in the morning) blocked further contributions. Spool through to comment 1209.

"Sadly despite my final final warning people are still posting abusive comments. So I will close this post for new comments today. It will be closed for a week. I will then decide whether to reopen it again or whether there are better ways of continuing the conversation".

Other forums, including DigitalSpy, have taken up the dialogue.

Let's Face it

Odd when things come together... Alongside the radio audience figures from RAJAR, yesterday saw the launch of a new set of metrics - ranking the sites we most use on our mobile phones. Figures for December 2009 show 16 million people in the UK accessed the net from their mobiles, looking at a combined total of 6.7 billion pages. The top 10 sites accounted for 70 per cent of both total pages viewed and total time spent online on mobiles during the month. And right at the top was Facebook, with BBC sites ranking at number 7.

Meanwhile I found this video of Victoria Derbyshire on 5Live explaining why she's stopping blogging, and how she now keeps in touch with her audience on Facebook.

And this, from Mashable on the Facebook redesign (hasn't it me yet...)

Local difficulties

The RAJAR figure which adds BBC Radio Scotland, Wales, Cymru, Ulster to all the BBC local radio stations in England is on a downward trend. About a million listeners have been lost overall since 2007 (when RAJAR methodology changed) - with the current total reach now standing at 8.9m.

In London, where Radio 4 rules the speech market, BBC London is having a hardtime against a re-born LBC. London's share stands at 1.6%, down from 1.8% two years ago compared with 5.7% for LBC in the capital - two years ago it was 3.8%.

The picture around the country is patchy - little change at Radio Shropshire, for example, over two years - but Solent has lost 3 percentage points in share, and Radio Manchester has lost one, as has Radio Lincolnshire.

So it's not just newspapers and ITV finding local and regional coverage difficult and expensive, at least in terms of holding on to audiences.

Listening more or less

There may be some movement in listening between 5Live and Talksport - but it seems to be in hours rather than absolute customers. 5Live (including Sports Xtra) is down quarter on quarter in terms of reach, from 6.53m to 6.18m, and hours per listener are down from 8.1 to 7.4. Thus 5Live's share of the market is down from 5.3% to 4.6%.

Meanwhile, whilst Talksport is steady quarter on quarter at 2.4m, its listening hours are slightly up, from 7.9 to 8.2 per head, moving share up from 1.9% to 2.1%. Full RAJAR figures here.

Of the BBC's digital stations, the Asian Network remains steady at around 360,000 listeners, but support for the concept of a "station" as a way of reaching that audience seems to be waning - according to the Guardian's report of Caroline Thomson's evidence to a Lords' committee yesterday. That evidence is also interesting on building DAB transmitters (or not).

Gong time

There'll be head scratching at the BBC, as the Royal Television Society news nominations are perused. 17 nominations is a good haul, in 14 categories available. But Controller Kevin Bakhurst will be wondering why the BBC News Channel (nee News 24) failed to make it in "Channel of the Year" - where the three selected are Al-Jazeera English, CNN International and the old enemy Sky News. Equally the News Channel misses out where it might expect a shoo-in - News Coverage Home, and News Coverage International. Who were the judges ?

In passing, congratulations to former 5Liver Ian Pannell, nominated in Television Journalist of the Year. Full list in Press Gazette.

Howay the lads

Good to see former BBC colleague Tom Gutteridge in the hunt for a regional tv news pilot in the North-East, as reported by The Guardian. With former ITN editor Nigel Dacre on board as well, Trinity Mirror have added some gravitas (and a little avoir-du-poids) to their bid.

Tom has an excellent blog here.

Cheerleaders

The Times says the Tories will create scrap the current form of the BBC Trust, replace it with a "licence-payers' trust" and create a new role of non-executive, "cheerleader" chairman to work alongside the Director General and the BBC Executive. An senior MP tells the Thunderer that Sir Michael Lyons, who's term ends in 2011, will not oppose the move and stand down.

It's all a bit odd - if you ask BBC insiders, the Trust IS more concerned with regulation on behalf of the audience, and irritatingly so. Few cheerleaders in sight, as reviews, programme performance debates, and edicts pour forth. The issue of a BBC chairman, cheerleading as in industry, is driven by Sir Christopher Bland. What is unnecessary is a combination of the BBC Trust and Ofcom - so this is more confirmation that there'll be nice office space available at Southwark Bridge if Mr Cameron gets in....

Older women

The Times reports that former Countryfile reporter Miriam O'Reilly is asking an industrial tribunal to rule that she lost her job unfairly, because of age and sex discrimination. She's also alleging victimisation - saying claims by the BBC that she leaked stories of of internal discontent at the programme were not true. Miriam's team may call BBC1 Controller Jay Hunt to flesh out what "refreshing" Countryfile really meant.

If it reaches a full tribunal, it'll be much more than an everyday story of countryfolk...

Meanwhile, the only over-50 recruited in the Mark Thompson-driven volte-face on news presenters who has made it to air is Moira Stewart. No sign yet of Fiona Armstrong or Julia Somerville on the News Channel.

Little Ben

TV news reporters usually learn fast not to wear clothes that distract. Tyro BBC political correspondent Ben Wright may regret his purchase, on display on Sunday's late night news, of a coat with an oddly Prussian military look about it. We've not seen its like since the Loden overcoats, of Tyrolean origin, favoured by Douglas Hurd.

Burgundy news

I enjoyed this piece in The Sunday Times about how Archie Norman sounded out candidates for the ITV job over meals at Wild Honey in St George St. Writer James Anderson says the venue was chosen for first for privacy - that didn't work, because someone got close enough to see that Adam Crozier had the fish, and Norman chose steak and Gevrey-Chambertin - and, secondly, to be away from media types in Soho and Covent Garden. The more likely reason is that the restaurant is less than three minutes walk from the offices of Archie Norman's private equity operation, Aurigo Management Partners, in Davies Street.

(The Gevrey Chambertin on the Wild Honey list is Cuvee Ostrea, Domaine Trapet, year unspecified on the website, at £97 for a full bottle, £47.50 a half).

Turning Pink

Shouldn't do music on a Monday (like twitterers) but you can't imagine a performance like this making it to air in health'n'safety conscious UK broadcasting. Spool to two minutes in, and watch as water, live mikes and twisting fabric swing above the heads of the (expensive) celebrity crowd at the Grammies.

Layers of Peel

The Peel Group, controlled by John Whittaker, is a complex mix of sub-companies and partnerships, so it's hard to get an overall picture of how it's doing. A number of northern websites, including Crain's, have been looking at latest filed accounts and find, unsurprisingly, that asset values in many of the group's property holdings are down. Other latest Peel stories include selling part of a wind farm, and putting up rents at the Trafford Centre by 20%.

Meanwhile if you'd like to buy or rent a flat at MediaCity, Salford Quays, the latest price list can be found in this brochure