Quantity surveyors

Peter Preston has an excellent piece in today's Observer on the BBC Trust's obsession with measuring creativity through polls of viewers and listeners.  The obsession with attempting to measure the intangible comes down a lineage of John Birt, through Patricia Hodgson, to Mark Byford and Sir Michael Lyons.  What is being measured is "public opinion", the major component of the Reach, Quality, Impact and Value mantra.  I'm ok with audience figures, or "Reach", clearly understandable to all. The BBC doesn't like to go too big on league tables of Value - which is "cost per listener and viewer", because many offers (BBC Alba, for example) would be closed in any rational comparative assessment.  Quality is subjective; and Impact means was there was a fuss in the papers.

As Sir Michael says a lingering farewell in the New Year, he leaves us with the closing chapter of Putting Quality First - now largely meaningless in the light of the licence-fee settlement.  Mark Thompson was kind enough to say in the Commons last week that it still provided a road map for the organisation. In the sense of trying to making programmes people appreciate.

Sir Michael has trumpeted the requirement for the Executive to provide forward looking business plans as a big new deal. Sadly,  it actually flows from the Coalition Government's adoption of "project and programme" disciplines.  The BBC needs simply to lock in with the DCMS business plan of November 2010 - where the key objective is to sort out the S4C and World Service elements of the licence fee settlement.    Lord Patten will look forward to making 16% cuts or more in the activities and staffing of the Trust over his tenure.