Unplugged

Bob Shennan, Controller, Radio 2 and 6Music, has pulled the plug on the Electric Proms, on the grounds of cost.  This little complement to the "real" Proms was conceived somewhere between Radio 1 and Jenny Abramsky, the then Director of Audio & Music, and launched in 2006.  From a week-long event for UK bands and performers with "Camden cred" and genuine invention, it finally formally moved to Radio 2 last year and became a home for dinosaurs, with album-plugging performances from Elton John, Leon Russell, Neil Diamond and Robert Plant.

In the feed from the BBC Press Office, the adjoining press release brings us news that popular music quartet, Blue, will represent the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest.   That's the BBC in 2011 - Putting Quality First.

TV Studio and MCR jobs

If you feel you're part of the coming squeeze at the BBC, and your expertise is in and around tv studios, there may be something for you working for Peel Media/SIS in the running of The Studios, MediaCityUK, Salford.  They're looking for a Bookings Manager, Allocators, Studio Managers, Senior MCR Operators, MCR Operators, Technologists, a Systems Analyst, a Gaffer, a Leading Stage Hand, Duty Technology Managers, Senior Support Engineers, Support Engineers and Support Technicians,  There's links to job descriptions here - you can apply with a CV and covering letter, no later than Friday 12th February, to jobs@mediacityuk.co.uk

Blair Thomson

Blair Thomson, a former Editor of The World Tonight on Radio 4, has died at the age of 71.  I first met him when he had been thrown out of Ethiopia in 1975, and was learning the ropes in the Broadcasting House Newsroom in London - him already a grizzly Indiana-Jones-figure with a gruff, largely unplaceable accent, myself a callow news trainee; both of us at the end of the subs' desk hoping to be tossed the weather story for the 1800 bulletin.

Blair was in Addis Ababa for the successive coups of 1974 that eventually led to the end of Haile Selassie's regime. He was a stringer (a reporter paid by the piece) for the BBC, and also worked for the respected Radio Voice of the Gospel.  He wrote the story of the revolution up in his 1975 book, "Ethiopia: The Country That Cut Off Its Head" - reviewed as "vivid".   Blair was soon part of the "Intake" operation at BH, working as a Foreign Duty Editor on shift, dealing with stringers in the field himself.  At nights, he would occasionally scare the pants off other shift workers by finding his way into the Concert Hall (now the Radio Theatre) to play the organ, whose low throb echoed eerily around empty corridors in the early hours.  He rose to be a respected international fixer, and eventually Home News Editor, before a move to run The World Tonight in the 1980s.

There we met again - with my home base, Newsbeat oddly-placed across the corridor from the R4 deep-thinkers.  Blair particularly enjoyed the reporting of the European Parliament ( The World Tonight was given special funds) and found time for regular supervisory trips to Strasbourg, where his knowledge of budget hotels and pricier restaurants was unsurpassed. He also moved his home to Cornwall, which added to his time on the road.

He then moved on to Television Centre, as Editor of CEEFAX, which gave him a lead for his post-BBC career - running text services for CNN and others.  In recent years, he'd become one of the great and good in Cornwall, serving on many a voluntary group and quango with relish and vigour from his home in Truro.  He was always convivial company on visits back to London, and I'll remember with pleasure bashing out the blues with him on an elderly upright at one of Jenny Abramsky's parties.

Small dogs

c BBC News

The BBC reports a sit-down demonstration this morning outside its offices in Cardiff, by Welsh language protestors who want S4C to remain separate from Auntie.

There is, apparently, no direct translation for Tory poodles (clearly not a native Welsh breed) so they've gone for Tory puppies...

Gold standard

Congratulations to Tom Sleigh, who parted company with the BBC in April last year, dropped from his pivotal role as chief advisor to Caroline Thomson.  He's resurfaced at the World Gold Council, supporting "market-facing business projects across the global business".

"Tom was drawn to the World Gold Council due to its global remit straddling different markets and sectors. He welcomes the opportunity to be part of a team working to become the undisputed voice of industry leadership and the chance to assist in the further development of this unique asset class."


Tom's previous big appearance in the news came when he was the lowest-paid employee to have his salary made public by the BBC - a package worth £81,000.  Like many other strategists at the BBC, he will have played his part in the development of "Putting Quality First", the blueprint for the shrinking of Auntie, that was leaked to The Times in February last year.

World traveller

It must be a relaxing time now for the BBC Director of Policy and Strategy, John Tate.  A six-year licence fee deal in the bag; the seminal paper, Putting Quality First (remember, the one that was closing 6Music and The Asian Network ?) now moved forward into process - Delivering Quality First.  Time for a couple of international conferences to wind down.  What about Public Broadcasters International (No, I've never heard of it either) in Sintra, Portugal ?  October 27-29.  "Dandy. Short Powerpoint at the ready, brief mention of 4% p.a. efficiencies, play 'em that nice Mitch Benn video. Let's call it 'View from the Bridge'.  After all, I was there..."

John, right, in listening mode










Fit another in before Christmas ?  How about the vital 6th Korean Communications Conference, at the Westin Chosun Hotel in Seoul, 8-10 November ?   "Shame to waste the Powerpoint."

Alarm Bells

This is the blog that likes to flesh out the lives of the people at the top of British broadcasting; today, some worrying news from Wales on Sunday.  The man in charge of the UK's most influential tv channel, Danny Cohen, at BBC1, was once tour manager for The Alarm - and for 17 (seventeen) years, organised a fans' convention in North Wales.   The gathering continues to this day; thankfully, Danny has dropped his involvement - but that only seems to have happened quite recently.  Full details here.

Mike Peters and Danny in rehearsal 2005

Hindi

For a measured view of the issues the BBC World Service faces in closing down its Hindi radio news bulletins, read this, from The Hindu.

Hare-brained

If you're interested in game shows, I've found an excellent site.  Bothers Bar. "Commentary, guesswork and idle speculation on gameshows in the UK and abroad".

Back in September 2009, one of their contributors went to see a pilot of "Don't Scare the Hare", the show now in production at The Studios, MediaCityUK.  It all sounds pretty grim, as pilots often are.   Here's a flavour - the whole thing is worth a read - scroll down from this link.


The game pits three lycra-clad guys against three lycra-clad girls in a bid to win £10,000. 

The first game was Don't Lose Your Bottle. One contestant from each team is challenged to get to the end of a course, the first half has poles connected by bits of string (the web) followed by lots of tall poles close together (the forest). On top of each pole is a (sugar) glass bottle. Their job is to reach the end of the course within two minutes. Of course if a pole is dislodged too much the bottle on top will fall and smash. DON'T SCARE THE HARE!

The HARE begins in the three point zone with a net above it. When a bottle smashes, the hare spins round in apparent fear and retreats to the two point zone (the game pauses to allow this to happen which meant the audience got confused when they were following the floor manager's ten second countdown and a bottle smashed halfway through it). Another transgression drops another point, and a further transgression means the other team get to push their button for an automatic point. If they get to the end in time, they can push a button which drops the net (not looking unlike the cage from Mousetrap, in fact). The same game is then played with the teams reversed (the player set to play the game is out of the studio whilst the first team get their go). Sure, you've seen laser maze sort of thing on every show going, but you've NEVER seen it with a robotic hare providing a metaphorical visual scoring aid. This game was the longest to set up, apparently, so it was played before the opening and chats were done.......

So it's nine o' clock now and I'm losing the will to live - in three and a bit hours they've recorded two games. I bought a pack of Ibuprofen at the Liverpool Street Station Boots in case I got a headache. I'm quite tired and fed-up, I could do something extreme here to end the pain and possibly make a statement in an arty way.

You can see why it might have a new name when it finally hits our screens. 
  

Another opening

Good luck to the crews at The Studios, MediaCityUk.  The recording hamster wheel starts today. The first long run is 12 editions of a new game show for BBC1.  Sorry, that should read....

The creators of Total Wipeout, 101 Ways To Leave a Game Show and The Whole 19 Yards are making an exciting new show for Saturday nights on BBC One. If you and your mates fancy being entertained by contestants under some serious pressure, trying to hold their nerve as they face major physical and mental challenges, then this is your chance.

Incredibly, some tickets still available. 

Royally...

At sensitive times, clumsy management decisions don't help the workers' mood.   The current trails on the BBC World Service - apparently, your Royal Wedding station  - bring groans, winces, sighs, and the odd boot lobbed at nearby speakers.  Listeners have noted that "countdowns" (91 days to go) are more usually associated with moonshots.

There's also an editorial conflict.  A long time ago, offerings called News About Britain and Network UK were a feature of World Service output - dropped because they were too parochial and insufficiently "global".

If you can't listen, you can get an overview of this distinctly middleweight output about the Windsors and the Middletons, and their apparent international significance, on special pages of BBC News Online, when many a once sturdy journalist seems to have been turned to produce royal mediagobble.  ("Can Kate's gown really stay a secret ?"  "Dorset jewellers make ring shortlist" and much more).  And, if you're a major international company, there are advertising and sponsorship opportunities on BBC World and bbc.com  Extreme Weddings ? Royal Wedding update modules ?

Who could be behind this remarkable assault on the normal editorial judgements taken by BBC News?  For some, the Byford Gap can't appear soon enough.

I agree with...

A new Trust review of BBC Online and how it commissions its 25% "indie" quota, says the money target is being reached, but indies never know how or why. Part of the reason is the commissioning and structural disorder between "new media" and the "content" divisions, sometimes referred to in this blog.

The Trust also paid Deloitte to conduct a review (for how much ?).  There's even more damning stuff in there. "Relationships with BBC personnel appear to be the strongest driver of commissioning opportunities as a robust short-listing process has not existed".

Collaborator needed

Whilst we're in the middle of all these BBC cuts, some staff are galled at the people needed to think about even more efficiencies.  Eyebrows went up in Audio & Music yesterday when a round-robin appeared about an "opportunity" to join a workstream entitled "Doing fewer things better in radio".  Though clearly only a temporary post,  the successful applicant will "gain broad exposure to the BBC's radio output and work closely with a range of senior BBC leaders".  And, presumably, work out which jobs and programmes are disposable.

Language uncut

Compliance officer !  Risk assessment !   Elton John "effs" on Radio 2 before 0900.  Wouldn't have happened in Wogan's day.  Adults only listen on Radiofail.

Pine cones

The BBC is looking for a new "Head of Weather".    To help candidates, here's a few interview questions.

1) In the top image, what has happened to the major centres of UK population between Birmingham and Newcastle ? Do you think Peter Salmon has noticed ?

2) Comparing and contrasting the two images, which provides more detail about Scotland ?    Do you get on with Alex Salmond ?

3) In both images, what is it with all this blue ?

 

Easing sadness

Three days on from the announcement of 650 job losses at the World Service, and there's stll a sense of shell shock inside and outside Bush House.

The wave of emotion needs now to be focussed on damage limitation, rather than barricades and industrial action.  And maybe, between Hague and Horrocks, Lyons and Thompson, there are things that can be done.

First, smooth the funding out between the FCO care and custody period, and the licence-fee takeover by Auntie in 2014. Currently it feels like the poor child is being publically beaten and starved, while the future foster-mother looks on, apparently helpless, but with bandages, food and clothing waiting.

Second, bring that sense of fair play across the BBC that once permeated these deals. It used to be that efficiency targets and other cuts were roughly the same across Bush House, Broadcasting House and Television Centre. Mark Thompson is seeking to "protect" domestic output by making cuts of 20% over the new six year licence fee period, while the back office is being cut by 25%.  At Bush, the headline cuts are 25% over less than three years, and some back office functions are being halved.

Third, think again about some, not all, of the short-wave decisions.  The bulk of the audience listen this way, and the signal can reach people when FM, Twitter etc can be easily blocked. 

Fourth, don't lose reputation and broadcast skills in major languages too soon.  OK onlines services maybe the long term answer in some markets - but it's one thing to translate and read one-minute scripts for global news items; it's quite another to host radio discussions/tv debates with knowledge and confidence. 

Fifth - one for Thommo - take a more strategic view of partnerships for World Service. The current moves (audio versions of Hardtalk, and renaming Digital Planet "Click") look like a drift to an audio version of BBC World (itself not always a beacon of engaging and incisive journalism). There are richer deals to be made with Radio 4.   The future should be able to mix and match.

Gear, anyone ?

Jeremy Clarkson talked about the Richard Keys/Andy Gray departures to reporters at the National Television Awards last night.  The Mail quotes him thus "We've arrived at a stage where you actually can be busted by heresy by thought, which is a terrifying place to live. While we try very hard on Top Gear not to be sexist... if a man wants to think that... that's fine. You should be allowed to think what you think".

I suspect Clarkson is actually ruminating on whether or not he's offended a Top Gear VT editor enough, in thought, deed or words, for a stack of off-air remarks to have been squirrelled away..... 

Money is the only guarantee of independence

As Sky continues to act tough with Roop in town, it's having all sorts of consequences.  Sky News has been pro-active about the Richard Keys/Andy Gray story, happy to run off-air clips however they've been found - to the inevitable discomfort of Sky Sports. And Sky News this morning is leading on the new police investigation into reporting methods at the News of The World.

Meanwhile many assume that the slight delay in the progress of the inexorable R Murdoch move to own all of  BSkyB is to allow development of a strategy that protects the "independence" of Sky News.  Independence is a fine thing, as ephemeral as the guarantees that come with "independent editorial advisory boards" and other such mechanisms.  What's needed is a guarantee of future funding.  As other Murdoch news outlets here and in the rest of the world are allowed and encouraged by the great man to tune their agendas, his first tv love, Sky News, has developed in stature and credibility, if not viewers, and its reputation is now, it seems, a bargaining counter.  That reputation is a loss leader for Murdoch, and a very clever mechanism indeed is needed to keep that funding coming if Rupert relinquishes editorial control.

Something's turned up

With Murdoch Senior in town, things have speeded up at News International in their second look at who was listening to mobile answerphone messages, and who knew about it. Ian Edmondson has been sacked, and "material evidence" that was apparently the grounds for his dismissal has been handed to the police.  Evidence that presumably wasn't around when Harbottle & Lewis carried out the first internal investigation....

Flesh on the English changes

The first year cuts for the World Service News and Current Affairs teams will see 30 to 34 out of 250 jobs go.  Some savings will come from more editions of the cheaper-to-run World Briefing;  cheaper still in future without dedicated business news inserts, with a new rota, and perhaps journalist presenters.  The evening edition of Newshour will run at two hours all year round.  There'll be changes at the World Today, as it seeks to create a joint morning programme with Network Africa.

In the newsroom, shifts writing so-called "regional stories" will end. In the words of Andrew Whitehead, Editor WSNCA "It's either a central story of interest to a global audience, or we don't write it".  There'll be more work on integration with the team doing foreign news for News Online. Newsroom regional editors survive, but move out of the newsroom.

In terms of support to the Bush Newsroom, the separate World Affairs Unit shuts. It's a cluster of correspondents who give Bush output its distinctive feel - and on a daily basis, most of the mighty brains that bring context via "think pieces" will in future be based at Television Centre.  The same happens to the Business Unit at Bush.

In programmes made by other people, there'll be an audio version of the dull Hardtalk to schedule; Digital Planet becomes "Click" to match the tv brand; Outlook goes down to four editions from five, The Strand is cut to 20 minutes.   None of these moves will have raised cheers at Bush House. And it's only Year One.

World Service in English

For the World Service in English, the cuts look really hard, at 68 post closures in the next financial year. Europe Today and Politics UK will stop, as will one weekly documentary strand.  The new kid on the block, World Have Your Say, gets an extra weekday edition, and there'll be shorter daily "versions" of From Our Own Correspondent as well as the existing weekly edition.  These schedule changes are not enough on their own to meet the target, so more will emerge later as Craig Oliver explains next steps to balance the books.  

Hague v BBC World Service

A couple of sharp points from Foreign Secretary William Hague in the Commons, in response to the World Service cuts.  He noted additional contributions from Government (£13m p.a. for three years) to help WS with their missed contributions to the pension deficit; an additional £10m p.a. for three years to kick start some sort of tv services in Urdu, Hindi and for sub-Saharan Africa; and an agreement to cover capital costs for the move to Broadcasting House in 2012.  He claimed the BBC's first response to the reduced funding was to close 13 language services, rather than the five he's accepted.

The first cut is the deepest

It's going to be hard to keep a perspective on figures coming out of the BBC World Service today, especially with a headline that 650 posts are to close, and 480 of those will go this year. Boss Peter Horrocks, clearly emotional in announcing the cuts, came as close as possible to saying that the Foreign Office was saying one thing about protecting the service, whilst doing another.

Five services stop completely; another seven, including Russian, lose their radio output, but stay as online/mobile offerings. Short-wave transmissions to China stop, as do some to Africa.


It is worth looking back a little.  In 2001, the FCO grant-in-aid to the World Service was around £200m. The radio audience claimed was 153 million worldwide.  The following year direct shortwave transmissions to Europe, North America, Australasia and the Caribbean were dropped. By 2009/10, World Service annual income had grown to around £270m; the radio audience was still around 150m but the trend was sharply down; but WS investment in online and tv output allowed it to claim a multimedia audience of around 180m.  The forecast impact of these cuts is to reduce that multimedia audience to 150m. 

I'm told the cuts are even-handed between the language services and the English output, at least in terms of cuts to headcount, but as yet don't have the detail.

Rankings

Someone asked me yesterday if I'd got it in for Piers Morgan.  I think I tried to answer "Only so far as he plays fast and loose with audience figures".  On Monday, Piers fell into fourth (bottom) place amongst news channel competitors at 9pm in the "key", as defined by Piers, 25-54 year-old demographic. 208,000 of them watched Piers v  former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.  He was even beaten by Nancy Grace's America's Missing, on sister channel Headline News.

Fewer tongues

Broadcast says that five language services are for the chop in tomorrow's cuts at the BBC World Service. It says transmissions in Macedonian, Albanian, Serbian and Portuguese will stop, as will a dedicated programme service to the Caribbean.

If Broadcast is right, these cuts will be hard for those who make the output. But it should be clear that these are not 24-hour radio services that are closing. The BBC broadcasts in Macedonian Monday to Friday, with 15 minute bulletins at 0830, 1730 and 1830, and three minute summaries at 1100 and 1500.  A large number of  the world's Macedonian speakers are outside transmitter range - in the USA, Canada, Australia and Italy.  The BBC broadcasts in Albanian 1000-1200 and 1700-1800. Serbian output runs 0630-0700, 1230-1245, 1500-1500 and 1800-1830.  In the Caribbean, there are two daily Caribbean Reports, and one Caribbean Sports Report.

The Portgugese output, currently aimed at Africa, would be a more significant loss. Again, there's currently an hour at 0430, and half-an-hour at 1700 and 2030 GMT.  But Portuguese is a major world language, ranked, depending on who you believe, fourth or fifth in number of speakers globally. It would be wrong to lose that capability.

However, these reductions are nowhere near as savage as was forecast before the end of the year, where "10 to 12" was the currency of services to be cut.  One suspects Foreign Secretary William Hague has been a bit difficult about losing language output, and that the story of tomorrow will be cuts to the World Service in English.   

An apology

.. to architects working at KSS, Make and Martha Schwarz.  Daniel Levy, lovable chairman of Tottenham Hotspur, has told the London Evening Standard that the re-development of the White Hart Lane site (which you did all that work on) is now "not viable".   Charming, eh ?

No, Danker

I'm still grumpy about a range of things in the proposed changes to the BBC's online services. Apparently Panorama had 5 (yes, 5) staff to run their website; they're allowed to keep two.  Why does Panorama need an active website at all, when 6Music, BBC Radio 7 and many others go to automation ?

That's probably by-the-bye. The future for accessing BBC radio content online remains as clear as mud.  It's sort of coming out of iPlayer into a "new product" that the Auntie is going to build.  The unlikely Daniel Danker (Berkeley and Microsoft) describes the brief thus...

Here's what we want the product to do:

• Better bring out the personality of the networks, presenters and DJs
• Rich pages for our flagship programmes (e.g. The Today Programme, The Archers)
• Integrate music events
• Be highly personalised and available on lots of internet-connected devices (people want radio on the move)
• Be highly social; pulling in the buzz around live radio
• Become a home for podcasts (both 'catch-up' and 'archive' content), as well as improve the way we offer clips
• Make better use of technology to improve exploration, discovery, sharing, and listening
• Create a new design especially for radio and music
• Link up closely with the TV & iPlayer product (but not duplicate it), sharing link

 I think Mr Danker and his team should share the budget information for this unfocussed project with us. iPlayer is a perfectly reasonable way of catching up with BBC Radio.  Many people around the world are happy finding music through YouTube.   Enough "products" already, Mr Danker. 


 

Supporting Piers

For completeness, last Friday's US primetime rankings are now out.  Clearly, Americans looking forward to the weekend bother less with the "news channels".  At 9pm, Piers' interview with George Clooney recorded the show's lowest figure of the week, at 121k viewers amongst Piers' favourite demographic - 25-54-year-olds.  Hannity, at Fox News, topped the class, with 333k.

These are clearly big numbers. To help you get a handle on things, Piers's Friday fans equate to the number of red squirrels surviving in Scotland; or the entire population of West Wiltshire; or the number of UK pub customers who took up cask beer in 2010. 

Burns hurt

Marvelllous timing.

24th January 2011: Radio Scotland blogs about new improved Robert Burns site with a new, complete audio archive of 717 works specially recorded for the BBC.

24th January 2011: Erik Huggers (Dutch) and Mark Thompson (English) announce closures of 200 top level domains, including ww.bbc.co.uk/robertburns

25th January 2011: 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns

Sloping off

Oh, that BBC Trust.  Loves a bit of tough talk.  This from Press Gazette, about the 360 posts to close in BBC Online. 


Diane Coyle, the BBC Trustee who led the review, said: "The Trust is clear that the BBC must manage the service and its impact on the market in a way that holds true to the new strategy. We will monitor this closely, particularly the strengthened arrangements for editorial leadership and control. We are also going to continue our dialogue with users and industry."

One promised change is a cull in the number of specialist blogs.   Let's hope that doesn't include the excellent dot.Rory, the blog of BBC Technology Correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones.  aka Mr Diane Coyle.  We'll know more when Rory gets get back from his current ski-ing holiday.

Hard Talk

We await the cumulative figures for the first full week of Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN.  The Thursday show did not significantly improve things, with Morgan's interview with Ricky Gervais attracting 279k viewers in Morgan's self-stated key demographic of 25-54 year-olds. Fox News' Hannity show scored 557k.

I love comments on US websites - gems here from TV Newser.  

Of course there was no ratings bump. Who wants to see a prerecorded, edited conversation between two elitist English blokes, sipping beers and talking about the Golden Globes...an event which ceases to be relevant after 24 hours? 

It would have been news had these two Brit-blow-hards actually made good ratings. What is CNN smoking over there? 

Ricky Gervais was scheduled against the first new Office of 2011. They asked themselves, "When will everyone who wants to see Ricky Gervais be watching something else?" and scheduled Ricky for that timeslot. Idiots.

Watch for a cloud of silt as this venture sinks softly to the bottom where it will settle in and slowly come to rest  

Tactics again from Thommo

The key changes for the BBC's online offering, announced today, are not strategic; they are tactical.  High maintenance sites close; a number of dull, automated sites will hold a marker for programmes; and the BBC will withdraw from detailed discussions with its audience via the web.  Instead, it looks like the licence payer is going to be "engaged" (2011 buzz word) by those newer passing trends, Twitter and Facebook, where the BBC presence is already less than transparent, and certainly not costed. 

The biggest casualty is the 606 site in Sport.  Despite taking one of the most stupid "brand" names from the Rado 5Live football phone-in, it's evolved into a genuinely diverse message board and forum. It contained debates about American football, through disability sport, down to weightlifting and wrestling.  But the management say users have halved from 30,000 a week in 2008 to 15,000 now.   I suspect that's because no bosses have been reading the comments and responding for over a year.

The H2G2 site, less than a week after an expensive make-over, is now apparently on offer to the highest bidder. This wacky, nerd-sourced mini-Wikipedia was one of the few originals to come out of the BBC investment in online, and it's rather a shame no-one matched it with its obvious friend "QI" and kept it going. 

Radio suffers - sites for 1Xtra, Radio 5 Sports Extra, 6Music and BBC Radio 7 become automated programme guides. But the Audio & Music Interactive behemoth survives in a strange way - focussing on "live output, and the discovery of new music as played and recommended by BBC DJs and iconic musicians".  In another move, Erik Huggers says there will be a "new product" to deliver radio programmes, which had previously been added to the iPlayer, and apparently will also still be available that way. 

In News, programme sites other than those for Today, Newsbeat and Newsnight get the automated treatment. As predicted, there's a lot less local stuff to be produced, with 35 jobs going in the English Regions, including Sport. So no more "People and places, nature and outdoors" etc. 

As recommended here long and often, a culling of dull BBC blogs is promised, but no victims are named.

What's yours ?

The team at one of my happiest stomping grounds, Newsbeat, are having an Alcohol Week.  This is not an internal event, but an attempt to engage with the Radio 1 audience about a serious problem.  Two reality checks are needed.  1: Chris Moyles.    2: These figures, used for the price of drinks in the Radio 1 Booze Calculator, working out prices of drink in pubs.
. 
Pint of weaker beer/lager/cider = £3.06
Pint of stronger beer/lager/cider = £3.06
Standard wine = £3.35
Large wine = £4.50
One measure spirits = £2.50
Double measure spirits = £3.90
Alcopop = £2.75
To calculate this we took an average of typical prices from three large pub chains across the UK. Source: All Bar One (National), Bar Ha Ha (National, Leeds, Cardiff), Walkabout (Sheffield). 

The trouble is that before the Radio 1 listener gets to the pub for a session, there's often some warming up with bottles and tins on the way.  Bargain Booze currently offers 8 pint cans of Carling for £6, 4 pint cans of Strongbow for £3.59,  3 bottles of Blossom Hill wine for £10, and eight Bacardi Breezers for £8.19.

Monday morning quarter-back here....

It's wrong to try to edit tv news bulletins from the armchair, but I wish our domestic news teams had found thirty seconds for a little on the "Shame" demonstration by around 34,000 people in Brussels yesterday.  It had all the right buzz - a campaign started on Facebook by the young on both (all ?) sides of the country's language divide, and joined by young and old alike on the day.

Don't tell me it's on the website.  It's about covering the world more interestingly on BBC1. 

Reputations

The solicitors currently protecting the reputation of Ian Edmondson, suspended from the News of The World pending a further internal investigation into who knew what about listening to answerphones, are PSB Law, based just off Oxford Street, London. Lead partner Eddie Parladorio is no stranger to the world of celebrity and newspapers. He's work in media law for Schillings, Avanti Law, Max Bitel Greene and Statham Gill Davies.  An 2008 Independent profile said "Parladorio is regarded as a bit of a rough diamond among London's libel fraternity. "Don't mess with Eddie in or out of court," warns one leading litigator".


In 2001, Parladorio complained that the Metropolitan Police were tapping his phone conversations.  He also caused a bit of stir at a legal bash a in 2002 when he turned up on the arm of Ulrika Jonsson, shortly after she parted from Sven Goran-Eriksson.

More recent clients have included former amateur boxer and film-star Tamer Hassan, star of Kick-Ass; Everton FC manager David Moyes; and the tanning company, Fake Bake. Eddie's wife, Bethany, is with a "boutique beauty and health PR company" Media Hubb, that represents Fake Bake, amongst others.  Today Eddie is in the Mail on Sunday representing the former boyfriend of a lingerie designer.

Where might Ian and Eddie have met in the past ?   Could it have been in 2009 when Eddie was representing Commander Ali Dizaei in the matter of allegations arising from an investigation by the "fake sheikh" Mazher Mahmood of The News of The World ? The Commander accepted substantial damages and an apology.

In February 2010 Mr Dizaei was convicted of corruption offences and is now serving a four-year prison sentence.

Tacsi news

Papers opposed to the BBC are usually the ones most interested in the Corporation's taxi spend. I try not to get over-excited, but when I see a poor defence, I can be roused.

The outgoing Controller of BBC Wales, Menna Richards, managed six spectacular UK taxi bookings last year. Three, at £348.20, £331.93 and £348.20 (again) are presumably between London and Cardiff.  There are three others, between undeclared destinations, at around £150 each.

In response to enquiries from Wales On Sunday, a BBC Wales spokesman said  “A driver is contracted to and from London if train times aren’t appropriate, such as very early morning or late at night. Such journeys would sometimes include other members of the BBC Wales Board as well the director and offer value for money in comparison with the cost of travelling by rail."

The first weekday train from Cardiff leaves at 5.14am, arriving in London at 7.32am; the last sensible return departs from Paddington at 11.30pm.  So, dear spokesman, was Menna conducting important BBC business outside the hours of 8am-11pm, and with whom ?  Or, if not, who was with her in the cabs, so that we might see the value compared with individual train tickets ?  

Television with borders (updated)

This is an edited update of a post I wrote in January about the drive to create a Scottish Digital Network, to rival the S4C/C4 style relationship in Wales. Blair Jenkins is the driving force behind it, and my original piece described him as cold and humourless when he was at the BBC; Blair's been in touch to say "I am one of the most relentlessly upbeat and optimistic people you are ever likely to meet".  I'm happy to correct the record - my contact was largely at other end of video links and at conferences, when he may have seemed sterner.

I was also mistaken when I said he was a battler for the so-called "Scottish Six". Blair says "These debates were held and decisions reached during the time of my predecessor, Ken Cargill, in 1998..... I was not an employee of the BBC until 2000".

The piece went on as below; I've removed the adjective bitter, for which I wholeheartedly apologise for applying to Mr Jenkins without foundation and personal knowledge.

 Blair resigned from Auntie in 2006, ahead of major job cuts in his department. Since then, his "Scottish Broadcasting Commission" has pondered, and, unsurprisingly, proposed the SDN as a public service broadcasting counterpart to the BBC.  And joy of joys, though a little late on the Welsh precedent, he now wants the SDN funded by the licence fee - £75m p.a, please.


You might cry "ingrates". Since the perceived depredations on BBC Scotland by "London", the BBC has moved Radio Scotland to Inverness at considerable cost, set up BBC Alba at considerable cost, and built, on a PFI, Pacific Quay in Glasgow at considerable continuing cost. Meanwhile STV dances all too readily to the SNP tune.


It's not enough for Blair.  He proposes new headquarters away from Glasgow for the SDN. He apparently wants to break up the city's dominance of Scottish Broadcasting.


The time for appeasement is over.  If the SDN is really what the people of Scotland want, the BBC should just give them Pacific Quay and go home, jamming transmissions from south of the border as they go.  Let them pay directly for their own broadcasting, and buy what they fancy from BBC Worldwide.  Not a bad idea for the Welsh too.

Offline

Squeaky bum Monday approaches for BBC staff in "online".  Cuts of 25% in sites have been in gestation since the strategy leaked out nearly a year ago.  Insiders have seen a sort of web version of Pompeii created, with some sites petrified where they lie; others stagger on with old templates and breathing difficulties, and must be suspicious that they are not for the future. 

Who will express the new strategy ?  Neil Midgley of the Telepgraph thinks both Mark Thompson and the departing Erik Huggers will do the talking. Neil guesses at 350 post closures, 150 currently unfilled. He thinks BBC Local will be one victim.  I suspect it'll be the sort of local history stuff that will go ("Your Memories of World War II" etc, much lauded before the Byford Gap appeared), as sites retreat to a core of news, sport and weather which might be auto-generated from existing content.  Sites that seek to entertain, without being partnered with current tv and radio output, will have to go. But which "skyscraper" sites will remain ?

Meanwhile in News, the annual invitation to consider an exit has gone out to staff, this time emphasising that if over-55s go before April 6, there's a more generous pension arrangement on offer.  It's signed by my old boss, Steve Mitchell, now entering his 62nd year.  His boss, Helen Boaden, will be 55 on March 1st.   On past form, neither will seek a deal.

Untwittered

Readjusting relativities

What's Danny Cohen worth as Controller, BBC1 ?   It seems £40k less than Jay Hunt.

Jay's final salary was £265k and total package £272k; young Danny gets £225k and £232k respectively.

The new relativities are interesting. Will the replacement for Jana Bennett get close to her salary of £415k ?   Is the job of Controller BBC1 that much less important than the Controller North, where Peter Salmon is on £375k and a package of £463k ?  Where does it stand in relation to Vision's Chief Creative Officer, Pat Younge, on £310k and £317k respectively ?

While we're on, was it Danny, Jay or someone else who signed off last night's porno edition of the "comedy" show, Not Going Out, with discussions about private parts poking through holes in pizza boxes ? I'd love to see the compliance form.

Annigonol ydy un iaith

The construction work on the BBC's "drama village" in Cardff has been topped out, and the site officially named, rather unmusically and undramatically, Roath Lock, or, in Welsh, Porth y Rhath.


I suppose calling it the Drama Village would have been too straightforward, though in Welsh less so. Chwaraegerdd Pentref.

Visionaries

More information on BBC salaries, from COO Caroline Thomson.   Lists of 462 unnamed staff classified as "Senior Managers" have been published, with details of their salary bands, by division.  It's not the whole story on pay, because it's perfectly possible to earn big salaries whilst apparently at a lower grade - but the emerging picture will cause tension between divisions.

Journalism, which includes Sport, boasts 31% of the total BBC Senior Manager Posts - that's only top of the twenty or so whose exact salaries are regularly published.  30 of these additional managers have packages worth more than £100k.

Vision, however, fights back. Despite only having 20 per cent of the Senior Manager graded staff, a remarkable 73 of them have packages worth over £100k.   Compare that with poor old Audio and Music - 6 per cent of the Senior Manager Universe, and only 9 on deals of more than £100k.   BBC North has 4.5% of the Senior Manager grades, but manages to get 14 on deals of more than £100k. 

Operations (which now includes HR and Marketing) and The Executive Unit are bundled together and record a healthy 19 per cent of the Senior Managers, with 30 packages above £100k. That's all on top of the 32 identified individuals whose full salaries and expenses get published. 

Future Media & Technology, about to be separated again, get 7% of the SM posts, with 21 on deals above £100k. Finance and Business has 8.7% of the SM posts, and 20 on £100k packages. 

Filleted just for you

The BBC seems to be getting a little faster at responding to FoI requests. Here's my filleted highlights of the latest releases. 

Over the last 3 years, 188 individuals received termination payments below £100,000 upon leaving the BBC for reasons other than redundancy. The total of these payments was £5,007,945.

Over half a million has been spent so far on 1550 staff, family and friends visiting Salford. 

Category               Amount    
Set up costs         £18,124
One off costs including consultants’ initial research for briefing materials on residential areas, education etc.
Hotels                 £106,080
Lunch Day 1         £21,630
Dinner                   £30,185
Lunch Day 2         £11,609
Coach                   £31,933
Tours of residential areas
Train                      £109,126
London-Manchester Piccadilly standard class return
Tram                      £3,279
Manchester Piccadilly-MediaCity Salford (but they probably had to walk from Harbour City)
Local expertise      £53,333
Local area experts, tour guides etc.
Exhibition space      £5,175
For display materials, booked when no internal space available
Delegate packs      £20,774
Local information, publications, maps etc
Misc. costs             £23,568
Event management £139,807

TOTAL               £574,622

There is one recorded incident in which a member of staff has been disciplined due to inappropriate use of a social networking site in the last year.

No chocolate digestives are on offer for meetings with the BBC in London, says Julie Van Der Woude. But she "can confirm that chocolate digestives are offered on the BBC’s hospitality menus in Wales and in the English Regions (except for London). In Wales, the cost for the financial year 2009/2010 was £149.94. In the English Regions the hospitality menus offer mixed biscuits comprising chocolate digestives, bourbons, shortcake and oatmeal. The cost for the financial year 2009/2010 in English Regions for mixed biscuits amounted to £1,868. It is not possible to separate out how much of this cost was just for chocolate digestives."

Desmondo

Stephen Glover this week suggested that Richard Desmond could be more dangerous to the balance of UK media control than Rupert Murdoch. And on Tuesday, we learned that the Five early evening chat show, Live from Studio 5, currently produced by Sky News, will soon be replaced by  "OK! TV".   But, overall, the Desmond strategy for multi-media domination seems based on the production values of the Express more than anything else - cut the bottom line, cut it again, hammer simple agendas, and make money out of quizzes and competitions. And now, use one to publicise the other.


So the woeful Vanessa show on Channel Five is sponsored by Carpetright; has a full list of set suppliers and product reviews on its website; and is mentioned, editorially, nearly every day in the Daily Star. On Tuesday the headline was "TV favourite Vanessa Feltz sent the censors into overdrive by turning the air blue with a string of sex jokes", which, on full reading, were edited out by the production team, rather than censors.  Today, it's "Vanessa Feltz's fiance told how his Big Ben wilted after he got locked inside a freezer. Hunky co-host Ben Ofoedu, 38, tried out trendy cryotherapy for Channel 5’s The Vanessa Show"

Imagine the immortal souls of the subs told to write this stuff; the personal pride of the show's production team at Princess (owned by Elisabeth Murdoch's Shine);  and the values and judgements of presenter and the man who's put her back on the telly.    

A Channel moves on its...

COO of BBC North Richard Deverell said it was possible to envisage a BBC tv channel moving to MediacityUK, at a conference today.   There is, of course, still a major hurdle.  Manchester has no Michelin-starred restaurants - and it stays that way in the 2011 Guide. The last in the region was Paul Kitching’s Juniper in Altrincham, but he left in 2008. The closest are Northcote Manor in Blackburn and Simon Radley at the Grosvenor Hotel in Chester, both over 30 miles away.  The 2011 Michelin Guide has a record 53 starred restaurants in London, all less than 30 miles from channel controllers and commissioners in Television Centre and White City.  The nearest is probably The Ledbury in Notting Hill, at just 2.2 miles by corporation Zil.

Ed on the naughty step

Cheeky Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has been criticised by the Welsh Affairs Select Committee for being "clueless" and "flippant". He copped it for saying he'd never watched S4C, but he had seen Fireman Sam. 

If only he'd mentioned other stalwarts of the S4C children's schedule, like Bob y Bildar, Peppa Pinc and Pingu.

Where is he ?

The latest former News of the World executive to come under scrutiny in the current round of stars complaining about phone hacking is Greg Miskiw.  He left News International in 2005, from his base in Manchester, and his name was on a News of the World contract with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. Now it's being suggested he's the "Greg" marked by Mulcaire in corner of various other documents about investigations.  

Greg seems to have risen through reporting and subbing at the News of the World.  He found a way into Warsaw in 1982, at the start of Solidarity, by covering the Poland v England Under 21 game in March that year.  Later as a sub in 1993, he was part of a group that spoofed Chief Sub Lou Yaffa (moonlighting from the Daily Mirror in Manchester) with a whole series of fake wire stories about his beloved Newcastle United FC, at the end of a shift.  It was convincing enough for Lou to think about changing the whole edition.

Miskiw takes credit for co-ordinating the paper's coverage of the sting by "fake Sheikh" Mazher Mahmood on Sophie Rhys-Jones, Countess of Wessex, in 2001. In the same year, Greg had to pick up the pieces with a young hack who left under stress after being made to dress up as Harry Potter by Rebekkah Wade and Andy Coulson.   The transcript of their conversation provided a Miskiw quote which is everywhere on the web "That is what we do - we go out and destroy other people's lives".

In 2003, he was criticised in an employment tribunal for "cavalier and irresponsible behaviour" to crime correspondent Peter Rose. 


Greg joined the Liverpool-based Mercury Press Agency in 2005 as news editor, but there's no sign of his name in that role on the website now.  Greg wrote a piece about a Ukrainian "plague", worse apparently than swine flu, for the Sunday Express in 2009.   His current whereabouts are hard to confirm, but one Ihor Miskiw, with an address very close one once held by Greg in Manchester, was named in bankruptcy petition at the end of 2010 by HM Customs and Revenue.  

Meanwhile, there's no new detail on Ian Edmondson, suspended by News International just before Christmas.

Suddenly, the phantom was gone

There are many runes to read in the departure of Erik Huggers, Director of Future Media & Technology, from the BBC, and from my distance I won't call all of them right - but it looks like victory, in part, for the old guard, and a return to the way things were.

Some people in Microsoft were allegedly both surprised and pleased at the hiring of Erik, in May 2007, and Sharon Baylay, in May 2009.  Erik's total BBC package last year was £407k. Sharon's was £376k.  Both stood to lose substantially from the move to close the executive FURB scheme, topping up their pensions. Both, if they had stayed, would be responsible now for cutting 25% of their departments - Sharon's from a very low base.  In the heady speculation of change at the end of last year, as Sharon departed, and Lucy Adams and Peter Salmon left the Executive, our Erik - whose management style was sprung from one glossy powerpoint created every six months - was said to see himself as a possible successor to Mark Thompson.  Clearly, over Christmas, something changed.

Before the division of Future Media & Technology was created in the Thompson re-structure of 2006, "technology" was king of all kit, equipment and software, the inheritor of the old "Engineering" division. Now, under John Linwood, the technology old guard, who love circuit breakers, buzz bars, flood wiring, system architecture and arguments about bit-rates for transmission, have got control of their toys back. But at a price - John is off the top board, reporting to Chief Operating Officer Caroline Thomson (now with one less rival to succeed Mark).  John, though he has Microsoft in his deep background, flies helicopters. And probably has his own soldering iron.

The software/I-player side of the operation goes to Ralph Rivera, who does get to sit on the Executive. He'll be surprised at the elevation, having only joined in October, with a background largely in computer gaming.  Staff will be looking forward to the declaration of his salary level.

After the policy of letting a thousand flowers flourish online, there are still some hard things to be done. Journalism online has already been constrained, with the creation of the Byford Gap, and will take hits in the cuts to come. They've also lost design control to the new central style police - one success for Huggers. 

But Vision, under Jana Bennett, have now wrested back control of their online propositions -and Audio and Music Interactive sails on trying to make tv out of radio.  Is my theory of a single "output" controller going to emerge from "town hall" meetings about how to make 20% savings ?

Architecture mirrors life

In an uncanny mirror of some public sector cuts, Arup have announced that their restructuring exercise is complete, and they have closed 670 posts from a total of 4,000 in the UK.  Just over 16%. 

From Building Design.

I've started so...

The BBC Trust has confirmed that it's a giant road-sweeping bureaucracy, with the tactical turning circle of an ocean liner, and needs reform.

Sorry that should read...  The BBC Trust has confirmed which BBC services it will review in 2011....
These are: Radio Five Live, Radio Five Live Sports Extra, BBC News Channel, BBC Parliament, BBC Local Radio and Asian Network. The Trust will begin its reviews of Radio Five Live and Five Live Sports Extra early in 2011, followed by a separate review of the BBC News Channel and BBC Parliament.

Surely Radio Five Live and Sports Extra should be reviewed after the move to Salford ?   It's all very well talking about remits, etc, but the presenter line-ups in both news and sport will change, and that often means the style and content of the programmes they host will change.

The BBC Executive has said it wants to close the Asian Network, and is supposed to be working on alternative proposals to serve that audience. What's the point, Sir Michael ?   BBC local radio is at the beginning of a year of severe retrenchment, with five stations experimenting with more shared programming.  That was a response to 16% cuts - now DG Mark Thompson wants 20% - so more of the same is inevitable.  In the spirit of transparency, is it ok to tell us the cost of these reviews ?

No comment

Listening less

It'll be getting a bit twitchy at Bush House.  Sister service BBC Monitoring at Caversham has just announced a net loss of 54 posts over the next two years, to respond to an FCO cut in funding of £3m each year. That takes the listening post to 2013/14 and the comparative comfort of licence fee funding.

54 jobs from a total of 450 worldwide is a cut of 16%.  Monitoring started at Evesham in 1939 just before the outbreak of war, with 50 staff tuning in to wire services and radio broadcasts from across the Channel.  In 1942, numbers had grown to 500, and the operation moved to Caversham Park, near Reading.  I've visited once, in 1973, and little was done to dispel the belief that US experts were also somewhere in the building.

In theory, the information produced is supported by "customers" - but they are largely the Foreign Office and the BBC.  The list of languages transcribed remains extensive, but you'd have to be pretty suspicious, surely, to want transcripts of Icelandic, Creole, Finnish and Afrikaans broadcasts, wouldn't you ?

Sages are forecasting announcements about World Service next week.

Hamster Wheel

It's spinning now for dear Vanessa, with her first Radio 2 show under her belt, from 0500 to 0630, then Radio London's phone-in, 0900 to 1200, a lie down, then pre-record the next day's Channel Five show, broadcast at 1100am Monday to Friday.  Oh, and knock-off a newspaper column for the Express.

"I'm feeling fairly buoyant but I don't know how much of that's adrenaline or a certain kind of shock. I got to the Radio 2 studio at about five past four this morning and I've scarcely stopped talking since. I can hardly remember my own name and now I have to write my newspaper column. So far my voice is alright but this is day one. Day seven or eight, who knows ?", she tells Radio Today.

She'll have top quality guests to keep her grounded on the Channel 5 show; this week there's Liz McLarnon, Hayley Tamaddon, Mylene Klass, Zoe Salmon and Big Brother's Josie Gibson. That's what I call laying down the gauntlet to Piers Morgan......

Peer review

The two brains of Mark Damazer are having a moment or two.  After last week's savage attack on David Beckham in the Evening Standard, his blog as Master of St Peter's College, Oxford, reports on a tour of student accommodation.   It's not clear why the tour was necessary, unless there have been rumblings from the JCR about size and quality.

Here's an extract from Mark's un-subbed thoughts on one, slightly off-site, room.  "It impressively matched expectations of what a student room should be – crowded and non-miminmalist. All the room has en suite showers etc. I am in danger of sounding like an estate agent  – but all in all I have found the rooms at St.Peter’s quite a lot better than I had contrived (for no good reason) to imagine".  

Blimey, it's like the early days of News 24.  I think he means non-minimalist, and that all the rooms have en suite showers.  But you never know with Mark.

Working couple

While Piers waits for launch on CNN today, the current Mrs Morgan has been earning beer money as a Royal expert on the NBC Today show.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Ready to move into....(V2)

First - an apology. Without checking, when I saw that the BBC was offering "creative space" to rent in White City (in Property Week) I went off on a familiar rap thus "The property strategy of the BBC as we approached the turn of the 20th Century was based on the certainty that we build; others will follow.   Thus the almost complete White City site (with its attractive concrete yard in front) boasts two low rise buildings next to the three ziggurats of White City 1, the Broadcast Centre and the Media Centre.  The expectation was that indies and facilities houses would be breaking down the doors to rent space at good prices within a flat white/pinot grigio of the BBC's channel controllers and commissioners.


It hasn't happened.  The indies prefer Soho, Notting Hill, Clerkenwell and Camden. The two buildings on the dark, west side of the campus, beyond Tesco, along the road where BBC staff drive but dare not walk, have been used as decant space while cards are shuffled in the main buildings - but that's about all."  

What I wrote next was wrong. The BBC is not trying to market them as  “affordable and flexible” workspace for small creative businesses. The BBC is instead marketing space in buildings opposite TVC - we used to call them Centre House. The Media Trust charity will be the first organisation to move in, and will base 60 of its staff there.  Running the project is developer TCN, which describes itself as "the brave and playful dog in the European real estate market". So the buildings are advertised as Ugli. As in "Ugli is the new way of working...maybe not beautiful on the outside, but bursting with inner loveliness and potential for your business".

Hope I've got it right this time. 

Stand down studio - roll vt.

Piers Morgan's tactic for his CNN interviews is to prerecord them - so that both parties can be made to look on the ball through editing, and he can try to drum up pre-publicity with teaser quotes.

This (spoiler alert) is apparently the best bit of edition Number 1 with Oprah Winfrey.  Her worst career moment was the box-office failure of her movie "Beloved." It sent her into what she calls a "macaroni-and-cheese-eating tailspin."  Winfrey starred as a former slave in the 1998 film based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. It had the  misfortune to open the same weekend as the slasher film, "Bride of Chucky".   Sadly she told the same story to the LA Times in December.   And Fox News the same thing in 2008.   And People Magazine the same thing in 2006.


And on that bombshell, I stick to my view that he'll be doing book and film promo interviews like all the rest of them by late February, and maybe even "experts" like poor old Stephen Sackur on Hardtalk by the end of his first year.

Van Bacon

Richard Bacon's never on air when Arsenal are playing.  Spooky.

Threading ?

ITV team

Adam Crozier is shaking the management tree at ITV.   Mary Fagan, who worked with Adam at Royal Mail, finds a berth as group communications and corporate affairs director.   She was deputy city editor of the Sunday Telegraph before taking on the task of polishing the posties' image.   Though it's not quite a like-for-like replacement, Ruth Settle, who's on maternity leave, moves out. 

Chief strategist Carolyn Fairbairn, with a pedigree that includes McKinsey, Downing Street and the BBC, is also moving on at the end of the financial year. Magnus Brooke, another ex-BBC staffer, hangs on. The former speech writer for Greg Dyke and Mark Thompson is Director of Regulatory Affairs.  But Simon Pitts moves up into a re-titled role of strategy and transformation manager.  (Transformation ? How very 90s)   Simon has heady experience of "media issues at the European Parliament in Brussels" and has already been given custody of ITV's Five Year Plan by Adam.

Earlier in the week, Fru Hazlitt, hired by Adam last June, took a surgeon's knife to the company's commercial department.  With Paul Dale in place at Technology, will Adam and his new team get the organisational change at Gray's Inn Road (and around the country) that he sought at the FA and Royal Mail ?

Staying on track

Miliband, D may be sniffing for work round the BBC, but Michael Portillo is holding on, at least to Great British Railway Journeys.  In conversation with The Railway Eye, he's pretty sure the series will be re-commissioned - and reckons there's enough material for at least two more runs.  

UK Tweeple stats

London is the Twitter capital of the world, according to rankings by numbers of users assembled by Twittergrader, but Manchester is a clear second in the UK.  Of course, on Twitter you can make up where you live.   Maybe some of those Tweets are really coming from Salford. 

UK Rankings in the Top 100

1 London        

35 Manchester           

59 Glasgow

70 Edinburgh 

71 Birmingham

84 Leeds                   

86 Bristol

97 Liverpool

100 Brighton

Found via How Do, with much more analysis at Social Media Manchester. 

Buzz buzz

A busy day at Egton House. Andy Parfitt reveals that Radio 1 will mount a two-day music festival "in East London" to mark the 2012 Olympics.  And it needs at least 18 months to plan, so Jason Carter becomes Event Director, Radio 1 and 1Xtra 2012.

Carter tells Music Week “Content will be broadcast across BBC platforms and we will hope to deliver some very special artist moments at the main event, to be broadcast on other networks including BBC Radio 2 ”.

Brilliant. BBC buzz word 2010/11 "deliver" right in there.  And a new sighting "very special artist moments".  Are they songs, by any chance ?

Job creation

While The Times estimates BBC jobs losses to the end of the licence-fee deal at 2,000 to 2,500, Radio 1 and Ixtra seem to have got two new posts under the wire. Piers (very urban) Bradford becomes their first Commissioning Editor.  Joe Harland becomes Short Form Content Editor

He will, apparently, have "full editorial and creative responsibility for the chapterisation and atomization of existing and new Radio 1/1Xtra audio content for online pages, syndication on external platforms or repackaging for further broadcast. He will be responsible for building and leading an expert team who develop the best practice production techniques from across the industry, maintaining the high quality content – leading and championing new formats, developing and implementing an innovative house style, as well as coordinating Visualisation at a Senior Level. He will also ensure that the that budgetary control and planning is clear and be responsible for creating, spotting and maximizing opportunities, ensuring that the he distribution of content is smart and coordinated"

No, I haven't a clue either, unless it's about making clips; only missing the buzz word "delivery". Apparently he needs an expert team, so more jobs to come. Found on the excellent Radio Today site.

BBC FoI Odds and Ends

Halal meat is on offer at the BBC's canteens in Elstree, Maida Vale, Henry Wood House, Bush House, Television Centre, the Broadcast Centre, the Media Centre, White City, Dumbarton and Pacific Quay.

Menus for the restaurants at TV Centre on September 9 2010 are here.  "Classics" now features something called "Live Action Cooking".  Not clear how the other dishes are produced....

Outcomes of BBC disciplinary hearings since 2006
Alcohol dependency programme 3
Cancelled 10
Compromise Agreement 13
Disciplinary 4
Dismissal 26
Final written warning 77
Informal action 4
Monitoring of performance 1
No action taken 27
Not Upheld 2
Partially Upheld 1
Resignation received and accepted 10
Summary Dismissal 15
Verbal warning 32
Withdrawn 16
Written Warning 118
(blank) 16
Grand Total 375 (One way or another, the BBC parted company with 64. Ed) 

There's a refusal to answer how many of these related to expenses claims, on the grounds it would take too long, which seems odd, given the detail above. 


During the period 1st September 2009 and 1st September 2010 the BBC had 1928 people on unpaid work experience placement. They worked on average for 13 days over an average of 3 weeks each.



MediacityUK: The organisational structure on site within and across these Divisions has not yet been finalised. (Not long now, surely ? Ed)

As at 30 September 2010, 34 BBC staff were in receipt of a salary greater than £200,000 per annum. This
figure excludes those staff we consider ‘talent’ – for example presenters and news

The Executive Board has ..agreed to give up one month’s basic salary in each of 2010/11 and 2011/12.
We are also consulting on removing the pension supplement which some members of the Executive Board
receive in lieu of pension contributions above the pension salary cap (currently £123,600) and intend that
these are removed by the end of March 2011. (This is taking some time, apparently. Ed).  Overall these reductions will lead to a reduction of at least 20% in the total remuneration of each executive Director.

The BBC's real reality show

It can be a career-defining moment at the BBC - when the boss says "We want you to head up a workstream".  Hard to say no, and, of course, if you do it well, then you're on the road to becoming a great panjandrum.  The difficulty is coming up with the "right" answers - and do you really want to be a panjandrum anyway ?   These are the nine Apprentices fingered by Mark "Lord Sugar" Thompson and Caroline "Karren Brady" Thomson, and their nine tasks, which should save £700m in total.


1. What will audiences want from the BBC in a converged, fully digital world ?
Rhodri Talfan Davies, head of strategy and communications at BBC Cymru /Wales.  Jesus College, Oxford, then Cardiff School of Journalism, and into the BBC in Newcastle, Manchester and London, rising to Head of Programmes, BBC West.  Then the outside world on two pioneering but ultimately forgotten brands, Home Choice and NTL.  Now re-born in Wales on salary band £70-100k, and copped all the expenses for the 2009 Christmas Party in Cardiff. Dad Geraint (Jesus College Oxford, then the Western Mail) was Controller, BBC Wales from 1990 to 2000.

2. What should ‘doing fewer things better’ mean in Journalism ?
Bob Shennan, controller of Radio 2.  Bob (Corpus Christi, Cambridge, Hereward Radio, Peterborough, then BBC Sport) came back to the BBC after a year with Channel 4 as Director of their doomed radio project, filling the gap at Radio 2 left by Lesley Douglas, and the Ross/Brand affair.

3. What should ‘doing fewer things better’ mean in Television ?
Craig Oliver, controller of English, BBC global news. Joined ITN as a trainee after Cardiff School of Journalism, then came to the BBC in 2006.  Now in Peter Horrocks' stable, and watching what happens as Helen Boaden moves into the Byford gap.


4. What should ‘doing fewer things better’ mean in Radio ?
Ceri Thomas, editor of the Today programme since 2006, having first joined the BBC there as a producer from LBC - sojourned with Radio 5 Live news programmes for a while on the way up, running Breakfast with Julian Worricker and Victoria Derbyshire.  Useful experience as a market-trader.

5. How can we become a simpler organisation, easier to work and partner with ?
Phil Fearnley, general manager, news and knowledge. "Commercially and operationally minded entrepreneur" (Linkedin).  Exeter University and Coopers & Lybrand/Ernst & Young.  Then Atomic Tangerine, Smashed Atom, BBC Technology, iRights, Huge Entertainment and back to the BBC with FM&T.

6. We want to attract, retain and inspire brilliant people at the BBC, what should they expect from the BBC and what should it expect from them ?
Cheryl Taylor, controller, comedy commissioning.  After flirting with drama and video editing, joined the BBC as a researcher on Comic Relief, then Channel 4 comedy and Hat-Trick, before rejoining Auntie running comedy outside London, before stepping to controller in 2006.  Self-confessed fan of toilet humour.

7. How can we continue to spread creative opportunity and investment across the UK but eliminate duplication and wheel-spin ?
Luke Bradley Jones, managing director, bbc.com. From Bloomberg Business Week "Mr. Bradley-Jones is responsible for devising Worldwide's strategy to pursue opportunities around the world and, working alongside management teams from all divisions, to drive BBC Worldwide into new markets. Mr. Bradley-Jones has over 7 years of consulting experience focused exclusively on the media and telecommunications sectors. During that time, he has gained extensive international experience, working in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and South America (including a year based in Brazil), advising clients such as TV New Zealand, Johnston Press, Brasil Telecom and Vodafone"  I feel I know him already; he probably wrote the question.... ...


8. What should the next chapter be in the productivity story at the BBC ?
Adrian Van Klaveren, controller, Radio 5 Live. Keeping in touch on the train ?


9. How can we forge a clearer, more productive relationship between our public service and commercial operations ?
Kim Shillinglaw, commissioning editor, science and natural history. Wadham, Oxford, then Observer Films and into the BBC.  "I'm constantly accused of saying what I think too often". 

Under the sun

It's really difficult to innovate in television drama. Here's the latest list from BBC tyros Ben Stephenson and his new master, Controller BBC1 Danny Cohen.

One Night, 4 x 60 event drama, written by Paul Smith, made by BBC Drama Production

A gripping event drama set over one blistering hot summer night when nerves are frayed and tensions ride high. Each episode is one character's stand-alone story which tells the events of that night from four different points of view. 

Anyone remember Talking to A Stranger by John Hopkins ?  Judi Dench, Maurice Denham, Margery Mason and Michael Bryant ?
 

Call The Midwife, 6 x 60 series, written by Heidi Thomas (Upstairs Downstairs, Cranford), made by Neal Street Productions

Adapted by Heidi Thomas from Jennifer Worth's best selling memoir, Call The Midwife is a moving, funny, colourful look at midwifery and family in 1950's East End London.

The District Nurse, created by Julia Smith and Tony Holland, for Nerys Hughes ?

Bound (working title), 6 x 60 series, written by Julie Geary (Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, Lip Service), made by Tiger Aspect Productions

The series is about of a group of women who have lost the men in their lives to Her Majesty's Pleasure.  Expect crime and jeopardy, family and sacrifice, and love and romance

Any resonance with Widows, by Lynda La Plante ?

Morton, 8 x 60 series, written by Frank Spotnitz made by Kudos Film and Television

This is the story of a spy with a bull's eye on her back, a human target unable to trust anyone at any time, even the man she loves. She is, quite literally, running for her life.

Man In A Suitcase becomes Woman ?

Great Expectations, 3 x 60, written by Sarah Phelps (Oliver Twist, EastEnders), made by BBC Drama Production

Sarah Phelps' bold new adaptation will give us the heart and guts of Dickens at his very best. Suspenseful and thrilling, epecially for next Christmas on BBC One.

I rest my case.

Making a list

It's sometimes hard to see what's slowing down in the BBC's online offering - apparently facing 25% cuts.  Today, Auntie launches a "beta" home page for the 300 or so blogs written by various worthies around the corporation, with a design using the understated BBC Global Experience Language, this week's preferred template.

The ambition ? "to create a page which showcased the very best BBC blogs but also made it easier for you to discover new content which you might not know about".   A sort of index.  Let's hope it didn't take too many meetings to create.

As all bloggers know, what really gets the creative juices flowing is the stats.  BBC page stats are not transparent, so my award-winning suggestion is for the BBC to publish two things - the monthly unique users for each blog, the salary paid to each blogger, and the estimated time spent, to the nearest hour, in creating each post.  That might make cutting the blogs down to 225 much easier.

New Year message

DG Mark Thompson faces the troops today - mostly by video-link from the yet-to-be-operational Media Cafe along the side of the new Broadcasting House extension.  Will shots of the BBC's most expensive investment inspire or irritate the staff ?   (My personal irritation is more at a decision to label the building New Broadcasting House, when the BBC owns the daddy and original brand Broadcasting House.  And New Broadcasting House is in Manchester. And... I could, and do, go on).

And will discussions about efficiencies/cuts/vision etc be derailed by events ?  Mark Thompson is 53. Miriam O'Reilly is 53.

Political relocation

The Libdems are hoping to move from their current London HQ at No 4 Cowley Street to new premises. There's no spin yet on whether they are downsizing, empty-nesting, looking for somewhere cheaper, using Phil and Kirstie etc.  Glinsman Weller have been asked to help with the disposal of the Grade II listed Cowley Street building.

I'll waive my finder's fee; they should consider 4 Millbank, where the BBC's mighty political operation will be shrinking by at least 16% soon.  A short sub-lease ought to be more than adequate for the future requirements of the Libdems.