Doing less at BBC tv...

Craig Oliver, who's left the BBC to help with style and communications issues with the Coalition, left not just his role at Global News, but the leadership of the workstream "doing fewer things better in television" in the deeply-engaging Delivering Quality First process.

This workstream will undoubtedly grab the headlines when its recommendations are published.  The leadership of the group has fallen to 36 year-old Matthew Postgate, who has been the Controller, BBC Research and Development since 2008.   He's probably the first in that role with a BSc in Politics from Bristol University. His techie ambitions seem to have a emerged with a brand and digital business agency called Rufus Leonard. He joined the BBC in 2003, as an executive producer, but the biogs give no record of what he produced. In 2007 he emerged under Erik Huggers as Head of Mobile. It seems to be around that time that he dropped spectacles for contact lenses.

Google him and you'll find an impressive list of conferences, speeches and papers. I enjoyed the title of "Programming Culture in the 2nd Generation Attention Economy" but found the abstract hard going.  Other offerings have talked about the need to "move from programme making to experience creation".

He's on £150k, and as well as travel to conferences, he has to visit BBC R&D North, leading the advance guard at MediaCityUK.  His most recent expenses show three trips between London and Manchester, all priced at £262, which is expensive for a standard class return.