The scenic view

I've always been interested in the lives of Panorama reporters. I once was involved with helping them move from Lime Grove to White City. They wanted private offices in the new open plan building - I looked round their space on several occasions and could see nothing going on in any offices, let alone stuff that needed to be done in private. So we tried to block that, but the editor went to the top, and 12 offices for pairs of producers and reporters were built, requiring major work on the air-conditioning.  The offices were stripped out by the next editor.

The current editor of Panorama, Tom Giles, is featured in the Guardian. He says that next year he's down to five "core" reporters, Paul Kenyon, Shelley Jofre, Richard Bilton, Raphael Rowe, and John Sweeney, plus freelance Jane Corbin, to produce the London-based share of 40 half-hours a year, plus seven one-hour specials.  Tom says the average cost of Panorama runs at £225k per hour; he gets £500k from BBC1 to fund special investigations, and £6.5m a year to run the rest - that figure has apparently been protected by DG Thommo from DQF cuts.

51 Panorama programmes from the last twelve months are available online. Here's the list of reporters who've done more than one show.

Shelley Jofre 4
Richard Bilton 4
Declan Lawn 4
Vivian White 4
Paul Kenyon 3
Jane Corbin 3
Samantha Poling 3
Raphael Rowe 2
John Sweeney 2
Tom Heap 2
Hilary Andersson 2

The 51 shows also include two repeats - a 1966 report by John Morgan in California, and an 1975 programme about Sandhurst.