14 mentions for "arts", 8 for "creative", 5 for "bold" or variants. In a strategy speech that paid tribute to the importance of Shakespeare, Mishal Husain and Sir David Frost, there were also 4 "brilliants", 2 "amazings" and one "fantastic", from BBC Director General Tony Hall.
On the anxiety side, the stretch target for additional savings to pay for a raft of initiatives means finding £100m for each of the next two financial years, beyond the existing DQF 20% target (which includes 4% for reinvestment). Mere spits, you might think, when the BBC's annual income is just south of £5bn. But, for example, the content spend on Radio 4 is £91m; and BBC Three gets £89m - and Tony has promised there'll be no cuts to channels.
The other target with a number attached is to double the reach of BBC Global News - to half a billion a month by 2022. When first collated, in 2004, under Mark Byford, the combined audience for BBC World Service, BBC World (tv news) and the BBC news website abroad was put at 190m; last year it hit 256m, so it's a genuine stretch, requiring a real upward curve.
Apparently, putting more video on the front page of the website will do the trick. I'm not sure that the BBC isn't a little too late to this party. I'd also like to point out that BBC World News (the tv service) available in 26 million homes 24 hours a day in the States, has yet to make the US cable news top 100. The table is propped up by Al Jazeera America.
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