Monday, October 7, 2013

Width

Just over 24 hours to go, and it looks like Tony Hall's speech on the future of the BBC will have to be renamed.

"Where next ?" has become "Whatever next ?" as a relentless cascade of announcements and initiatives tumble from the pen of Godric and the PR team.

Since Friday, we've got 20% increased spending on tv arts programming; a relaunch of the online culture initiative, The Space; a video channel for Radio 1 on the iPlayer (perhaps not unrelated to this morning's launch of Capital Xtra); a personalised BBC iPlayer app; an online potpourri of the speech programming, to be called Open Minds; Elmo and the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street to appear on CBeebies next year; a trawl for women presenter talent for local radio; and Mishal Husain making her debut on Today, featuring her Malala Yousafzai interview (a collaboration with Panorama). Surely some of all that should produce column inches ?

There's always a dark side. Steve Hewlett worries about funding models, with this clear shift towards individual (measurable) consumption from broadcast. The Mail on Sunday chose to highlight details of the NUJ dossier on bullying (now nine months old), and former BBC trusty Jennifer Saunders has gone a little off message in Glamour magazine....

"They went corporate instead of being what they should be which is a national resource which trains people and curates the best programmes, encourages talent and provides great news. They just became an executive run place for idiots."

"It's just so weird that they could put people off coming into the building the way they do now. How is Alan Yentob still allowed in the building? There are questions that need to be answered!" 

"I remember when it was fun to be there and everybody in the building looked like they really knew something and were good at something. Now they have things like massive workshops on decision making and you think: 'If you're a head of department at the BBC and you don't know how to make a decision, why are you in that job? That's the only thing that you have to do!"

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