Wednesday, July 31, 2019

The language of sounds

BBC Sounds needs a Project Manager, based in Glasgow. You'll be joining a hard-working and passionate team WHO DON'T QUITE WRITE ENGLISH LIKE OTHER PEOPLE....

"Our mission is to be the future of BBC radio, setting ambitious goals over the next few years to double audience reach and quadruple listening. You'll collaborate with the Product owner, Lead Engineer and UX Designer to deliver product increments and user value within a cross functional delivery team.

"As an embedded Agile Project Manager you will be responsible for the delivery of solutions from idea to implementation, helping the team to perform at the highest level, unblocking any impediments and the successful planning and execution of initiatives.

"In our highly agile environment the team will rely on you to help them organising the chaos that can
surround delivery teams by establishing team routines and ensuring that the prioritisation and focus is
clear. This includes agile coaching and continuously optimising the team’s practises and processes to
allow for consistent delivery of value to our audiences.

"We’re a hard-working and passionate team who are supportive, care about each other, and promote a
healthy work-life balance; for example providing opportunities for flexible working hours."

Rate for the job

Say it quietly. BBC staff get a pay rise of 2.68% in August, as the final part of a three-year deal. Under the new, allegedly simpler pay and grading structure, those in the lowest quarter of their job pay range, get an additional 1.5%.  Presumably move a few others into the lowest quarter ?

I'm not sure Gary Lineker knows, but there's a new deal on weekend working, settled by arbitration after the unions and BBC failed to agree. Eligible employees who have worked more than 26 weekend days (which means a minimum of four hours on a Saturday or Sunday) per year get an extra day off.

The NUJ reports there's little progress on a new policy on "acting up", agreed as part of the Terms and Conditions settlement, and, spookily, Lord Hall has cancelled an August meeting. Maybe he's been building up leave.

Holiday Town Parade

The next outreach project from BBC News, dropping normal news judgements for the week beginning 23rd September, will be " We are Stoke on Trent".

BBC Director of News Fran Unsworth was born in Newcastle under Lyme, essentially part of the modern Stoke Megalopolis; mum Phyllis is still there. She went to an independent day school, St Dominic's, a former convent school just down the M6 in Brewood. 

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Driven

The finale of Love Island 2019 was watched by an average of 3.63m according to overnight ratings. Previous episodes have consolidated closer to 6m with catch-up...putting the show ahead of Eastenders.

We're just past the 51st anniversary of Nigel 'Quatermass' Kneale's prescient TV play, The Year of The Sex Olympics. The plot followed 'hi-drives' in government and the media commissioning reality porn to distract the 'low-drives'. It was made in colour, but only a black and white version survives.

ITV have now commissioned a Winter Love Island.

Boris Booster

Blimey, etymology. Boosterism is usually associated with the puffy promotion of American and Canadian towns from the 1880s onwards.  Some argue that the activity, if not the name, go back to the competition between Greek city states, which maybe where Boris Johnson came across it.  The simple verb 'boost' seems to have started in the States around 1815, "to lift or raise be pushing from behind". Compare the Scottish use :"to move, to drive off, to shoo away". 

Historians also point to the Anti-Corn Law League, working out of Manchester in the 1830s and 1840s, led by free-trader Richard Cobden and promoted by the 'boosterist' writings of the Manchester Guardian and the Manchester Times.

Show with no home

In what looks like a first for BBC Studios, they are developing a drama series without either the BBC as a broadcast partner - or, indeed, any other broadcast or platform collaborator.

Studios are keen to show they can make good stuff that doesn't tickle the taste buds of the current, money-conscious and conservative BBC commissioners - but so far that's meant working with and for ITV, Sky, Channel 5, UKTV , National Geographic and BBC America.

This new collaboration is with Luc Roeg's Independent, getting writer Neil Forsyth to create a series out of Howard Marks' autobiography, Mr Nice.

Monday, July 29, 2019

Peak Newsnight

There's a clampdown on sharing overnight ratings. So it's worth noting the odd success belatedly. Newsnight on Monday 15th July averaged a remarkable 922,800.

It featured Emily Maitlis trying to kebab Rod Liddle. I hope that wasn't cause and effect in boosting viewing numbers.

From the heart

Lord Patten, speaking to Peter Hennessey on Radio 4 this morning, revealed that he submitted his resignation as BBC Chairman from the cardiology unit of the Royal Brompton Hospital. He was still recovering from major heart surgery when he wrote to then Culture Secretary Sajid Javid.

Belfast

Here's how the ID:SR (Sheppard Robson to me and you) team want to spend £77m at Broadcasting House in Belfast. A new mini-atrium link sits between the two big existing wings, and most of the secured car-parking on the Linenhall, east side becomes a plaza.















As far as I can see, the west-facing Ormeau Avenue facade, imposing and secure, is unchanged. Transparency only goes so far at the modern BBC.

Verbiage

I'd like to offer a modern redefinition of 'turbocharge' as used by the Boris Johnson administration. It should mean 'to re-use waste gases, forced back into a media interview under pressure to keep things spinning ever faster'.

Sunday, July 28, 2019

First steps

We're now just a month away from the launch event for Strictly Come Dancing 2019. Many column inches will be filled with 'speculation' about this year's contestants - yet, by now, these 'celebrities' will have all been signed up, started crash diets and exercise, and begun learning at least how to strike a dancer-like pose for the photo-shoots.  So at least they know.

Still, it fills newspapers. So far, most are agreed that Anneka Rice, Dev Griffin, Emma Barton, Jamie Laing, Michelle Visage, Mike Bushell and Radzi Chinyanganya are on board. Who, you ask ? I thought this used to be a celebrity show....

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Whip round

The DCMS, under Nicky Morgan, has become something of a social club for former Whips.

Minister of State is former Assistant Whip Nigel Adams, MP for Selby and Ainsty, replacing Margot James who resigned rather than serve BoJo. Adams left Selby Grammar School at 17. Aged 26, he set up Advanced Digital Telecom in 1993 with a £20 a week grant via the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. It re-sold phone and mobile network time and billing services to businesses. It was later sold for £3.1 million to JWE Telecom. He subsequently acquired NGC Networks in 2006, a business in which he continues to be a shareholder. He gets the job of delivering Boris' full-fibre Breakfast Britain.

PPS 1 is Matt Warman, MP for Boston and Skegness, another former Assistant Whip. Before politics, Matt (37, Haberdashers' Aske's and BA English Literature, Durham University) wrote on digital technology for the Telegraph from 2004 to 2015. He replaces Mims Davies who moves to the DWP with Amber Rudd.

PPS 2 is Baroness Barran (60, Benenden School and King's College, Cambridge). As Diana Barran, she was an investment banker and set up her own hedge fund. She went to the Lords in May last year, and became a Government whip. She will be known to some Beeboids as a Trustee for Comic Relief.

Still standing, at time of writing, from the Jeremy Wright regime is Rebecca Pow.

Friday, July 26, 2019

Two places

If Strictly is still live on Saturdays, I'm not sure the people of Dortmund and Leipzig can be guaranteed an appearance by new judge Motsi Mabuse, poster girl for the Let's Dance Live Tour.


Ask the BBC

If you know the right words, listening to the BBC via Alexa has some new features. From now on, if you've linked the Alexa app and your BBC account, you can pick up on a paused programme you've been listening to, say, on a smartphone. And vice versa, via 'Continue Listening'.

You can also ask Alexa for track listings: “Alexa, ask the BBC what’s playing?” If you're listening to a series of podcasts or programmes, you can skip forward or back between episodes with “Alexa, next” or “Alexa, previous”.

And moving within programmes can be done: “Alexa, ask the BBC to rewind 30 seconds”, or  “Alexa, ask the BBC to fast forward 5 minutes”.

Numbers

The recent John Ware-led Panorama: Is Labour Anti-Semitic? provoked 1,593 complaints of bias against the Labour Party to the BBC. Or perhaps, as the BBC notes, some were provoked "after an invitation to complain was posted online".


Accident waiting

This isn't going away: Age UK say that many pensioners, including those who find it difficult to dress, bathe and get out of bed, will struggle with the procedure of paying or even confirming that they are entitled to a free TV licence.

Charity director Caroline Abrahams said: "The idea that more than a million over-75s who are coping with serious health and care challenges will be able to comply with a new TV licence process, having never done so before, is cloud cuckoo land. However straightforward the process, it will still defeat many of them, unless they have friends and family who can help, and unfortunately a lot don't."

"The BBC's setting up of 'visiting teams' may be designed to be helpful but that's not how most older people we have talked to have reacted to the idea. This is what happens when a government tries to outsource social policy and delivery to a body like the BBC with no experience or expertise in this field - nor with any in-depth understanding of over-75s and their lives. A slow motion car crash is a foregone conclusion if the BBC is allowed to carry on with its means-testing plan."

She called on Boris Johnson to "abide by the last Conservative manifesto and continue to fund a free licence for our over-75s."

So far, 609,000 have signed Age UK's online petition: "Together, we must demand the Government takes back responsibility for funding free TV licences for everyone over 75."

Thursday, July 25, 2019

"Staffed by kids"

Courtesy of The Spectator Diary, a view of the British media scene from former Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre.

"Research reveals that 77 per cent of millennials say they never pay for news. Having played a key role in launching the free Metro and free Mail Online, I bear a heavy responsibility for that lethal bacillus — the belief that journalism costs nothing. It doesn’t. Journalism is expensive and to argue otherwise is fake news of the most insidious kind. But then the British media generally is in a dreadful state: Sky, a great British success story, now owned by the Americans; ITV’s shares on the floor amid rumours of a foreign merger; the ubiquitous Johnston Press bankrupt; the cadavers of the once mighty Mirror and Express being asset-stripped; Murdoch’s News UK setting aside around half a billion pounds for damages to phone-hacking victims; the Guardian, with its shrill feminism and hard-left juvenilia, dependent on charity; the Standard (what sublime hypocrisy is its editor George Osborne’s support for Boris) being investigated for its financial links to a Saudi regime that murders journalists; and the BBC, staffed by kids, run by an OAP, obsessed by filling every vacant post with women and dwarfed by the streaming giants. Modesty prevents me from dwelling on one group that still flourishes. The Mail — which never hacked phones — is still highly profitable while Mail Online, the world’s biggest newspaper website, is, after years of heroic support by Jonathan Harmsworth, now making solid money from advertising."

In charge down under

Is the tail wagging the dog ?  BBC Design and Engineering is recruiting an Assistant Content Producer, who will be part of the department's "Editorial and Incubator Projects", working to "Central Editorial".

"Central Editorial is a multi-skilled team, and we work across a range of tasks and services. One day, you could be finding and promoting timely and relevant content on the bbc.co.uk Homepage and sourcing great content for upcoming seasons and events. The next, you could be finding, creating and editing images to illustrate the BBC’s Radio programmes or producing promotions on our connected TV services."

It looks like this job is designed to give 24-hour cover to the BBC Homepage, without paying someone to endure lonely nightshifts in MediaCityUK, Salford: "This role will be directly hired and based from Australia. As a prerequisite to apply, applicants must currently hold full rights to live and work in Australia via citizenship, permanent residency or another appropriate visa with a right to work in Australia to apply."

Mrs Morgan

Nicky Morgan, 46 (Surbiton High School and BA Law, St Hugh's Oxford) is the new Culture Secretary.

In June last year, she revealed a personal boycott of small BBC studios, in London and around the UK, where politicians sit for 'down-the-line' interviews, because of poor lighting. Instead, she'd decided to respond to requests for interviews by asking for crews and reporters to visit her.

“Sky’s a bit better but BBC Millbank [in Westminster] — you sit there in a kind of small cupboard with a camera pointing straight at you. It is deeply unflattering in how you look and . . . I just get a whole load of social abuse afterwards about how ugly I am.”

She was on the Public Accounts Committee in 2014, when MPs led by Margaret Hodge piled into the BBC over the failed Digital Media Initiative.

In 2016, Nicky was replaced on Have I Got News For You by a leather handbag. She'd pulled out of a long-standing booking the show at short notice claiming 'unforeseen circumstances'. It came as she criticised Theresa May for wearing £995 leather trousers in a photo-shoot; ""I don't think I've ever spent that much on anything apart from my wedding dress."

In March 2017 she responded to Tory MP Julian Knight's complaint that the BBC's Brexit coverage was "pessimistic and skewed" by tweeting it was "another attempt by leading Brexiteers to silence those whose coverage and questions they don't like #chilling". She later signed a letter organised by Labour MP Pat McFadden urging the BBC "not to succumb to pressure to skew" coverage.

In September 2018, the Today Programme asked Mrs Morgan if she would serve in a Johnson administration:  "I think I'm very unlikely to be asked but the answer is no. I would not serve in a Boris Johnson cabinet."






Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Changing platforms

If you're worried by the previous Ofcom slide, which shows moves in UK news consumption away from traditional platforms to social media, at least the BBC tops the list of where social media users turn to for news on their favourite apps.


Who news do you use ?

An interesting chart from Ofcom's 2019 survey of UK news consumption. Not all changes are highlighted by arrows.


Campaign

New signs from Radio 3 that chunky Controller Alan 'Wavey' Davey has fallen into the clutches of marketing.

Matthew Moore in The Times reports that the network is targeting "passionate minds" to increase its audience. They are, apparently, 35 to 54 year-old 'culturally-engaged' potential listeners, who are  'creative, extrovert and open'. They tend to read broadsheets, and are more likely than the rest of us to use Instagram.   Good luck with that, Al.  The next set of RAJARs are due on 1st August.

Lots of stuff

Feel the Johnsonian focus in this move from pencil-sharp BBC Editorial Director Kamal Ahmed.



They could, perhaps, update the website photo...


Focus

Are you listening, Mr Purnell ?

From Digiday "In an effort to focus its resources with fewer, more specific shows, News UK cut the number of podcasts it produces in half, to 22 last year. One year in, the result: Double the collective downloads and triple the ad revenue.

“People want high-quality, distinctive shows,” said Jimmy Buckland, managing director of Wireless Studios, which has 11 people working on audio production and monetization for News UK. “Brands like talking to passionate people. In order to deliver meaningfully for advertisers, podcast brands individually need to get to a level of scale. It’s better to have 10 shows with 100,000 listens per episode rather than 40 shows with 10,000.”

Anyone counted the current roster of BBC podcasts ?  And, in multiples of 11, the number of people working on them ?

Mai job

Mai Fyfield, former strategy chief at Sky, has acquired yet another non-exec role, this time with BBC Commercial Holdings, just a year after leaving the satellite broadcaster.

She was already a non-exec at the Nationwide, (where scammers have used her name in a widely-circulated email), and she's on the board at Roku, a streaming pioneer.

She brings nearly 20 years experience in various roles at Sky, a degree in economics from Trinity Cambridge and a masters from Tufts, Massachusetts.  Was she named after Mai Zetterling ?

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Transfer or loan

Is it reassuring that, when considering talent pay, BBC Studios can prise Motsi Mabuse from the judging panel of the German 'Strictly', Let's Dance, produced by RTL?

In fact, she may be able to do both, with the German show running March to June.

Explain Venezuela

If you can't change the output, change the meetings. BBC Editorial Director Kamal Ahmed (who, according to Rod Liddle resembles “a pencil that has been sharpened to slightly beyond its optimum length”) has turned over the tables in the News Temple and compressed two daily meetings (at 3.15pm and 3.30pm) into just one (at 3pm) lasting forty five minutes.

It looks like an attempt to wrest a little more control over story choice from the Newsgathering Planning Machine and their News Lists. Instead the conversation will focus on something Kamal calls the "Five Families" approach. If this sounds like marketing claptrap, it probably is.  The first two 'families' are uncontroversial - news diary items and original journalism.

The final three are bound up in the language of selling beans. ...

Thematic journalism (Our Passions) - climate change, the rise of China, the cost of living, mental health, big tech.

Solutions journalism (Our Utility) - how well is my local hospital doing? Can we put less plastic in the sea? Explain Venezuela.

The “crikey” moment (Our Fun) - why we are all, actually, getting happier; the child brought up in a care home who inherited a castle.


Big Will

There'll be a new-ish Chinese wall in the Shepherd's Bush home of Will Walden from today. Will, a former BBC Westminster news editor, is expected to take a lead role in Boris Johnson's communications operation at No 10.  Will is married to occasional BBC Royal Correspondent Daniela Relph.

Spurs fan Will (Elizabeth College, Guernsey and Grey College, Durham)  worked for the BBC for 12 years from 2000, moving through sport, Washington and Westminster. He was Andrew Marr's producer when the Scot was Political Editor; he was the News Editor at Millbank for six years, before Boris nabbed him to replace Guto Harri as his Mayoral Spokesman. Boris and Will were parted when he became Foreign Secretary; he's since been berthed in the Edelman PR operation, a temporary home to myriad former Beeboids.

Monday, July 22, 2019

Funny guy

Congratulations to Josh Cole, newly appointed Head of Comedy at BBC Studios, from his current role commissioning at Sky.

Arsenal fan Josh has a sideline running gay club nights, sometimes with a Jewish angle. One, at Dalston Superstore, was called Cock and Roll; then there was Hard Cock Life, at Shoreditch’s Ace Hotel every few months; and currently, if irregularly, Buttmitzvah (various venues).

Everybody out

Radio 2's wakes week starts on Monday 5th August...

0500 Vanessa Feltz: Nikki Chapman sitting in
0630 Zoe Ball: Amol Rajan sitting in
0930 Ken Bruce: Gary Davies sitting in
1200 Jeremy Vine: Vanessa Feltz sitting in

Sunday, July 21, 2019

Customer journeys

I'm taking a guess that a new BBC post, with a job description that, over six pages, doesn't mention 'Over 75s', is designed to sort out the unpleasantness of collecting licence fees from elderly people who haven't paid for one since they were 75.

"The Head of Service Development will develop contact centre and field services requirements and processes lead and be accountable for providing business assurance in regards to the quality of service being provided by the BBC’s outsourced operation. They will act as a subject matter expert in regards to operational projects. They will challenge in order to drive improvements to customer journeys."

The postholder will have to ride shotgun on Capita's 'outreach team', as first mentioned by Director of Policy Clare Sumner to the DCMS Select Committee. “We are recruiting a specific group of people who will pay support visits to this group and help them understand what the system is and help them apply. They will be a different cohort to people who enforce the licence fee.”

How many sympathetic ways can you think of to say 'cough up' ?

O tempora

The relationship between the BBC and the Government will be very different from Tuesday.

The next UK Prime Minister re-branded Auntie the "Brexit-Bashing Corporation" on 30th June. As Boris Johnson's campaign for the Conservative party leadership developed, he dropped early attempts at gravitas, consistency and clarity, and now seems ready to giggle his way through difficult interviews (cf Andrew Neil) as if he were back at Eton applying for Balliol. As Prime Minister, he can from this week, like predecessors, choose his media appearances to suit himself.  And it's a reasonable guess he'll be concentrating his efforts on gags for PMsQs, whilst a Johnson Cabinet sallies forth on the boring stuff like 'policy'.

So, over at Today, we have a show run by Sarah Sands, who jumped into the lake at Chevening with fellow guests at Bojo's birthday party when he was Foreign Secretary. Since the referendum, the programme has had some testy exchanges with ERG members who will not forget their treatment. The exception is likely to be failed Brexit Secretary David Davis, who spookily always seemed to turn up in John Humphrys' bit of the running order.

At Newsnight, will Emily Maitlis be as fearless as before with a resurgent Liz Truss and others? Will she remain BBC News' hostess of choice for big political events ?

At Editorial Policy, the current opinion polls need fast action to re-define the balance of political appearances, if only in readiness for a snap election. After weeks of 'blue on blue' debate, who are current affairs producers going to define as "The Opposition" to BoJo's strategems ?

Higher up the tree, what next for Editorial Director Kamal Ahmed, who in 2018, briefed his fellow BBC hacks that Brexit, at the very least, would be 'a bit rubbish'. Mr Ahmed, tipped to give Lord Hall his first Board level BAME member in 2020, will need the full length of his backbone in the months ahead. 




Saturday, July 20, 2019

Earners

Katherine Rushton in the Mail has found two BBC names signed up for a conference on 'Global Citizenship', run by a company that helps people obtain passports from other countries. Fiona Bruce and Simon Jack will no longer be attending the event (£1,500 per delegate) at the Rosewood Hotel, Holborn, London, in November. It's not clear whether or not they really knew they were going; it's possible their agent, Alex Armitage, may have put the conference in their schedules.

The Mail says guidelines for presenters with sidelines like this will be re-inforced.

Before your very eyes

I'll just leave this one here...


Ranking

Median remuneration at Ofcom, 2018/19 £57,548
Median remuneration at the BBC, 2018/19 £44,000
Median remuneration at the DCMS, 2018/19 £42,091


Friday, July 19, 2019

Charlotte's web

An upbeat Charlotte Moore, Director of Content at the BBC, in an article for the 60th anniversary edition of Broadcast, on her guiding principles:

"First, we’re committed to creative excellence and supporting the British production community. We aren’t driven by commercial imperatives, we don’t need to commission for international audiences and we already have an amazing back catalogue, so our only guide is to continue to take creative risks and commission the best shows.

"And, to reiterate, we’ll keep doing this in every genre – we won’t abandon genres that don’t generate international sales.

"This means we’ll work with independents large or small who want to bring us their best ideas. Last year, we worked with more than 300, we spent just under 90% of our development funding outside of the BBC group, and commissioned 36% of our business from indies with a turnover of less than £10m.

"Second, we’ll continue to invest in the best new talent. The BBC of 2019 must reflect the Britain of 2019. We’ll keep seeking the next Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Stacey Dooley, Guz Khan, Tim Renkow or Mobeen Azhar.

"We’ll improve our support for diverse talent behind the camera, not only with our current schemes but with new opportunities that will be announced shortly.

"Third, we’ll continue to put the reinvention of BBC iPlayer at the heart of our plans. When it launched in 2007, it was revolutionary, but we now need to step up the pace of development to keep up with the market.

"Making sure we have an iPlayer that can compete on a level playing field with SVoDs and act as a showcase for the best British content is key to our future, especially if we want to remain relevant to young audiences. These are the viewers of the future and it’s critically important they feel they are getting value from the licence fee.

"Challenges lie ahead but, with so much talent available, brilliant creativity across the industry and an audience that is hungry for more, there has never been a more exciting or exhilarating time to work in TV."

Minority stake

Mmm.  Britbox, the very late re-invention of the BBC's Project Kangaroo, could be a nice little earner - for ITV. 

It starts off with ITV holding 90% of the equity, and the BBC 10%. The BBC has an option to acquire up to 25% in total over time. ITV will have the ability to bring additional investors on board. ITV appoints the majority of the BritBox board. The management team will be led by Reemah Sakaan, Group Director ITV SVOD, responsible for making editorial decisions about the service content while also ensuring alignment with ITV's and the BBC's branding and editorial policies. Reemah reports to Kevin Lygo, ITV’s Director of Television, who has overall commissioning responsibility for BritBox.

The BBC, like other contributors, will be paid "market rate fees" for its content, should Reemah fancy it. You will pay £5.99 a month.

Programme and party combined

It's always difficult getting end-of-show-party dosh at the BBC, but the producers of This Week pulled quite a stroke for a 'political' programme. The final episode was an hour and 10 minutes long (presumably pulling in twice the normal budget), and featured expensive (in copyright terms) filmed sequences, pastiching Grease; a wedding band; and a live and watered audience. All from Central Hall, Westminster (basic hire starts at £8k).

Fiscal illusions

It reads as a passage written with more than an economist's glee. In yesterday's Fiscal Risks report from the George Osborne-created Office of Budget Responsibility, comes a new Primary Spending Risk...

"The likely cost of the BBC’s recent decision to means-test free TV licences for the over-75s by
linking it to pension credit – thereby potentially prompting a material number of those
currently not taking it up to do so – poses a fiscal risk that we had not previously envisaged.
It is unusual for a government to delegate parameters of welfare policy to a broadcasting
company to save money. The unintended consequence is likely to be that the link to pension
credit receipt will raise welfare spending by more than bearing the remaining cost of free
licences reduces BBC spending, so the budget deficit will rise not fall. "

That summary may seem pointed enough, but there's loads more schadenfreude in the full analysis of the consequences of Osborne's cute 2015 attempted trammelling of the BBC. 

"Free TV licences for households including someone aged 75 or over were introduced in 2000,
with the BBC being compensated for the foregone revenue by the Department for Work and
Pensions (in effect transferring some of the BBC’s funding from licence fee receipts to general
taxation).

"In 2006, the licence fee as a whole was reclassified as a tax, making the free licences
in effect a tax relief. All BBC income and spending is treated as part of the public sector finances.
In the July 2015 Budget the Government announced that compensation from DWP would be
withdrawn progressively, so that from 2020-21 the full cost of free TV licences would be borne
by the BBC. As part of that agreement, the Government gave the BBC responsibility for the policy
beyond the term of the then current Parliament, legislated for in the Digital Economy Act 2017.
We have assumed to date that the BBC would maintain the current system of free TV licences, so
that the reduction in compensation would reduce BBC spending and the budget deficit.

"However, the BBC launched a consultation on the future of the concession in November 2018,
and in June 2019 announced its decision not to maintain the current system but to focus
eligibility on households containing someone aged 75 or over who receives pension credit. A
report prepared for the BBC by Frontier Economics estimated that maintaining the current
regime would cost the BBC £745 million in 2021-22, but that means-testing it in this way would
reduce the cost to £209 million, after accounting for additional administration and compliance
costs but assuming no increase in pension credit claims. Announcing its decision, the BBC Board
estimated the full cost at £250 million, factoring in “implementation costs including compliance
with the new policy and possible increased take-up of pension credit”.

"The scale of any likely increase in pension credit claims is highly uncertain. If the £40 million
increase in costs estimated by the BBC Board were accounted for entirely by higher take-up, this
would imply around an extra 250,000 claimants, costing around £850 million depending on
their characteristics – more than the original move was expected to save the Government. And
since the BBC will spend the £500 million or so it saves by means-testing, the overall cost to the
public finances will be even greater relative to the assumptions in our latest forecast.

"DWP estimates there were around 470,000 people aged 75 or over who were entitled to the guarantee element of pension credit in 2016-17 but who did not receive it, almost 40 per cent of the total number entitled. These had an average entitlement of £65 a week, resulting in around £1.6 billion of unclaimed benefit among this age group.  So around half of that group would need to start claiming to wipe out the expected savings from transferring responsibility to the BBC and the BBC cutting its domestic spending by a corresponding amount. But if the BBC spends what it saves via means-testing free licences, that fraction would fall to only a sixth.

"Experience from 2003 to 2008, when DWP undertook extensive activity to encourage pension credit claims, suggests that very large increases in take-up are unlikely, but more than a sixth is quite possible. The critical difference this time is that potential claimants are facing a potential loss via the licence fee, whereas then they were only forgoing income they had never claimed. During this period, take-up of guarantee credit initially increased, but plateaued at between 70 and 80 per cent of those eligible. DWP narrowly missed its 2008 target of 2.2 million guarantee credit claims and fell further short of its 3.2 million target for pension credit.

"Part of this disconnect between the then estimates of entitled non-recipients and the ability for
DWP staff to identify them was thought to be shortcomings in the estimation methodology, in
particular mis-recording of benefit receipt by respondents to the family resources survey (FRS)
and the understatement of savings. But methodological improvements since then, including
matching FRS responses to administrative data, have increased rather than reduced estimated
non-take-up, partly as a result of better identification of disability benefit receipt, which further
increases the numbers entitled to pension credit (and the amounts they receive).

"The publicity associated with the latest change will also be different, with more scope for the BBC
to use its channels to advertise pension credit than DWP had with a limited communications
budget. The BBC has stated its aim to encourage take-up of pension credit, saying:

“… We want to raise the visibility of Pension Credit, which Age UK cites as one of the
reasons why people don’t claim, and have already written to charities and older people’s
groups to work together to do this. We have started a public information campaign which
includes using our airwaves and writing to all 4.6 million households setting out the new
scheme. We hope that pensioners will consider claiming as they could then be eligible for
around £2,500 and other benefits as well as a free TV licence.”

"DWP took a similar approach, but eventually concluded that “it would not represent value for
money to repeatedly press unwilling eligible people to take up their entitlement.”

"Today's over 75s might, however, have different experiences and awareness of the benefit
system, and attitudes to claiming, than their counterparts 15 years previously. This may increase
the likelihood of take-up. Between 2012-13 and 2016-17 the proportion of eligible people aged
75 or over taking up the guarantee element of pension credit has fallen by almost 10
percentage points. This is likely to reflect a combination of the lack of proactive take-up
promotion by DWP and the gradual reductions in pension credit as a whole as the savings credit
element has been eroded in value. If this fall in take-up were reversed, there would be around
120,000 extra claimants of pension credit, at an annual cost of around £400 million.

"The BBC’s announcement appears already to have had an effect. New pension credit claims
rose from 7,600 in the four weeks to 7 June (immediately prior to the announcement) to 9,300
in the four weeks to 4 July. After allowing for the fact that no new claims were made on the late
May bank holiday, that represents an increase of around a quarter.

"Potential knock-on effects of the BBC’s decision extend beyond pension credit. In particular the
act of claiming pension credit might prompt additional claims for attendance allowance,
particularly among those who receive advice from third parties. And for those renting their
homes, claiming pension credit could increase claims for housing benefit, though given the
higher level of take-up of housing benefit among pensioners (perhaps due to it often being paid
through a reduction in rent rather than as a benefit), the risks here appear smaller.

"In summary, it is relatively unusual for a government to delegate parameters of welfare policy to
a broadcasting company in an attempt to save money, and it is perhaps not surprising that this
may have unintended consequences. The BBC’s decision to means-test free TV licences via a link
to pension credit receipt may well raise welfare spending by more than it reduces BBC spending, particularly once the BBC spends the money it saves by means testing. The net effect on the
public finances would therefore be to push the budget deficit up not down.

"Government policy towards the licence fee in recent years also highlights the fiscal illusions and
policy risks to which hypothecated taxes or charges of this sort are prone. In principle the licence
fee is a charge that people choose to pay for the right to receive broadcast services, but the link
between the amount that licence holders pay and the money that the BBC spends providing its
share of those services has been weakened first by requiring it to pay for part of foreign policy
(the World Service from 2014) and now part of welfare policy. Given the fate of other attempts
to reduce the generosity of parts of the welfare system in recent years, there is also a risk that the
Government will step in to prevent or ameliorate the losses for those due to lose out. "

Thursday, July 18, 2019

More, more, more

The slow news offering, Tortoise, seems confident enough about its future to keep hiring. In the past month, it's secured the services of Alexi Mostrous from The Times, and Basia Cummings, from HuffPost. Also at their Eastcastle St, W1, HQ is Eleanor Scharer, billed as "Partners and Programming". Eleanor followed James Harding from The Times to the BBC.

And there's more to come.


Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Fractious

There were a number of prickly exchanges between Tories on the DCMS Select Committee and the BBC DG Lord Hall this afternoon.

The DG clearly wished observers to infer that the decision to bow to the imposition of Over 75 licences in the last Charter negotiations was made between George Osborne and the then BBC chairman Rona Fairhead (later a Tory Minister). His colour chart edged to magenta at any suggestion that the BBC was not 'honouring' a pledge in proposing a narrowing of free licences to those in receipt of Pension Credit; he insisted that both Osborne and Culture Secretary John Whittingdale knew that the BBC would have to test its continuation as a universal benefit for Over 75s - confirmed two years later in the Digital Economy Bill.

Damien Collins, chairing the Committee took delight in the vagueness of BBC published minutes at the time; if Lord Hall was as apopleptic then as now about the wrongness of this condition added to the Charter, why was not this choler reflected in the record ?  Maybe that'll encourage better minutes in future - they couldn't possible be less informative than they are at the moment.

New finance chief Glyn Isherwood got a little roughed over on the staged reduction in payments received from the Department for Work and Pensions, which means the BBC coughing up £450m this financial year for the benefit, before taking full responsibility in 2020/21. He needs more practice dealing with the farmyard economics of Philip Davies MP. Mr Isherwood was on surer ground with continuing attempts to resolve the Personal Service Companies mess with the HMRC, which he approached with admirable frankness.   

Departure

Some head-scratching at MediaCityUK this morning, where one of the popular sheet anchors of the BBC operation there, Ian Bent, has resigned.

As Head of Radio Production, North, Ian runs a department that makes programmes for Radio 4 (You and Yours, Countdown, Round Britain Quiz), Radio 3 and The World Service. He has worked as a reporter, presenter, producer and editor on programmes across Local Radio, Radio 2, 3, 4, 5, 5 live, 6 Music and World Service.

Radio 4 hasn't been generous with Salford in the past, re-calling some editions of Woman's Hour back to London, to 'save money'.

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

Fast mover

The press release said Mohit Bakaya would take up his role as Controller Radio 4 in August; the Radio 4 commissioning site has him already in place, with Kirsten Lass acting in Mo's old role as Commissioner Factual.

An app for it

What news of media thought-leader Ashley Highfield, once of Microsoft, the BBC and Johnson Press ?

He's been re-invented as "Henley Partners", which seems light on accuracy, given he's the only Partner, and it's based in his Kensington W8 home. He's come up with an app, to help small businesses target newspaper/online ads. He's largely full of himself.

Only at the BBC

Machines are going to watch and listen to old BBC programmes, so they can work out what to recommend to us punters who've shared the deepest and darkest sides of our broadcasting preferences by signing up for iPlayer and BBC Sounds. That's bound to work, eh ?  Nonetheless, a bunch of John Lewis vouchers to the wordsmith who came up with 'enrichment engines', only previously used in Formula 1.

"We have ambitions to increase our understanding of our content catalogue using machine learning based enrichment engines to generate new metadata."

"The Platform team are developing two content enrichment capabilities; enrichment engines and infrastructure to support enrichment engines. The enrichment engines need to generate metadata based on inputs such as transcripts, audio and video for use in recommender systems, search engines and more. The supporting infrastructure needs to enable builders of engines to be able to easily integrate them into the BBC’s content pipeline, allowing for experimentation and measurement of impact."


Thought through...

This week, as last week and the week before, BBC America seems to be showing close to 48 hours of Star Trek episodes.

Apparently, this time, it's not just by chance.

"This week brings the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon, one of the most historic global moments in living memory. BBC America is celebrating with a full week of space-themed programming including Doctor Who and Star Trek marathons, and a slew of classic sci-fi movies including Gravity, Galaxy Quest, and all four Alien films."

Monday, July 15, 2019

Brum honour

Radio 4 Woman's Hour presenter Jane Garvey kitted out to receive a Doctorate from her old university, Birmingham. Low res, dinky etc - maybe a better shot will turn up...

Upselling

Cheeky old ITV are offering tours of their rented studios at Television Centre which are home to GMB, Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women, plus their green rooms, make-up areas etc.

Full adult price for a 90-minute visit - £27.50.  I bet someone at BBC Studioworks will be thinking a little harder about the small print of future long-term contracts with rivals.

Full bench

The BBC cast list for the Culture Select Committee Session this Wednesday afternoon has grown like topsy, swelled further by Lord Hall appearing twice in the list...

Lord Tony Hall, Director General, BBC
Sir David Clementi, Chairman, BBC
Clare Sumner, Director, Policy, BBC
Glyn Isherwood, Chief Financial Officer, BBC
Lord Tony Hall, Director General, BBC
David Jordan, Director, Editorial Policy and Standards, BBC
Patrick Holland, Controller of BBC Two, BBC

Parochial

I seem to have stirred up a right old hornet's nest with tales of transmitters not doing everything we expect of BBC regional services. It used to be the sort of story Fyfe Robertson would cover on the old Tonight Show.

Apparently if you live at one end of Cole Lane, Ockbrook, you get the BBC West Midlands signal from Sutton Coldfield and learn about crime in Telford, 60 miles away. If you live at the other end, you get BBC East Midlands from Waltham-on-the-Wolds and crime in Nottingham, 10 miles away.

Why they don't just go round to their neighbours baffles me.

Sunday, July 14, 2019

Neil

Just for completeness, the Andrew Neil Interviews (of Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson) were watched by an average audience of 1.9m on BBC1 - an 11.5% share of available tv viewers at 7pm on Friday. The unambitious set, with an office acoustic, had three named producers, a programme editor in Andrew Alexander, and an Editor in Rob Burley. No sign of a credit for the deft guiding hand of Newsgathering executive Jonathan Munro.

It's available on iPlayer for a year. The majestic wrangling-to-the floor of Bojo over Sir Kim Darroch by Mr Neil (wearing a small gingerish sporran on his head to mark the occasion) will be watched over and over on training courses. But students should also look out for Neil mutterings of his own opinions of other Bojo answers, which were not up to BBC standards.

Shopfronts

According to the chatboards of TV Forum, next week should see a big move on BBC News towards the new Reith font family as standard across tv and online output.

It will be the first time News has been 'on brand' across the Nations and Regions since the last time there was a command-and-control approach to BBC journalism, under Mark Byford. How long will this line hold, and which regional programme will be the first to breakaway with their own graphc designs for titles and studios ? The North of England has always been a good bet for going it alone, whether on the East or West of the Pennines

Two things

Apologies for a blog-free day yesterday. I was at a social event attended mostly by people over-50 and more. I usually get a bit of BBC hassle, and expected grief over the Over-75 licence fee manoeuvring; but instead got it in the neck for two topics which the BBC ought to be able to solve.

1: If you pay your licence fee, and sign your broadcasting preferences away to the BBC by opening an iPlayer or Sounds account, why can't the BBC make both fully available to you when you're on holiday abroad ?   Netflix knows no such boundaries (though it might, post-Brexit). If all the people with dodgy VPN accounts came back to the BBC properly, that would help with audience figures, and provide added value for the licence fee. Make it happen.

3. If you live on the east side of Leicester, why should you be condemned to regional news programming from the West Midlands ?

Friday, July 12, 2019

Breakfast news

Congratulations to Richard Frediani, newly-appointed Editor of BBC Breakfast, in succession to Adam Bullimore.

Richard (King Edward's, Lytham; 2.2 in Economics from University of Portsmouth; post-grad diploma in broadcast journalism from the University of Central Lancashire) started at Red Rose Radio (left), then joined IRN in London. ITN followed, then Head of News for Granada, and then back to ITN.  He is the King of the Pendolino, travelling from his home in Penwortham, just across the Ribble from Preston Station, and a die-hard Preston North End fan.

Richard's dad, Umberto, this year decided to retire from the fish and chip business, putting his eponymous friterie in Watery Lane, Preston, on the market for £625k.

.

Ear peace

We'll probably have to wait til the end credits to see who was in the gallery for The Andrew Neil Interviews this evening on BBC1. Will there be an 'Executive Producer' in the shape of natty Newsathering boss, Jonathan Munro (left, spotted in Ukraine last month) ?

At least the stress of these specials will be over. A proposed Question Time special featuring Johnson and Hunt seems to have collapsed. As, probably, would the audience figures.

Tassel-tastic

Huw 'Fingers' Edwards dressed up to receive his honorary fellowship from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff.

Thursday, July 11, 2019

Could do better

The British re-invention of Top Gear, with Paddy McGuinness and Freddie Flintoff joining Chris Harris, is doing better than the previous Matt LeBlanc-led trio on BBC2, but it's a different story on BBC America.

Paddy, Freddie and Chris got their first run-out at the centre of the Sunday night schedule last weekend, and failed to make the list of Top 150 Cable Shows. At 150th was evangelist Joel Osteen, with an audience of 169,000.

Leadership competencies

Yet another confessional piece from former HR Director Lucy Adams, previously leader of BBC People, this time on the myths of 'talent management'.

"I had a detailed leadership competency matrix with tons of behavioural indicators and an accompanying assessment tool to help leaders understand what they lacked. I had succession plans for all the senior roles with ‘ready now’ and ‘ready in a few years’ all documented. I had a nice expensive High Potential programme with a respected business school. All my leaders had their own personal development plan. Talent Management perfection !

"I continued to deploy them with the unquestioning faith of an HR zealot, despite the lack of any real evidence that they were working. My ‘hi-po’s’ still failed to get promoted or left. My neat succession plans often failed to materialise. My leaders continued to get confused about how to complete my 9 Box Grids. Employees still complained that their talents weren’t being recognised. No one could remember what the leadership competencies were and the people who got promoted often didn’t demonstrate them anyway !"

Recruiting

Private Eye and the FT bring us the news that Nick Pollard, formerly of everywhere including Ofcom, has joined Chinese state broadcaster CGTN as a consultant, ahead of their planned launch of a UKnews operation at Chiswick Park.

Perhaps Mr Pollard is on a daily rate; Nicola "Under-30" Keaney is Deputy Director of Newsgathering for CGTN.


Fast turnaround

In a break with previous tradition, the DCMS Select Committee under Damian "Flyhalf" Collins will tackle the BBC on its Annual Report before the summer break.

The session, at a so-far-unnamed location, comes next Wednesday afternoon. At DG Lord Hall's side will be chairman Sir David Clementi, and two first-timers - Chief Financial Officer Glyn Isherwood and Director of Policy Clare Sumner (there to defend the BBC's solution to the Over-75s licences conundrum).

Normally, the BBC side get to relax in Tuscany before this regular ordeal. They'll have to be doubly careful next week - what chance Damian turning up as Culture Secretary in a BoJo adminstration ?

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Mohit

Mohit Bakaya, the new Controller Radio 4, improves the BAME diversity of James Purnell's top team, but is less helpful on the socio-economic background stuff, having studied PPE at Keble College Oxford. That achievement perhaps should be balanced by making it through now-demolished-Pimlico School.

Mohit joined the BBC as a Production Trainee in 1993.  He worked on the Radio 4's arts programme, Kaleidoscope, before going on to launch Front Row in 1998.  In 2001, he become editor of Night Waves, before becoming a Radio 4 Commissioning Editor in 2008.

He has two children by his first marriage, to antique dealer Josephine Ryan. He now lives in Balham, with Victoria Shepherd, who he married in 2013; Victoria was producing Nightwaves in 2008. Victoria now writes and occasionally produces Gardener's Question Time and the Kitchen Cabinet (for indie Somethin' Else).

He's on the board of Tamasha Theatre, "a diverse cohort of bold and playful theatremakers". In 2013 he commissioned Grayson Perry to deliver the Reith Lectures. In 2016 he made GQ's List of 100 Most Connected Men.


Jonathan

The first Controller, BBC Sounds, is Jonathan Wall, 47 this year (Altrincham Grammar, BA media and communications, Birmingham Polytechnic/University of Central England, and Diploma in broadcast journalism, Falmouth).

2019 is clearly his breakthrough year; he's been Controller Radio 5Live for six years, but has only just joined the over-£150k list of senior managers, at £165k+. It looks like he'll stay domiciled in Knutsford, spending three days a week in London, and 'the rest of the week' (is that two days ?) based near his 5Live chums in MediaCityUK.  Winter weekends will still be given over to the under-13 Panthers at Egerton FC.

It's an edgy time for 5Live staff, with the station once again appearing on a list of savings the BBC might have to mark if forced to cough up for all Over-75 tv licences. But at least the job is going to be advertised.

Jonathan is a BBC lifer, he remembers listening to the launch of 5Live when he was studying at Falmouth. He started a few months later as a news and sport broadcast journalist at Radio Humberside.  He tried a spell as a researcher in TV Sport, before joining the 5Live sports bulletins team in 1998.

As Deputy Controller, he talked about the challenge of keeping the 5Live weekly reach above 6m. It hasn't been there since June 2014.

What gave Jonathan the edge on podcasts ?  Football-loving James Purnell probably noted the 2017 5Live successes of "Flintoff, Savage and the Ping Pong Guy" and "Beyond Reasonable Doubt", and the more recent "You, Me and the Big C" and "That Peter Crouch Podcast"; it was 5Live that birthed "Brexitcast", and claims over 50 other offerings.  Jonathan made a trip to the States in 2017 with Bob Shennan to talk to podcasting companies.


Lorna

Lorna Clarke, 57, is the BBC's first Controller, Pop Music, with responsibility for Radio 1, Radio 1Xtra, Radio 2, Radio 6 Music, The Asian Network - and other music output, taking a "strategic vision across the portfolio", including BBC Music and music television. The job doesn't seem that different from Controller, Radio & Music, once occupied by Bob Shennan, so it'll be interesting to see where the salary ends up. 

Landing the job was quite an achievement for Lorna, currently on a six-month career break from her role as Head of Production, Radio 2 and 6Music. Hot inside money was on Ben Cooper, the Controller of Radio 1, 1Xtra, and the Asian Network, who she leapfrogs. Will Ben cast his eyes elsewhere now ?

Lorna started off in radio via a course in broadcast journalism at Westminster Poly, which fixed placements at Radio Cornwall, Metro Radio and Radio Humberside, then got a job with Radio London/GLR. A spell as a junior reporter at Metro followed, then two years with the Caribbean Service of the BBC at Bush House. She was part of the production team that launched Kiss FM, and eventually got a seat on the board. She was headhunted by the BBC in 1997 to become Head of  Mainstream Programming for Radio 1. In 2012/3 she studied with Copenhagen Business School, acquiring a diploma in Business/Managerial Economics in the Media. She's a Trustee of the grant-giving Performing Rights Society Foundation, and a Development council member of The Rio, the Dalston picture palace.  She lives in Stoke Newington.

When she arrived at Radio 2/6Music, she found only one BAME member in her team; now she's proud to say there are 5. But, she told students at Bournemouth earlier this year, "I don't see any Lornas coming up behind me". 

Sorry

Dear reader,

First, an apology. Two weeks ago, I spoke to a Genuine Straight-Up Radio 4 Insider on your behalf, and he said "Buy Moes"; I failed to pass on that intelligence.

So Balham's Mohit Bakaya becomes a key part of Team Purnell, taking the Controllership of Radio 4 despite being 52 and despite being part of the network's management team since 2008. It is, as predicted, a balanced scorecard. Yesterday's trio of top appointments also featured Jonathan Wall, the lowest paid of Mr Purnell's remaining network controllers, clearly seeing the role of Controller, Sounds as an improvement on Controller 5Live and 5Live Sports Extra. Lorna Clarke, currently Head of Production for Radio 2 and 6Music moves up to Controller BBC (Pop) Music.

Mr Purnell has made inroads on diversity in these appointments, and will be expecting his champions to follow through. Expect more diversity as Mo selects the next presenters of Any Questions ? and The News Quiz.  Expect more white male anxiety in the daytime schedule of Radio 2, where sit three presenters aged a total of 186 years.

A little more on each appointment in subsequent posts....

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Listener

We noted that Sarah Beck left the BBC last November as Director of Monitoring, after moving the UK operation from the wide open spaces of Caversham Park to the crammed upper floors of Broadcasting House. There was no subsequent job ad, so one presumes the post was closed, and surmises there may have been redundancy.

Now, spookily, a new post has emerged - Editorial Director, BBC Monitoring.

Meanwhile Sarah is now Chief Operating Officer of the Said Business School at Oxford University.

Box of delights

Still no sign of a joint-BBC-ITV-streaming dongle. Meanwhile Britbox in the States adds exciting new content for July, including, er, seasons 5 to 8 of Taggart; two Peter Cushing Dr Who Movies, and coverage of various Royal Horticultural Society shows. Hold me back, mother.

(BritBox is now available for $6.99 per month—after an introductory free trial period—on Roku®, Apple TV 4th Gen, all iOS and Android devices, AirPlay, Chromecast, and online at www.britbox.com. BritBox is also offered as an Amazon Channel available for Prime members on all Amazon Video capable devices and platforms including Amazon Fire TV and tablets, as well online at www.amazon.com/channels/britbox.)

Frozen

Yet more Eliasson...


Monday, July 8, 2019

No dotted lines

In 2011, I was slightly surprised that the BBC does not have an organisational chart. It appears that the simpler BBC promised by DG Lord Hall is still impossible to describe in a diagram, from this latest refused Freedom of Information enquiry... 

“Do you have an up to date organizational chart available?”

With regards your request for an organisational chart, under section 1(1) of the Act, we can 
confirm that the BBC does not hold the information sought by your request. Due to the size and 
changing nature of the BBC we do not have an organisational chart for the entire organisation. 

All thumbs

Sun showbiz editor Dan Wootton thinks that BBC Religion Editor Martin Bashir has dispensation to appear on the forthcoming 'celebrity' edition of XFactor.

It would be quite a year for Martin. He's seen The O'Jays live and become a grandfather. He will presumably be playing selections from his 2010 album Bass Lion.


Let's all go to Iceland

BBC Media Centre 8.7.2019

Acclaimed Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson is the subject of a new BBC Radio 4 documentary (9 July), the first in a three-part series highlighting artistic responses to the Arctic environment.

BBC Media Centre 23.6.2019

Alan Yentob follows Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson in preparation for his landmark 2019 show In Real Life at London’s Tate Modern. Eliasson is an entrepreneurial artist and the mastermind behind many projects spanning galleries and further afield.

Jonty's jaunt

BBC business correspondent Jonty Bloom has left the building.

Jonathan Peter Bloom left King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford, with just two A-Levels and joined an American bank in the City, re-sitting his exams via evening classes. He then went to Keele University, studying astronomy and international relations and working on student radio. His first job was providing business news for BT City Call in 1986. In 1988 he joined the BBC as business reporter.

Mrs Bloom - Karen Hoggan - is a business presenter for BBC World Service, on Newsday. The couple both act as volunteer guides at the Wimbledon Windmill Museum, not far from their home.

RDA

Round the turn of the century we had BBC Choice, and a show called The Recommended Daily Allowance, presented by John Gordillo.

It came live from Television Centre, and used an outside camera to track Huw Edwards leaving the building after presenting the Six O'Clock News. Here's a little of Huw's fruity side.


Sunday, July 7, 2019

Clearly out

The naughty old All-England Tennis Club is testing the BBC with this year's in-vision sponsorships. Rolex, makers of watches, can be reasonably associated with scoreboards and match-timings; Slazenger is pretty inevitable in many shots; Robinson's may have moved on from barley water, but they're still with Wimbledon; and Polo Ralph Lauren have been making uniforms for umpires, line judges and ball boys and girls since 2006.

2019 sees Oppo appear, without explanation, on the dark green/grey surrounds of the Centre Court. It's the mobile phone brand of the Guandgong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Corp, manufacturers of the Find X phone. It boasts a motorised camera lens, and very fast charging technology. It's relationship with tennis is unclear.

2019 also sees American Express offering themselves as a journalistic source, with branded boxes of "Game, Set and Facts" popping up during matches. A box too far, BBC. Think it through.
Would you let Wonga do it for snooker ?  Or Tesco Bank for Match of the Day ?


Mystery shopping

Observer/Guardian radio critic Miranda Sawyer asks today "What is happening with Radio 4? A glance at the current schedule shows a station treading water. We’ve had the same programmes at the same times for years now, and though each is individually strong, such stasis means that there is no ooh-what’s-this? refreshment, no reach for a new audience, no excitement for a changing future...... I love Radio 4 but find myself flicking to other stations and podcasts very frequently. It often seems to be broadcasting from another age."

Let me guess. It's the first serious clash between Lord Hall and the former politician he brought in to secure the Charter, James Purnell.

Radio 4 is packed with more heritage brands than a Fortnum and Mason grocery hamper. From the Oxford Thick Cut Marmalade of Farming Today, through the Del Monte Yellow Cling Peaches in Syrup of You and Yours, via the Ambrosia Tinned Rice Pudding of The Afternoon Play, onto the Cracker Barrel Kraft Cheese of Analysis, the basic products haven't change much since the 70s. And Lord Hall remembers the trouble that was caused by previous controllers who simply moved the products to different shelves, never mind trying to sell the Vesta Curries, Wraps and Quinoa of Rollercoaster, Anderson Country and The Afternoon Shift. 

Lord Hall's watchword is re-invention, but his instinct is heritage, with a probably-Queen Anne-listed home in Henley on Thames. (Henley probably still has a grocery shop with all that stuff.) James Purnell is Bethnal Green; his biggest problem is with the smell and disturbance from nearby fried chicken shops. He thinks he's on a roll with BBC Sounds, and has driven the candidates for the Controllership of Radio 4 to provide their ideas for a radical revamp of the schedule.  Lord Hall's probably trying to choose the least disruptive...

Palazzo News

James Cusick, formerly of The Independent, raises questions about Boris Johnson in a piece for the website Open Democracy. He notes, in particular that Boris was a guest of Evening Standard owner Evgeny Lebedev at the Palazzo Terranova in Umbria, and at dinner there when Katie Price exposed her upper body. 

Can we expect follow-up pieces on the BBC ?  Mr Cusick says Sarah Sands, now with Today, and Amol Rajan, now fearless part-time Media Editor and BBC Presenter, were regular guests. The residence boasts eight suites, and can be rented in whole or in part via Petersham Properties.

















Meanwhile, staying with exciting holiday news, the BBC's top paid journalist Huw Edwards tells the Mail: "We’ll probably end up in Greece or Turkey this summer though I tolerate the heat less easily these days."

Saturday, July 6, 2019

Warleggen it

Slightly puzzled by the way BBC1 schedulers have treated Poldark over the years. The original series went out from October 1975 into the New Year (16 parts). The second series, again of 16, followed in October 1977.

The 2015 reboot started in March 2015 (8); series 2 was moved to September 2016 (10); series 3 and 4 started in June 2017 and 2018.

Now we learn that the (final) series 5 starts 14th July, running right through school holidays - normally when Controllers 'burn off' less valuable dramatic stock. Let's see.

I.D.

There's a marvellous arrogance about some BBC departments. There's a new job ad, looking for an "SSR Manager - Occupational Health Lead".

I understand Occupational Health, and for that element of the job title, the job ad and the full role specification are both quite clear. But nowhere in either is there an explanation of SSR.  A search of the BBC's wider website comes up with a news story about Saving Scotland's Red Squirrels. A search of "About the BBC" points me to a 2014 BBC Research Department paper about Soundscape Renderer and GitHub. A search of Wikipedia offers a wide range of options, from Solid State Records, a Christian record label, via Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa, Sirius Satellite Radio, through to solid state relay.

Eventually I tracked it down, in an archived job ad from 2016: "The BBC Safety, Security & Resilience (SSR) Group exists to help get programmes made for TV, Radio and On-Line: by finding safe and healthy ways to enable the creation of the distinctive and world-class content that our audiences demand; by ensuring that our people, productions and premises remain secure and on air; by being imaginative, innovative and challenging; and by delivering value for money."





Is it twice as good ?

BBC Sounds has shot up in the ratings on Appstore - from 2.1 to 4.4, out of 5. The move, spotted by Podnews, follows a BBC request to re-set the ratings, because of improvements to the app. So the current figure only reflects 645 ratings.

Over at Google Play, the app is stuck at 2.6 out of 5, from 5,650 reviews. Apparently Google doesn't re-set ratings, but gives more weight to recent reviews.

Scrolls

It's not been a bumper crop of honorary degrees for the BBC at the end of the academic year (unless readers can put me right).

Here's BBC Scotland's Donalda Mackinnon dressed up as a Doctor of Letters from Glasgow Caledonian University....


Friday, July 5, 2019

Yet another presenter

In between everything, BBC DG Lord Hall found time to attend the General Assembly of the European Broadcasting Union in Oslo. And more time to prepare a Melvyn-Bragg-type brief in order to conduct a platform interview with, er, Reed Hastings, co-founder and CEO of Netflix....


Triumph

A successful launch party this week for Kate Weinberg's crime debut, The Truants. Slebs in attendance included Giles Coren, Jez Butterworth, Richard Curtis and Eva (daughter of Tim) Rice, who was very enthusiastic...



How soon will Kate be earning more than hubby James 'Tortoise' Harding ?

Binary choice

The BBC News new technology show, Click, marks its 1,000th edition with an interactive edition.

While you're waiting for options to load, ponder whether you've ever seen presenter Spencer Kelly and Prime Ministerial candidate Jeremy Hunt in the same room...


Concession time ?

A poll conducted for Age UK says 83%  of those surveyed want the Government to keep funding tv licences for the over-75s.

Charity director Caroline Abrahams said “Our research shows that the next Prime Minister will find himself on the wrong side of public opinion unless he agrees to abide by the manifesto commitment his party made to keep funding TV licences for the over-75s.

“There is still time for Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson to say that they will keep the promise their Party made to the public”.

The research was conducted via an internet omnibus survey by Kantar for Age UK. A sample of 1,559 GB adults aged 18 plus were interviewed from June 25 to 27.

A Government spokesman said: “We’re very disappointed with this decision – we’ve been clear that we want and expect the BBC to continue this concession.

Thursday, July 4, 2019

Flash

At last, a little more alacrity from Ofcom. Both Lord Hall and Sir David Clementi sighed and rolled their eyes in the House of Lords last month about how long it's taken to get iPlayer listings extended from thirty days to a year.

But now the regulator seems to have come to the wicket on 'channel prominence', promising to recommend that Parliament legislates to get public service broadcasters some prime visibility on smart tvs, streaming sticks and the like. This comes less than a month after a strong speech from Lord Hall asking Ofcom to hurry up.

Maybe the speed has something to do with the fact that Ofcom Director of Content, Kevin Bakhurst, faces the Lords Communication Committee next Tuesday.

Been anywhere nice ?

Some more BBC expenses have been published. A number of people have been to Boston, but don't always seem to strike the same flight deals. Head of News Output Gavin Allen got there and back for £1252.792; TV commissioner Thomas MacDonald spent £2119.01; and Head of Newsgathering/TV Specials Producer Jonathan Munro £2571.22.

Other tasty flights: Director of Children's, Alice Webb went to Chennai, from Manchester via Heathrow, for £2993.66. She did, however, boast the smallest hotel claim, for a night in the Beachfront, Cannes for just £37.37.  Chief Architect Jaytin Aythora got to San Francisco for £1,095.71 - but then spent £380 a night on three nights in the Hotel Spero. World Service big cheese Jamie Angus took a return to Lagos, Nigeria for £2711.02.

Company Secretary Phil Harrold and Director of Nations and Regions Ken MacQuarrie managed two nights in the Intercontinental, Geneva, at £247 a night. Factual Commissioner Alison Kirkham had three nights in the CitizenM, Bowery, New York at £236 a night. Director of Sport Barbara Slater had two nights in the Novotel, Monte Carlo, at £281 a night.

On the domestic front, shed a tear for Director of Workplace Alan Bainbridge, managing property outside London from his base in, er, Chesterfield. Four claims, all under £15, for "Supermarket Food Ovenight Stay".

Other people who read this.......