Trickier and trickier for Tigger

Tricky times for Tim Davie.

The savings target for the new BBC DG is moving up day by day, and special interest groups are lining up, as ever, to try to force his axe in different directions.

We have the basic five-year-plan savings to complete; we have additional savings needed because of both the delay to making the better-off Over-75s pay for tv licences, and a stalling in licence fee income; we have no returns back to the business from BBC Studios; and we have this week's new Covid-consequences target.

The campaign to 'save' Inside Out and the regional element of Sunday Politics has taken off in the Commons; new Ofcom CEO Melanie Dawes says she's concerned, and there are both formal and informal talks with the BBC, including her first meeting with Tim Davie next week. Culture Minister John Whittingdale has read out messages of support for Inside Out in parliament.

Melanie has decided that moving marginal bits of C4 to Leeds (a move that was really a consequence of Conservative manifesto pledges) is a triumph - though we've yet to see evidence. She wants the BBC to move 'decision-making' as well as cash out of London. Meanwhile, once again, commercial radio interests are floating various merger strategies for BBC local radio and 5Live.

To make things trickier on the Over 75s licence fee, The Times said Tim "is understood to dislike the idea of introducing the charge, fuelling speculation that he might seek to cancel it entirely." There's no sign of a rebuttal to this assertion. Lord Hall and former No 10 adviser Clare Sumner have been struggling with the current plan for five years; the current masterplan was developed by Gus O'Donnell's Frontier Economics. Has Tim really prepped a deal to put to The Treasury ? £745m a year at stake here.....