Trigger happy

Two entertaining and totally unsubstantiated theories about why an alarm took the Today Programme off-air yesterday. 1) Somebody in the toilets on the same floor thought vaping was undetectable to smoke alarms. 2) The spooks wanted to test out systems before allowing 'C' to visit the studios today. 

Changes ?

The BBC's Media Editor Amol Rajan may be on to a story, and we look forward to it in later bulletins. The former newspaper editor loves analysing journalism, and has brought live Strictly-style judgements to Today, praising the work of fellow presenters at the end of key interviews. His insights into how Royal correspondents interact with Royal households was pivotal in the two part documentary The Princes and The Press.

According to the Mail's Royal editor, Rebecca English (one of the few not to appear in Rajan's programme)  "last night's prime-time offering had seemingly been watered-down at the 11th hour, with editing going on up until the last minute. Plans for an accompanying podcast have also been postponed by the BBC".  Enough material about Royal pressure on journalists for Part 3, surely ?

Five times

Channel 5's creative mojo seems to be frozen in time, as they scour back issues of the Radio Times for new programmes. They revived All Creatures Great and Small, Eggheads - and now comes news of a reboot for Cash In The Attic.

Meanwhile the BBC might be a little frustrated about the Royal Family's focus on Amol Rajan's two part documentary about who's been slagging off whom; Channel 5 ran an equally-gossip-driven hour-long show on Saturday, baldly titled The Queen's Terrible Year, from ITN Productions. 

Still time

The closing date for applications to be the next Chair of Ofcom has been extended from today, to the 13th December. DCMS Select Committee chairman Julian Knight made the suggestion when interviewing Nadine Dorries and Sarah Healey last week, and it seems they listened. 

Gap analysis

A short break on Radio 4 this morning, as Nick Robinson and Martha Kearney feigned not to understand clearly audible evacuation instructions. They may not have been heard in other parts of Broadcasting House - Radio 3 kept going. Live streams on BBC Sounds were also lost. Of course, nobody switched Radio 4 to the continuing service of Radio 5Live, from Salford. Those who switched to Times Radio heard a feature on recorder classes in schools.

Well that was interesting. Emergency over. If there was one …we’re now back in the studio @BBCr4today pic.twitter.com/BLhZJwXMFp

— Nick Robinson (@bbcnickrobinson) November 29, 2021

Amollification

It will be an odd week ahead in the Today programme production area, with questions about who said what to Rosamund Urwin, Media Editor at The Sunday Times, about Amol Rajan.  Let me fillet the quotes for you... 

 “He has changed the tone of the programme and made it his own,” says a Today insider. “Everyone else — except Justin [Webb], who always had that mischievous charm — sounds stiff and old-fashioned by comparison. Amol has brought his personality to it. So when Mishal Husain interviewed the cricketer Azeem Rafiq about the racism he suffered, Amol said afterwards, ‘I’ve gone to pieces listening to that’ — and that is just unprecedented.”

“There’s a mixed view of him at the BBC, but he has plenty of supporters, and I reckon he can get Nick [Robinson] off the programme to [replace Andrew] Marr and have it as the Amol Rajan show within a couple of years,” said a Today source.

He always praises his production team too, saying they are the ones who create the magic, though one critic says: “It’s quite off-putting, it’s a weird humble-brag and a phoney deference.”

And the only fully-attributed bit: “Amol is one of the best: a first-class journalist and exceptional modern broadcaster,” said Owenna Griffiths, the editor of the Today programme. “He combines great intellectual curiosity with a laser-like sharpness in interviews.”

Trending

After a bit of a hiccup, BARB have published channel statistics for the week starting 25th October. GB News reached 1,696,000 viewers for the four week period, and those viewers stayed for an average of 20 minutes. Three months ago, the comparative figures were 2,613,000 and 25 minutes. 

Up a bit

As BBC News' sealed basement project continues (more money on look and feel), suggestions of a more subtle change in presentation are reaching tradingaswdr HQ. 

Readers with exceptional ears say the BBC News channel's countdown music has been modulated, up around a quarter tone, from where it starts in B flat towards B. 

The theme also mixes major and minor: here's a quick 18th century 'guide' to some of the emotional issues involved. 

Bb major - Cheerful love, clear conscience, hope and aspiration for a better world.

Bb minor - A quaint creature, often dressed in the garment of night. It is somewhat surly and very seldom takes on a pleasant countenance. Mocking God and the world; discontented with itself and with everything; preparation for suicide sounds in this key.

B major - Strongly coloured, announcing wild passions, composed from the most glaring colours. Anger, rage, jealousy, fury, despair and every burden of the heart lies in its sphere.

B minor - This is as it were the key of patience, of calm awaiting one's fate and of submission to divine dispensation.

 

Lit

Someone else has done the heavy lifting for me here. Presumably producer/director Clare Hix told him to address the camera sideways. 

Tell me this is a Vanity Project, without telling me this is a Vanity Project 🙄🎬

[each screengrab is a diff camera frame in between filming the interviewed guests during a 1hr programme, & I missed a few] 📸@BBC@AmolRajan#SelfLove#CareerAdvancement#MirrorMirrorOnTheWall pic.twitter.com/NiTX2beUnK

— Baroness Bruck (@BaronessBruck) November 23, 2021

Shumeet

Shumeet Banerji was CEO of  management consultancy Booz & Company till 2012 before which he held a number of senior management positions at the firm and its predecessor Booz Allen Hamilton. (Companies House notes that DII Capital Holdings (previously Booz Capital Holdings) accepted the resignation of Mr Banerji as a Director on 4th August 2011; Richard Sharp was appointed a director the following day.)  He is the founder of Condorcet LP, an advisory and investment firm focused on early stage technology companies. Mr. Banerji is on the board of HP Inc. and of India’s most highly valued company, Reliance Industries Limited, one of the largest oil-to-petrochemical companies in the world, and on the board of its subsidiary Jio, India's biggest mobile phone network.  

Shumeet, 60 (St Stephen's College, Delhi; BA and MBA, University of Delhi, PhD Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Illinois) has a London home in St John's Wood, not far from Abbey Road. 

Reliance recently branched out and bought Stoke Park which boasts a 27-hole Harry Colt designed golf course, a 49-room five-star hotel, a spa and leisure centre, three restaurants, bars and lounges, 13 tennis courts and 14 acres of private gardens. Mr Banerji is a director.  Could be handy for BBC Board awaydays. 

Damon

Richard Sharp has finally found two new non-executives to join him on the BBC Board, starting in January. 

Sir Damon Buffini, 59 (Gateway Grammar School Leicester; BA Law St John's College, Cambridge; Harvard MBA) was brought up by his single mother on the Thurnby Lodge Estate, Leicester. He was founding partner of Permira, when it was spun off from Schroder Ventures. He was Chairman and Managing Partner from 1997–2010. Acquisitions and sales included The AA, Little Chef, Birds Eye, Hugo Boss, Paperchase, Doc Marten's, Travelodge and New Look. In 2006, it became majority shareholder in All3Media, where, spookily, another BBC non-exec Steve Morrison was CEO.  It bought for £320m and sold for £550m in 2014. 

He was knighted in 2016; papers noted he had donated £10,000 to Britain Stronger in Europe. Since July 2020 he's chaired the Arts Council's Culture Recovery Fund, spookily working with Sir Nicholas Serota. 

At Permira he played sweeper for the Private Equity All Stars, building on playing for Cambridge University.  He's a non-executive of the PGA European Tour, and chairs their Ryder Cup Committee; he's reported to play off a 12 handicap.  

Embed from Getty Images

Ofcom opines

Some bits and bobs that caught my eye from Ofcom's fourth annual report on BBC performance. Its moans are mainly about public perceptions, and it occasionally acknowledges the BBC had a very good year. It's bulked out to 85 pages by re-running pompous complain assessments, none actually upheld.

The BBC launched its online audio service, BBC Sounds, in 2018 as part of its strategy to meet changing audio behaviours, particularly among younger audiences, and this service has grown in popularity. However, according to BBC data, less than a third of its users are aged under 35 and this proportion has not grown. Just 27% of BBC Sounds account holders are aged under 35, down from 29% at the same time last year.

In 2021, based on data the BBC provided to Ofcom, around twice as many people working for the BBC UK public services attended private schools as the UK average (14% vs 7%) and had parents in professional occupations when aged 14 (61% vs 33%). The trends are similar for the broadcasting industry as a whole, based on the limited data that we have.

Total BBC spend on original TV content has been in long-term decline, reducing from £1.6bn in 2010 to £1.2bn in 2019, although the number of hours of content each year has remained relatively stable. (Quizzes, antiques etc: cheaper programmes in longer series....)

The average weekly reach of the BBC News website has increased across all demographics this year (from 29% of adults 16+ in 2019/20 to 36% in 2020/21). BBC News had a stronger presence on YouTube this year, posting 60% more videos than in the previous financial year; the total number of UK views of those videos has doubled since last year. 

We note the BBC’s plan to have nightly news bulletins, tailored to the interests of young people and presented by young people on the broadcast BBC Three channel which we have agreed it can relaunch

We note from our research that the BBC website/app and BBC radio both perform better in terms of perceptions of impartiality than BBC TV: 65% of BBC website/app regular news users rated it highly, and 61% of BBC radio regular news users rated it highly. The BBC website/app also saw its performance on impartiality improve compared to last year. 

There has also been a significant reduction in total news and current affairs spend from £344m to £294m this year, with spend on this content for the nations and regions falling by a larger proportion than network spend.

In the current reporting period we have not found any BBC content to be in breach of the due impartiality or due accuracy requirements of the Code.

Sharp thinking

Asked if BBC staff are feeling beleaguered, chairman Richard Sharp told the Voice of the Listener and Viewer autumn conference “We’ve had to take significant financial and job cuts over the past years which creates a slightly negative attitude internally. In addition, we’ve lurched from one crisis to another over a period of time which hasn’t reflected well on the people of the BBC. Then in addition we’ve had persistent attacks from the press.”

On the licence fee deal - still not settled:  “What’s unfortunate for our consumers is that the BBC is facing financial strictures at a time when the competition is even more severe.  If we have to contract then that has a multiplier effect and there will have to be consequences if we don’t obtain a licence fee settlement that keeps pace with media inflation.”

On Amol Rajan's documentary about the Princes and the press, he thought "as a viewer it engendered enormous sympathy for the people in the crosshairs of public scrutiny, and the appalling behaviour of the media as a whole." Did he anticipate losing the co-operation of the Royal Family ? "The BBC is a national institution and we approach other institutions with great care and thought. We have tremendous respect for all aspects of the Royal Family and from time to time we produce shows that may or may not meet with full agreement from different parts of the establishment.”

On tiptoes

New BBC Head of Arts and Classical Music TV Suzy Klein offers a celebration of dance in 2022. 

This will include a showing of the film Yuli: The Carlos Acosta Story, released in the UK in 2019 with some funding from BBC Films, and now available on Amazon Prime. It's based on Carlos' autobiography. Much will be familiar to BBC audiences - via the 'imagine...' 2015 edition "Carlos Acosta: Cuba Calls" or 'imagine...' 2003 "Carlos Acosta: the Reluctant Ballet Dancer". 

Meanwhile, for the dance season,  Alan turns 'imagine...'s attention to choreographer Wayne MacGregor, including coverage of his time as director at the Venice Dance Biennale. Has he been to Venice for 'imagine...' before ?

Oyster

The BBC is continuing to grow audiences abroad, thanks, in part, to the unwitting generosity of licence fee-payers, the Foreign Office - and a steady growth in the international performance of BBC Studios. 

Last year £214m of licence-fee income was diverted to the World Service group, a legacy of Mark Thompson's settlement in 2010. The Foreign Office coughed up £88m (0.74% of annual spend). 

The BBC's Global Audience Measure, in which we are assured there's plenty of de-duplication to make sure people aren't counted twice, now stands at 489m per week, up 20m from 2020, and on target to reach 500m by 2022.  Within that, BBC World Service (in English) and the language services, some operating solely on digital platforms, are up 13m; and BBC Studios reach is up by 16m, to 65m. 

We're told BBC.com saw a rise of 8 million since 2020 and now has a reach of 40 million adults. Yet, when combined with BBC World (the tv news service), total growth is 3m, suggesting something of a drop for the linear channel. 

Options analysis

The return of Paul Dacre to the Mail changes the landscape for toilers on the shopfloor of Ofcom. Might it affect the mindset of those previously thought to be seeking alternative employment, for example, with BBC News ?

Impartiality Pete

The BBC's top man in Northern Ireland is leaving his post to work on impartiality across the organisation. 

Peter Johnson, 55 (Ballymena Academy and Imperial College) is Director Northern Ireland, in post since 2006; he's worked in Belfast since joining in 1994 in audience research. At the start of the last year, he had some 700 staff - he's lost around 50 to redundancy this year.  Northern Ireland currently has a small number of employment tribunals in the offing. 

His new gig will last til summer 2022; an interim is expected to be appointed soon. 

Here's yer man back in 2014 at his alma mater. 

By George

Hybrid workers at Broadcasting House, W1 may be interested in the re-opening of The George this Thursday,  depending on their salaries.  There's little pre-publicity, but those who have peered in through the windows suggest the new operators, JKS Restaurants, are more interested in diners than drinkers. 

The Grade II listed pub was famously nicknamed The Gluepot by Sir Thomas Beecham who felt his musicians got stuck there during intervals. 

Steve

GB News has signed Stephen Dixon. 

Stephen, 47 (Dowdales School, Barrow 6th Form College, Nottingham Trent University) started in broadcasting as a volunteer at Furness General Hospital.  After university, he joined ITN, before moving to Sky News in 2000.  He lives in Milton Keynes, is a vegetarian, has two rescue cats and shares his struggles with Type 1 diabetes on Twitter.  In 2018, he published a book of poems, Love is the Beauty of the Soul.  Last year he had a partial hair transplant.

Tiring

A new dump of minutes from the Ofcom Content Board produces a brave and plangent cry: A member commented that the agenda had included a number of papers related to the BBC (plus a paper on Channel 4) and wondered about the cumulative effect on the PSB landscape and any associated risks. 

Yes, the Content Team at Ofcom loves nothing better than micro-managing the Corporation (in a number of cases, their old employer). Papers included re-launching BBC Three; a BBC Studios review; the impact of BBC Sounds; the BBC operating licence; the BBC's place in Ofcom's Public Service Broadcasting review; and the usual round of complaints about BBC output. 

Onboarding

How fast are YOUR headhunters ?

Korn Ferry have been helping BBC DG Tim Davie find his next Director of News & Current Affairs. Applications closed on October 22; will we get an appointment before Christmas ?

Audeliss have been helping BBC chairman Richard Sharp add a new non-executive director to his team. Applications closed on May 30; will we get an appointment before Christmas ? 

Ask Tom

Congratulations to Tom Wrathmell, this month elevated to Director, Across The UK Strategy at the BBC. 

Tom, 37, (Westminster School and 2:1 Geography, St John's, Oxford University) makes liberal use of the exclamation mark in his Tweets, and loves answering practical problems. 

Don’t touch Vax! Been there before. Was a Miele convert and bought a Blizzard. Really not great and eventually broke. Checked the reviews and sadly it’s not a one-off. Bought a Dyson v10 Absolute stick cleaner. It’s amazing and makes very easy work of keeping the house clean.

— Tom Wrathmell (@media__type) October 9, 2021

@Reece_Parkinson @Chris_Stark Bowers and Wilkins PX’s - incredible quality, amazing sound isolation, great comfort. Work on calls too. Mine are now pretty battered from use but still going strong!

— Tom Wrathmell (@media__type) October 4, 2021

Hi Elly, either use parcel collect from Royal Mail which is an extra 72p via the website, or print postage at home and drop into a local parcel postbox. You can find a list here: https://t.co/WfFQMGmxMn. Merry Christmas and thanks for keeping us entertained this year!

— Tom Wrathmell (@media__type) December 21, 2020

Ted and Joanne

So, the country's new taste-maker is Ted Verity, editor of the Mail in print across seven days. Ted, mostly recently the Mail's prime witness in their court battle with Meghan Markle, is a contemporary of David Miliband. They studied PPE together at Corpus Christi, Oxford, and in their second year, shared a house with nine others somewhere 'off the Cowley Road'.  He describes Miliband now as an 'old friend' although the last time they had dinner together was around 2003. 

Young Ted took his PPE to the Stoke Evening Sentinel, before joining Associated Newspapers in 1990, as a reporter and then showbusiness supremo. He was very much a Paul Dacre protege, rising quickly through the ranks, to be made editor of Dacre's pet section, Femail. He was sent to sort out the Mail's papers in Ireland, and there Ted found his own protegee in columnist Joanne Hegarty, subsequently to become Mrs Verity in 2011. He returned to a senior executive role in charging of developing the paper's online services and then the Mail on Sunday.

Mrs Verity's Instagram account describes her as  "Journalist, Stylist, & Mum. The Chic List Columnist In You Magazine. Less is more. Working on a book."   Mr Verity's leader in today's Mail On Sunday is an extended version of Paul Dacre's letter of withdrawal from the process to find a new chair for Ofcom. 

Civic rejuvenation

 If this was your not-in-anyway-up-yourselves mission statement, who would you want in your gang ?

The New School of the Anthropocene is an experiment in transdisciplinary higher education devised by a group of academics from Cambridge and across the university world in collaboration with October Gallery London. 

NSotA is dedicated to addressing ecological recovery and civic rejuvenation through the arts. It is run cooperatively as an agile, non-residential institution. No degree will be awarded: a means of countering an anxious culture of accreditation. We aim to recruit from under-represented sections of UK society and run the School as non-bureaucratically as possible with minimal tuition fees, thereby freeing students from the tyranny of debt. 

We are a self-organising body with no managerial tiers. We intend to create a radical new model for higher education that could be replicated and rolled out regionally. The aim is to recover educational adventure and foster cultural confidence in a post-pandemic world.

Yes, dear reader, like me, you sort of knew Alan Yentob would be in it, here in dialogue with his Notting Hill neighbour, Franc Roddam, as part of NSotA Symposium 4: 'Education as Play and Restoring Social Ambition' :

Seeing the light

Paul Dacre has come to the cause of those who thought he was the wrong person to lead Ofcom, with a withdrawal letter of bitterness, misjudgement and prejudice.  He may also have started to think twice about how a 'confirmation hearing' in front of the Culture Select Committee might go. 

Easy like Sunday morning

The Rubik's Cube of BBC News presentation is still spinning. Andrew Marr has announced he's leaving Marr on Sunday in the New Year. 

Will there be a new Director of News appointed in time to influence Marr's replacement ? What would be the instinct of the current News Brand Manager, Tim Davie ? What drivers are in play ?

Diversity: Mishal Husain

Gender: Emily Maitlis

Sop to Dorries: Andrew Neil

Man who wants it most: Nick Robinson

Man who will try to trip up man who wants it most: John Sopel

Marr has been doing the job for 16 years, and says he's moving to a new role at Global, the radio group that owns LBC and Classic FM, as well as taking on new writing commitments. 

Odds and ends

BBC DG Tim Davie is entrusting more and more hard-pounding to his new COO Leigh Tavaziva. So much so, that she now requires a Director of Operations and Transformation. The job ad closed at the end of August, but so far, there's been no sighting of an appointment. 

Transformation is tricky stuff, especially when the end state relies on knowing something about your future income. By the mood music from Nadine, the transformation may have to be delivered through continuing radical surgery, rather than a course of vitamins and a healthy diet. 

Meanwhile Alan 'Wavey' Davey has yet to reveal plans for the BBC Concert Orchestra. In March it was announced it would be moving  to ‘a location outside the M25 bringing live music to underserved areas of England. Discussions are ongoing with a possible location and there will be announcements in due course.’ 

Until 2004, the Orchestra's HQ was the Golders Green Hippodrome; it's now based at the Watford Colosseum, and in January, the Council announced a £5m refurb, talking about a two year extension for the BBC. 

Most of the Orchestra's gigs so far posted on the orchestra's website for 2022 are in familiar venues - The Southbank Centre, Wembley,  and The Royal Albert Hall. A wider search reveals a gig with Nottingham Trent University Choir "A Night at The Movies" at the end of April, in the Albert Hall, run commercially by The Albert Hall Nottingham Ltd since 1990. 

Lay off

ITV is pretty grumpy about the planned return of BBC Three to linear broadcasting, in its response to Ofcom. 

Ofcom has provided no assurance that BBC Three will be obliged to deliver on the BBC’s own  commitments to deliver public value; and

Ofcom has provided insufficient scrutiny of BBC’s market impact model which significantly underplays the impact that the BBC’s proposals will have on rivals and hence on fair and effective competition.

In the past, US-acquired shows Family Guy and American Dad were the mainstay of BBC Three schedules, driving almost of third of BBC Three viewing. We are very concerned that the BBC is on track to go even further down this road with a relaunched BBC Three with nothing in the service licence or regulatory framework to stop them.

In the most recent chart showing weekly most-watched programmes on ITV2, American Dad takes five places in the top 50, and Family Guy occupies 19 slots. 

Sharp choices

Whilst we're all watching Government appointments to media bodies, perhaps we might also take an interest in the next moves from BBC Chairman Richard Sharp. He's leading the process to find a replacement for Baroness Grey-Thompson as a non-executive; her term's up at the end of December. (The Government has a direct say in who will represent Northern Ireland, still vacant). 

Meanwhile, there are anomalies at the BBC's Commercial Holdings Board. It was set up when BBC Studios, BBC Studioworks and BBC Global News were separate companies.  Studios and Global News have merged, and there's no real reason not to fold in Studioworks. Then you wouldn't need a Commercial Holdings Board, but a fresh set of non-execs on the main Studios Board. Meanwhile, non-exec Dharmash Mistry has been with the Commercial Board since 2014, and the Board is chaired by Dame Elan Closs Stephens, who's been quango-ing around the BBC since 2010. 

Going out

Spotted at the cinema screening of "The Beatles: Get Back"; Alan Yentob, still wearing a BBC lanyard and identity card, in case no-one knew who he was... 

Consequences

Ofcom is pursuing the idea that big online aggregators like Facebook and Google are not sufficiently transparent about their algorithms, and the way they select news stories to push at their users. 

This fits in with the world view of Mail Online and The Telegraph that Facebook and Google 'prefer' versions of similar stories by BBC News and The Guardian, for example. 

This is tricky stuff, especially if Ofcom don't like what they find. Imagine if, before the Internet, newspapers went to an industry regulator, and demanded that every newsagent across the UK laid out the day's papers in the same agreed way. Imagine if Mail Online was forced to be transparent about the algorithms and SEO-optimisation that moves stories about celebrities in bikinis around its pages. Imagine how little content there would be on most UK Newspaper sites if they weren't allowed to 'lift' stories from rivals unless they'd checked the story for themselves. 

Media studies

 OK, Amol, shall we share a few notes about today's programme ? 

First, I know it's rare to get HS2 and HIV stories in one lot of headlines, but do you think you can be consistent around 'aitch' rather than 'haitch' ?  Especially if you're going to use your posh voice at the top of the hour ... 

Second, the paper review. Yes, a good gag to suggest they were Media Studies Course Notes, but really the review is there for a purpose - to share stories gathered by the papers that BBC News hasn't got or can't stand up. It may be your view that the Spectator or New Statesman is a 'good read' this week, or that Geordie Greig will get a plum job, but that's not why the review is there. 

Third, we like to think of each day's pair of presenters as a team. House style is 'We'll be talking to Dominic Raab after eight-thirty", not "I'll be talking to..."

Fourth, 'Jim'. Let's keep the first reference as Lord O'Neill, shall we ?  Our listeners don't like presenters who sound too cosy with interviewees. Indeed, many don't take to presenters who are too cocky by half.

Taking a Line

Did you enjoy the 10 O'clock News from Belfast on BBC1 last night, produced by Jed Mercurio ?  Did you spot how Jed covered boring bits of dialogue, featuring economics editor Faisal Islam and local correspondent John Campbell, with interesting drone shots tracking up and down the Scandi-noir crime-scene setting ? Were you waiting for grappling hooks to appear over the balcony, followed by a SWAT-style take-down of H. sorry, Huw Edwards ?

Over here

Netflix have modified their UK charts to reflect hours of watching; below the Top Ten on November 16.  Do you think it might worth investing in UK public service broadcasting before we become a cultural colony ? 

1 Red Notice - newly released US comedy/action movie, said to be Netflix's most expensive film yet
2 Young Sheldon - US American coming-of-age sitcom television series
3 Maid - US drama series
4 You - US psychological drama, now on series 3
5 Narcos: Mexico - US crime drama, now on series 3
6 Squid Game - South Korean survival drama television series 
7 Love Hard  - US Christmas move, filmed in Vancouver 
8 Big Mouth - US adult animated coming-of-age sitcom, series 5 

9 Pretty Little Liars - US American teen-drama mystery-thriller 
10 Dynasty - US remake of US soap drama

The internal struggle

As BBC DG Tim Davie drives his staff "across the UK", it's mildly amusing that in BBC HR, you can choose where you work. Here's a top role "at the very heart of transformation and engagement for the BBC", which candidates can choose to execute from London, Birmingham or Salford. 

This clearly understated requirement is for a Internal Communications Business Partner - Campaigns & Content, reporting into the even-more-important Head of Campaigns and Channels. It seems the battle for hearts and minds is inside the BBC as much as outside. 

Thrilled

Not unexpectedly, Sarah Smith is heading to Washington to replace Jon Sopel as BBC North America Editor. She was there before - from 2007 to 2011, as Channel 4 News' Washington correspondent. Husband Simon Conway went with her, and wrote two books, A Loyal Spy and Rock Creek Park. Will he have time to knock out two more, before Sarah returns once more ? 

Melanie meddling

Clear evidence of mission creep from Ofcom CEO Melanie Dawes, talking to The Times; she implies that moving decision-making outside London could improve its reputation for impartiality. “We are pushing them hard on the need to stretch out across the UK much more comprehensively — in how they are run, how they make decisions [and] in who they employ behind the scenes. The further away from London you go, you find that people are less likely to feel that the BBC is really for them.” 

Dawes might like to look at Ofcom's own record on regulating where 'local' commercial stations are based; the BBC's chart-topping news shows at 6.30pm; existing massive investment in Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Salford and more. Small percentage regional variations in survey questions "Is the BBC for me ?" have been lighted on by former Beeboid Ofcom apparatchiks with glee; there are more important questions than new buildings in Birmingham that Ofcom should be thinking about as it considers the future of public service broadcasting under a Conservative government that hates it. 

Donna's off

Donna Traynor, a presenter and reporter on Newsline, the BBC1 nightly magazine show for Northern Ireland, has resigned. 

"It is with deep sadness that, after almost 33 years, I am leaving the job that I love and resigning from BBC Northern Ireland with immediate effect. Because this is the subject of ongoing Employment Tribunal and other legal proceedings, I am not able to respond to any questions or comments about my reasons for leaving the organisation."

Ms Traynor joined the BBC in 1989 from RTE in Dublin and presented radio news bulletins before moving into television. Way back in 1996, BBC Northern Ireland decided to instruct presenters appearing on television to wear poppies during Remembrance Day commemorations, from 1st November on, with those who refused being given off screen duties. That was because the previous year, Ms Traynor said she wouldn't wear the poppy, or indeed the shamrock on St Patrick's Day "as they were seen as symbols of division".  Ms Traynor did, indeed, wear a poppy that year - and screengrabs featured in both the News Letter and the Belfast Telegraph.

Field manoeuvres

Former Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden went on the Today programme this morning, and argued that his process to appoint a new Chair for Ofcom was independent, because, well, its decision was overturned. He said this second running is because there was not a wide enough field first time round. He could, of course, have made this plainer earlier. There were reportedly just nine applications, which may have had something to do with the fact that, as repeated by many Tory MPs back in January, there was already a preferred No 10 candidate.  Applications closed on 26th March first time round;  news of the re-run first came on 27th May. 

MP Steve Baker just bluntly told Sophy Ridge that Paul Dacre is being put in charge of OFCOM because he wants UK News to be censored by "conservatives". When fascism arrives it will come in a smart suit.....

pic.twitter.com/BJBCC6GPty

— Simon Gosden. Esq. #fbpe 3.5% 🕷🇪🇺🇬🇧🏴‍☠️🦠💙 (@g_gosden) January 31, 2021

Slow movement

A fairly slow start for The News Movement, the latest journalistic enterprise from Will Lewis, edited by former Beeboid Kamal Ahmed. Launched on Friday, it appears to have a team of nine, other than Kamal, working with resources from AP and ITN.  It's YouTube channel, at time of writing, offers one promo piece and two videos, and has eight subscribers. 

The message is "Explaining our world. No-bias news and original reporting". Friday's first piece was  about the deaths at AstroWorld; the second has the hashtag #RememberanceDay2021.

Job news

Odds and ends from the world of BBC employment strategy. An FOI enquiry reveals "Five employees have returned to the BBC on continuing or fixed term contracts after taking redundancy in the financial year of 2020/21 (1st April 2020 - 31st March 2021).   The five employees that returned did so in compliance with BBC policy."

Departing Director of News Fran Unsworth has told staff that only 60 people are still to be found a role in the current re-structuring of her division.  "Around 95% of all people involved in the preference survey will have an outcome of their choice in the new structures," without reminding us that staff were asked to produce three options. How many are in their third choice job ?

Questioned

Fiona Bruce shares some elements of her personal life with the Mail on Sunday Magazine. One wonders if the audience figures for Question Time are recovering the way she might like, after lockdown. She tells her interviewer ‘Question Time has a bigger social media footprint than any other TV programme outside Love Island', a variant of the GB News defence. 

On gender pay balance, she earned £405,000+ last year, from a combination of news presentation, Question Time, The Antiques Roadshow and Fake or Fortune.   ‘It’s getting there, but there’s still lots of work to be done on the pay gap. God knows if we will get a satisfactory result even in my lifetime.’ Huw Edwards' package was £425,000+.

The fearless interviewer announces discovery of Bruce's 'secret passion' - horse riding; news volunteered to The Times in 2016: "I took up horse riding about five years ago...."

Rupert and Wilf or not

The PM's sister, Rachel Johnson says she made a 'joke taken out of context' about the BBC and Rupert Murdoch, and, in a further lack of clarification, 'it never happened. 

The Mail picked up this line from Ms Johnson's contribution to a Radio Centre conference, talking about the BBC's struggle to survive "Especially when you have got people like Rupert Murdoch going to Chequers and saying to my brother, as he dandles Wilf on his knee, 'Boris you've got to get rid of the BBC, it's eating my lunch, they got a website, they're a publisher, it's not competitive'. You can see that there are pressures from all sides.'"

The Radio Centre represents the interests of commercial radio. Their website has a whole section headed "tackling the BBC's dominance in radio". 

The Daily Mail sought a response from News UK - is it a denial ?  "The supposed quote is preposterous. It is well known that our focus has been on the threat of the big digital platforms to publishers large and small." This morning Rachel tweeted....

Sorry to disappoint but Rupert Murdoch NEVER told the PM to get rid of the BBC as I am quoted as saying in today's Daily Mail. It never happened. Joke taken out of context. Totally my fault for agreeing to say "a few words" about future of the media. Apols to all who got excited.

— Rachel Johnson (@RachelSJohnson) November 13, 2021

London gaff

The Mail tells us that bachelor-to-be Michael Gove is moving into the grace-and-favour flat at 1 Carlton Gardens normally offered to a Foreign Secretary, at the behest of thrice-married PM Boris Johnson. 

The 1830 property, now valued at around £25 million, is leased by the Foreign Office from the Crown Estate, which looks after the Queen's properties. It was designed by architect John Nash, and was once a temporary shelter for Louis Napoleon, later Emperor Napoleon III of France. 

Not all Foreign Secretaries stayed overnight, but used the grand rooms for meetings, entertaining and photo-opportunities  Below, five film stars in London for the Unitalia Film Week in 1954, making a fuss of Sir Anthony Eden's pet pooch, "Victoria"  - Lydia Alfonsi, Irene Genna, Maria Canale, S. Pallavicini and Marisa Belli. Will Gove, hitherto flitting between rooms in his constituency, and hotels in Aberdeen and Glasgow, attract similar convivial gatherings ?

Embed from Getty Images

Story teller

Eastenders has a new Executive Producer, Chris Clenshaw. 

Chris has a first class BA in Fashion Promotion and Broadcast from University of the Arts London, from where he landed a job as a research with Richard and Judy in 2008. He then moved to ITV's This Morning rising to interactive/social media producer, alongside body double Rylan, and finally live day producer. 

In 2015, he worked as an edit producer on Big Brother's Bits on the Side, before joining Eastenders as a storyliner, and again moving up the ranks. Chris spent a year and three months working as a producer on Holby City. Most recently, he has been an executive story producer for Sky1's Bulletproof.

Eamonn off

The Mirror was first with the news that the Pied Piper of Chat, Eamonn Holmes, has decided to play his audience-beguiling tin whistle on GB News, rather than ITV's This Morning. His move, as yet unreflected on the GB News website, comes as the broadcaster also branches out with a cookery series (left) on his Instagram site. 

Odd, perhaps, that Eamonn is not being sought by News UK's TalkTV, due to launch in the New Year. Eamonn was with TalkRADIO under executive Scott Taunton, who's driving the new channel. Will Eamonn take his son Niall with him to GB News ?

Selector

The latest addition to the panel charged with assessing candidates for chair at Ofcom is Michael Simmonds. Michael,  57 (International School of London, University of Leeds) started out as a researcher at the Adam Smith Institute in 1986.  He became Special Adviser to Nicholas Ridley at the DTI in 1989, and worked at the BBC Political Research Unit from '92 to '94.  Then back to politics as SpAd to Brian Mawhinney, before becoming Conservative Party Director of Membership and Marketing. 

In 2000 he moved to consultancy and polling with Live Strategy, before it became Populus in 2003, with Andrew Cooper; the pair were described by Iain Dale as 'Tory modernisers'. He's still a director, though they're now called Yonder Consulting. 

Michael is married to Nick Gibb, former Conservative education minister and brother of BBC non-executive director Sir Robbie Gibb.  There is no obvious record of Michael serving on a public appointments panel before this gig. 

Adam off

"It’s a kind of mutual decision. Basically, just looking ahead, having been at two start-ups, first with TV-am and then Sky, I think it looks like the direction which Sky News wants to go over the next few years is not one that’s a particularly good fit for me".

Thus Adam Boulton, 62 (Westminster School and Christ Church Oxford) in The Times on his intention to depart from Sky News, where he presents a mid-morning politics show and acts as Editor At Large. In August his network's boss, John Ryley opined "The age of the all-powerful anchor is gone – instead they share the stage with journalists in the field, providing the audience with the high fibre news they demand"

In January, Sky has pledged that one in five of its staff will be from a minority ethnic background by 2025. In April, Sky News reported these staff figures: White 77%  Ethnically diverse 10% Prefer not to say / unknown 13%

On the side

The latest list of BBC News' presenters second jobs includes a fee of £5k-10k  for Huw Edwards as co-host of Rail Magazine's National Rail Awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel; £5k-£10k for Naga Munchetty at a unnamed event organised by Nimble Media Ltd; another £5k-10k for Naga hosting the Veuve Cliquot Bold Woman Award; £5k-£10k for Click's Spencer Kelly chairing a panel for Cisco; £5k-£10k for Emily Maitlis from procurement consultants Proxima; £5k-£10k to Clive Myrie from Fujitsu; £5k-£10k for Professor Amol Rajan, as a panellist at the Leeds International Festival Ideas (oddly no declaration from the panel chair Evan Davis - maybe he did it for fun). 

Hawthorn Advisers' Sarah Sands turned to her Today contacts book to get Sarah Smith and Mishal Husain to host panels at a 'New Enlightenment Summit' at Braemar for less than £5k each. 

Really ?

 I think that normally-reliable Getty Images have got the wrong hombre in this caption...

Fashion Trust Arabia Prize 2021 Awards Ceremony At The National Museum Of Qatar

DOHA, QATAR - NOVEMBER 03: Alan Yentob attends the Fashion Trust Arabia Prize 2021 Awards Ceremony at The National Museum of Qatar on November 03, 2021 in Doha, Qatar. (Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Fashion Trust Arabia)

Embed from Getty Images

And repeat

The Today programme doubled-down on Afghanistan this morning as their lead, with Amol Rajan, 38, interviewing his 'mate' John Simpson, 77, and, as yesterday, teeing off with a 'give us a sense'. 

Here's a tweet from October 25th. 

Millions of people in #Afghanistan are facing starvation this winter. Many will have no choice but to migrate UNLESS 1) the economy is resuscitated and 2) @WFP assistance is scaled up. We are on a countdown to catastrophe. Nearly 23M people need food NOW. https://t.co/SbqCSI0niZ

— David Beasley (@WFPChief) October 25, 2021

Throwing the Frisby

Another schedule tweak at GB News. Dan Wootton's 9pm show has been shortened by an hour, creating space for  "Headliners - The paper review that won't put you to sleep (like the others). Join the all-star comedy cast for an intelligent and insightful look at tomorrow's headlines tonight. Hosts Simon Evans & Dominic Frisby"

Dominic, 52, (St Paul's, Manchester University and the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art) is the son of the playwright and novelist Terence Frisby. In 2015 he spent some time as a director of a Pangbourne-based crypto-currency company Coinworks; in 2019 he stood as the Brexit Party candidate for Old Bexley, but pulled out before polling day. 

GB News' latest four-week reach, as measured by BARB, has fallen another point, to 1.7million.

Independent

The Guardian has discovered that Peter Riddell, until last month commissioner for public appointments, successfully asked the DCMS to change the Senior Independent Panel Member originally selected to assess candidates to be BBC chair. 

We don't know who he objected to, but we do know who ended up on the panel. They were chaired by  Sarah Healey, Permanent Secretary at the DCMS, joined by Mrs Blondel Cluff (Sir William Herschel Grammar, Slough and LL.B University of Westminster), lawyer, jeweller, and wife of Algy Cluff, oilman and one-time owner of The Spectator, and Catherine Baxendale (Dr Challoner's Grammar, Aylesbury and B.Sc, LSE) an HR consultant, formerly with Tesco and Procter & Gamble (brand manager for Pantene). 

The Senior Independent Panel Member was Sir William Fittall, a retired civil servant and Anglican lay reader.  Sir William (Christ Church, Oxford) settles disputes about Bishops and Vicars.

A couple of points

Many elements of R4 Today's post 8.30 item on Afghanistan stood out for this listener. 

First, the adoption by the BBC's Professor of Journalism Amol Rajan of the tired cliche "Give us a sense.." (© Huw Edwards) in the opening question. 

Then the appearance of the World's Greatest Living Foreign Correspondent, John Simpson, with the shock news that aid agencies have more or less abandoned Afghanistan (reported by Jeremy Bowen on 20th September, and again by the BBC on 25th October, with Mark Beasley from the World Food Programme). 

John was audibly moved towards the end of the sequence, provoking a valedictory from Professor Rajan. "We're proud of you". It was good, he said, to have John in Kabul once "the news caravan had moved on".  He perhaps has forgotten that Mr Simpson tried to get into Afghanistan as the Taliban took control, but was turned back at the border. And that the BBC has a presence in Afghanistan, led at the moment, by Secunder Kermani, currently reporting from the south of the country.  

More numbers

The Sunday Times replacement for Gillian Reynolds, Patricia Nicol, may have to wait for elevation to the Radio Academy. She's ridden roughshod through the request from RAJAR, the official radio audience measurers not to compare figures from their latest quarterly report with previous numbers compiled under a different system. And Patricia has uncovered figures not normally shared with the public under either system. 

"The UK’s three biggest morning shows — The Zoe Ball Breakfast show on Radio 2 (7.2 million listeners), Radio 4’s Today programme (6.5m) and Radio 1’s Breakfast with Greg James (4.3m) — have together shed about 1.8m listeners. But breakfast radio is, forgive me, far from toast. More intriguing is the shift in peak weekday listening from 8am pre-pandemic, to the far more leisurely 10am. And audiences are now sticking around after lunch.

Some will gripe that there are no exact comparative pre-pandemic figures, because RAJAR has tweaked its methodology. But the patterns are clear and the winners are claiming victory. On LBC, seasoned liberal combatant James O’Brien (10am-1pm) celebrated a record 1.3m weekly listeners. Over on Times Radio, which greeted inaugural RAJAR listener figures of 637,000 with joy, irrepressible elevenses star Matt Chorley sounded like he might pop his own cork as he raised a glass of champagne to his 250,000 weekly listeners. On Twitter, Virgin Radio’s Eddy Temple-Morris declared himself “honoured and humbled” by new mid-morning record listening figures. Virgin’s star breakfast presenter, Chris Evans, has seen his audience dip below 1m.

The growth of mid-morning listening is impressive. Woman’s Hour (3.2m listeners) is up by about 100,000 listeners. Ken Bruce on Radio 2, Britain’s most popular radio show since 2019, was up 400,000 to 8.65m listeners. On Smooth Radio, Kate Garraway has a record 2.5m listeners. Over on Classic FM, Alexander Armstrong attracts 2.4m weekly listeners. And the breakfast shows that go later, like the fun Heart Breakfast with Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden, from 6.30-10am (now UK commercial radio’s biggest breakfast show with 4.1m listeners), Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 6 Music, from 7.30-10.30am (with 1.35m listeners), or Chris Moyles on Radio X, from 6.30-10am (with 1.1m listeners) are all posting record numbers."

Semi-freddo

The Telegraph (Boris Johnson's 'real boss', © Dominic Cummings) tells us that the BBC licence fee is set to remain frozen at £159 for up to two years "in a bid to ease Britain’s cost of living crisis."

The paper's sources said the new deal, to run from 2022 to 2027, had to be "firm but fair,” one adding: “Now is not the time to be whacking up the amount households have to pay.”  (A frozen deal would fit with those who claim Boris might go to the country in 2023...). So far there's no sign of Government calls to Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney to join in this emerging campaign to keep the cost of living under control. 

It's suggested the final years of the deal would allow rises in line with Consumer Price Inflation.  

Still missing

The Mail on Sunday says the BBC investigation into what Martin Bashir and others may have done with the clothes of murdered schoolgirl Karen Hadaway has finished with no new information. The BBC tells the paper that Paul Smith, a former executive hired in mid-September to find out what went on, was  "hampered by the passage of time because some of those people spoken to could not recall being approached in 2004 and others cannot remember details of what they knew at the time".

The paper also reveals that former Panorama reporter Tom Mangold will be compensated for his treatment by management when attempting to blow the whistle over how Bashir secured an interview with Princess Diana. ‘We have reached an in-principle resolution with Tom Mangold although terms are yet to be agreed,’ says the BBC. 

The list of those compensated is growing. Matt Wiessler, Tiggy Legge-Bourke, Mangold, and I guess at least two more former Panorama staff. Contemporaries of Bashir at the programme might be tempted threaten class action for the way BBC press officers briefed against 'jealous colleagues, troublemakers and leakers'.

Happy returns

The Sun, and many of its readers with Twitter accounts, have been getting hot under under the collar about TV Licensing spending £9.25 million last year on 34 million letters sent out chasing licence fee payments. The news even merits a Sun editorial. 

Less re-tweeted is a line further down the story.  A TV Licensing spokesman said: “These letters generate more funds than they cost to send, so more money can be spent on programmes and services.”

Let's talk about...

I'm assembling a short list of discussion points for Tim Davie and Richard Sharp to have with candidates to be the next BBC Director of News and Current Affairs.  Let's start with whether it was necessary to lead a tea-time tv bulletin with detailed coverage of the inevitable conviction of a confessed necrophiliac, including the age range of the bodies he abused. And from last night, the global or UK significance of  Hollyoaks firing an actress for a side-job selling nude photos... 

Now it can be told

 A story's not really a story until John Simpson's been there. 

In Kabul with Joe Phua: veteran of dozens of assignments together, and one of the best & bravest people I’ve been privileged to work with. pic.twitter.com/E1ome6aYVe

— John Simpson (@JohnSimpsonNews) November 6, 2021

Is politics interesting ?

My local BBC South Today opt-out is always crime-heavy (as, it seems, is the BBC Six). Perhaps for a change they'd like to look at in-fighting between Tories at all levels, where Maria Caulfield is fighting Wealden Conservatives over housing developments in Polegate; developments which East Sussex Apparently Carbon Neutral Conservatives say drive the need for a new £1bn dual carriageway.  This week, levelling-up minister Michael Gove bravely sneaked in and out of Lewes for a dinner with party faithful, and it was pretty fiery.  Can he pull this one out of the fire ?

In the air

You many enjoy this pretty straightforward view of the BBC's journalism, from Philip-not-the-Genesis-drummer-Collins in the New Statesman. He points out that BBC chairman Richard Sharp is guilty of overstating the problem in order to may the dull solution a litte more spectacular. 

Big John

The Government has placed its confidence in John Whittingdale to deliver a new process of 'natural justice' to MPs accused of wrongdoing. 

Mr Whittingdale, whose worldly perspicacity failed to spot that the glamorous woman who agreed to accompany him to an MTV event in Amsterdam was a sex-worker, and whose personal code of conduct only brought him to declare the benefit in kind when prodded by newspapers, was a beneficiary of £8,000 from a company called Aquind for his 2020 election fighting fund. 

Aquind is effectively a single-purpose company wishing to build a giant electric cable between Lovedean near Portsmouth and a substation at Barnabos in Normandy. Presumably they wanted to see Mr Whittingdale, an Essex MP, re-elected simply for the joy of his politics.  In January 2020, Aquind donated £10,000 to Alok Sharma.  In February two Aquind directors shared a £12,000 table with Mr Sharma at the Tories’ Black and White Ball fundraiser.

Last month, the current Business minister Kwasi Kwarteng extended the deadline for the Aquind planning application to January 2022 - a second extension. 

Literary interests

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries is speaking at the Independent Publishers Guild Conference, where she'll be interviewed by IPG Chair Amanda Ridout, of Boldwood Books.

Amanda used to be CEO at Head of Zeus, where she signed a six-figure deal for three more books from Nadine back in 2017, working with editor Rosie De Courcy. Nadine's agent was Piers Blofeld (nephew of Henry), at Sheil Land.  Amanda left HoZ later that year, after a drop in profits. HoZ is now part of the Bloomsbury Publishing.   Nadine has declared income of £13,000 a month - £156k per year - but it's not clear if that has run out...

Landlord change

The BBC has a new landlord at MediaCityUK in Salford. Landsec - aka Land Securities - has bought a 75% stake in the whole development, leaving driving force Peel with 25%. Peel's previous 50/50 partners were Legal and General. 

Land Securities acted as 'developers' when the BBC transformed Broadcasting House into its main HQ. 

Their purchase in Salford includes £293.6m of debt, reducing its equity investment to £207.6m.

The judges

So far, we only have names for two of the three charged with a second go at selecting a new candidate to chair Ofcom. 

Michael Prescott was a hack - he took a post-graduate course in journalism at Cardiff, after PPE at St Catherine's, Oxford, before short jobs with the Mirror (alongside Alastair Campbell) and the BBC.  He was at the Sunday Times on the politics beat for 10 years, whilst also finding time to be a side-kick to Michael Parkinson on Radio 2. He then joined Weber Shandwick PR, spent time as Corporate Affairs Director at BT. From 2015 to 2017 he was an  External Director of the Cabinet Office’s Government Communications Service, 2015 – 17  (Matthew Hancock and Ben Gummer were Ministers). In February 2017, he joined Hanover Communications as Managing Director Corporate and Political Strategy.  He is currently a member of the Advisory Council to the Government's Radioactive Waste Management operation - presumably on the PR side rather than absolute science; and a Board Member of Cabinet Office diversity panel “Leaders as Change Agents”. 

The lead Civil Servant on the panel also has Cabinet Office pedigree, spookily overlapping with Michael Prescott: Sue Gray, once described "the most powerful civil servant you've never heard of". She had twenty years experience there, rising to head of the Propriety and Ethics Team. After a spell in Northern Ireland (she is married to a country and western singer originally from Portaferry in County Down, called Bill Conlon, and in the 80s ran the Cove Bar outside Newry, County Down) she returned to London to work alongside Michael Gove at Levelling Up. 

Earlier bird

Congratulations - we think - to Esme Wren, leaving Newsnight after three years in charge, to replace Ben De Pear in charge of Channel 4 News, where she'll have a reporting line to Ian Katz, former Newsnight Editor.  She also have dealings with C4 Commissioner Louisa Compton; Esme beat her to the Newsnight gig.  

There was a time, perhaps, when Newsnight was the bigger job, but post-Paxman, and even before, C4 News has been turning in slightly better audience figures. Esme has seen her team at Newsnight cut (and there may be more to come); at C4, her big issue is how and when to tell Jon Snow it's time to call it a day. 

Premium product

BBC Studios are attempting to monetise their podcasts in North America, offering "BBC Podcasts Premium" via the Apple Podcast platform at $2.99 a month. 

For that, you get ad-free versions of the Radio 4 Braggosaurus, In Our Time, and the World Service-produced Global News Podcast, alongside new stuff from Jon Ronson and Louis Theroux. No sign, at this stage of Gemma Collins and Scarlett Moffatt. 

As with BBC Select, launch director is Louise La Grange (D F Malan High School, Bellville and B.Acc, Stellenbosch University): “Audio storytelling is where the BBC first began almost a century ago, and we’re proud to expand on that tradition with the launch of BBC Podcasts Premium. We are incredibly excited to collaborate with Apple on its subscription product that offers a compelling and seamless way for audiences in the U.S. and Canada to enjoy the very best of our global audio journalism and storytelling, all ad-free, along with never-before-heard titles this side of the pond.” (Is Louise in London or New York ?)

Friendly Fire

An interesting long read in The Guardian reveals that it was Newsnight reporter Liz McKean who leaked stories of her thwarted Savile investigation to The Times, The Guardian, The Oldie and Private Eye. It reveals clear similarities with the Martin Bashir cover-up, sixteen years earlier - senior managers who were  more interested in attacking the integrity of whistle-blowing journalists than finding out what really happened. 

It reminds us also that McKean and her producer on the story, Meirion Jones, were invited to a meeting, post-Pollard inquiry, with acting DG Tim Davie, half-expecting an apology and clean start. As Jones said "It was new face, same suit". 

Tailoring ?

A couple of other changes to the job ad for Ofcom chair - do they make it easier for Paul Dacre to get through this time ?

In 'Key Selection Criteria, "familiarity with the structures and business drivers of an economic or a regulatory environment" becomes "an understanding of the structures and business drivers of an economic or a regulatory environment"

Dropped from the requirement "In addition to chairing meetings of the Board, the Chair will be expected to serve as a member of the People Committee and to attend the Risk and Audit Committee."  Dacre's people skills are, of course, legendary. 

Last time there were four members of the assessment panel; this time it looks like there's going to be three. 

"Effectively"

There's at least one change in the re-advertisement of the vacancy for Ofcom Chair. 

Under 'personal attributes' first time round, it read 'the Chair will be committed to working collegiately with Board Directors, and building a positive relationship with the Chief Executive". 

Paul Dacre was deemed unsuitable by the first four-strong assessment panel. It was rumoured there was interview discussion about two Board members who had previously worked for the BBC - at that stage, Tim Suter and Kevin Bakhurst. 

The new version of the ad reads "the Chair will be committed to working effectively with Board Directors, and building a productive relationship with the Chief Executive". 

50 miles out

Another triumph for CNN's command of world geography, presumably fixed by their London office.  Surely only the right place to be if they get a Biden interview...

I’m now reporting from Edinburgh in Scotland where 20,000 world leaders and delegates have gathered for the COP26 Climate Summit. COP, by the way, stands for “Conference of the Parties.” It’s the 26th time they have gathered to discuss and take action on this critical issue. pic.twitter.com/BGTAeU5cBy

— Wolf Blitzer (@wolfblitzer) November 1, 2021

Boff

It's almost as if there's a pattern. 

In May the BBC parted company with Director of Comedy, Shane Allen. Mr Allen set up a new company, Boffola Pictures, operating as part of 'indie' Lookout Point, which is wholly owned by BBC Studios. Now Boffola Pictures and Lookout have won a commission to produce Daisy May Cooper's new comedy thriller (title yet to be decided). 

Mr Allen picked up This Country after an unsuccessful pilot with ITV, and brought it to BBC Three. 

Name change ?

It's becoming The Farage Channel. The top five programmes for GB News in the week beginning October11 are the Monday to Thursday editions of Farage, followed by The Political Correction (with Nigel Farage). Audiences spread between 40k and 80k; all other shows are below 38k - and the network's four-week reach has fallen another point, to 1.8 million.