The BBC heads for a very uncomfortable end to the financial year. It has a matter of days before making an obvious conciliatory move to extend the BBC Singers for twelve months (which would then take the decision to a financial year with a CPI increase in the licence fee).
And it has promised results from the extraordinarily clumsy process to cut the number of local radio staff presenters, with the unsuccessful being made redundant. Interview panels have failed to convince candidates that they've either a) bothered to hear them live or b) actually listened to demanded demos. Demeaning 'live tasks', like asking candidates to 'talk to time' during interview can't have helped. Amol Rajan, Nick Robinson and Justin Webb regularly display failings in this area without sanction, on salaries 6 times bigger than their local radio counterparts. The respect for management, in some areas provocatively bringing in freelances to keep the meter moving during the recent 24-hour strike, is at rock bottom, and it will take years to recover team morale.
Meanwhile the Soviet approach to Across The UK sees the BBC lose the Rev Richard Coles from Radio 4's Saturday Live, without celebration, after 12 years. Is Cardiff known as the home of lightweight chat ? Will a permanent successor have to live in Wales ? Has Alan Yentob moved from London W11 to present imagine... from its 'base' in Glasgow ? Mr Lineker is allowed on a weekly basis to move from Barnes SW13 to Salford, with, I'm guessing, most of his salary spent outside Scotland - what's different about the Rev ?
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