I've been reflecting on the letters inviting top BBC News presenters to come forward privately if they might be interested in a redundancy deal, without a guarantee that it might actually be on offer. The news stories got pooh-poohed by both Huw Edwards and Nick Robinson on social media as 'standard practice - nothing to see here, no danger of your favourites going'.
Both are thoughtful men but I think they got the tone wrong - just as the BBC has got the process wrong. In an earlier post, I mentioned BBC News interim managing editor Philippa Busby. In a system where HR and managing editors get together to review interest in redundancy on a regular basis, her work is what's always been done, and shouldn't have been singled out. But frankly, it's been out-of-date for years in terms of 'top talent'.
Can you imagine a situation where you conduct business with key on-air network presenters you should be seeing every other day via a letter ? You should be in touch with their anxieties and ambitions at all times. You, not HR, should know who's thinking it might be time to go, without exchanging letters. (Think Ken Bruce).
The other problem is that, in any other talent organisation, you would have a view of who's underperforming, and who might be worth bringing in, rather than be looking for volunteers to start refreshing your line-up. But BBC News is still torn between the terms 'staff' and 'talent'. When Huw and Nick are part of the team, they are 'staff', ostensibly paid within a grading system, with terms and conditions. When Huw and Nick are 'talent', they are encouraged to make special programmes, boost the figures with newspaper and magazine features, and keep a sound public profile.
Many top News presenters pay is an amalgam of News and Studios funding - think Fiona Bruce with the Antiques Roadshow, Amol Rajan with University Challenge, and Clive Myrie on holiday in Italy. Their total wage packet is off any grade. These are effectively contract staff, and should be paid and taxed that way. No deals and redundancy, please - just contracts starting, and coming to an end.
Talking of highly-paid BBC News presenters, Nicky Campbell (£295,000) is surely having a bad day with the breaking news of Dominic Raab's resignation.
ReplyDeleteAs I understand it, the BBC's plan was that Nicky Campbell's 5 Live radio show would be visualised and made a regular UK opt every morning, on BBC News as received in the UK (and on BBC-2 as well), presumably because Nicky would be covering topics of particular interest to UK viewers. Meanwhile, world viewers would get the ‘regular’ non-UK output.
Now, on the fifth day of this arrangement, a UK story has broken and BBC News has RECOMBINED so that all viewers, world & UK, are getting Nancy Kacungira & Rob Watson - and the top guests, Kier Starmer etc. And the radio show that was supposed to be the UK opt has been kicked back into its box, because of a story about a British ministerial resignation that can only be of minimal interest to world viewers. Seriously, who else cares that Raab has gone?
Essentially, we were led to expect a UK split whenever a big story of UK interest occurred. And the exact opposite occurred. The network was already split, but they unsplit it when the story broke!! It’s laughable. Poor Nicky: as if he wasn't already feeling hurt that he didn't get to anchor the big UK story, he's not on BBC-2 either because the snooker is considered more important.
What it shows, actually, is that opting out to a radio visualisation is a hostage to fortune: a radio studio is not equipped to anchor a TV programme; it can only ever be a 'filler' when nothing much important is happening. Visualisation only makes sense when your core business is radio, like at LBC. When your core business is TV, visualised radio is always going to be the poor relation.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, if the plan at the BBC News network is to do a UK opt whenever a sufficiently important UK-only story breaks, why didn’t they? Having kicked Nicky back to 5 Live, the UK opt tv studio was, presumably, free to do a UK tv opt just as it would at any other time of day. So why didn’t it?
ReplyDeleteI'd say, because they haven’t actually got the staff to sustain both a UK opt and a regular service for world viewers. That why everyone got Nancy Kacingura on College Green talking to Rob Watson in his front room. Despite what they've said, BBC News can’t reliably sustain two networks side by side. The result is, they have to choose between 1) failing to serve UK viewers by not providing an opt, and 2) boring the pants off world viewers by delivering them continuing coverage of the resignation of a minister they've probably never heard of & certainly don't care about. The BBC chose the boring-pants-off option. Of course they did; world viewers don't pay licence fees.