The Kraken

Sir Robbie Gibb seems to have woken up to the digital drive in the BBC English regions. He chairs the BBC Board's England Committee, and, whilst he may not have checked the spellings and grammar in the published minutes of their February meeting, he seems to be posing the right questions. 

2.9 The Chair asked a question about ‘click bate’ stories and perverse incentives for journalists to perform to stories which attract high numbers. The Regional Lead said there is more care and thought into advance planning; monthly, weekly and daily (which accounts for 97% of the content) along with the usual breaking stories.

2.10 The Chair expressed a desire to further strengthen the impartiality of local journalism and show diversity of opinion within news content. 

3.5 The Chair expressed a desire to see robust data on the impact of the changes in online news growth in terms of story count in England. Across England there is a daily target of four stories per index post rota implementation which is tracked by tableau. This would be presented at the next England Committee.

4.2 The Chair expressed concern about the trend of news online and sports online consumption on the website specifically, a review of sport online coverage would be shared in the next Committee with comparison to performance on the sports app.

4.4 The path to target for RAJAR performance in England on Local Radio is below target. BBC Radio overall has declined, particularly in speech content and local radio has also shown a significant decline. The most recent survey does not account for the period of time in the changes to radio output in England through LVFA.

(Ed note: LVFA stands for Local Value For All)