Dribs

The BBC press team are clearly not believers in 'getting it all out there in one go'. In response to a Freedom of Information inquiry they've disclosed that some of Huw Edwards' medical treatment last year was paid with licence-fees. 

'We can confirm that the BBC did pay for initial treatment for Huw Edwards directly after his suspension from the BBC in July 2023. 'This was based on an assessment of risk and duty of care considerations. Further, we can confirm that this treatment took place in England.'

Apparently, they're not going in more details on costs and duration, but the Mail has been briefed that it had stopped at the latest when BBC was made aware of his arrest last November.

Never wrong for long

The BBC Verify team have had a second go at the impact of the Government's extension of inheritance tax to farms. The first version took flak for using the opinions of Dan Neidle, tax consultant and Labour Party member. 

This time there's a denser piece, with more 'experts', but it's clear that Labour and the NFU are using apples and pears in their calculations, and even the mighty Ben Chu doesn't feel totally astride the issue.  It doesn't answer the strategy questions: is this change going to raise additional funds over five years from implementation, or is it genuinely avoidable for most ?  Is it going to change the price of farming land ? If not, why bother ? 

Speedy

Some weekend time-savers for readers of BBC News Online, taking you straight from the baity headline to the 'answer', avoiding all that writing-stuff.

Q Will Rachel Reeves' difficult week cause her lasting damage?
by Ben Wright
A Barring some unforeseen calamity Reeves has many years - and many worse weeks - in the Treasury ahead of her.

Q Just how big was Donald Trump’s election victory?
by Jason Fitzgerald
A With an estimated 99% of all votes counted, Trump won 49.9%, with Harris on 48.3%

Q Trump and Xi Jinping’s ‘loving’ relationship has soured - can they rebuild it?
by Laura Bicker
A Xi could be president for life – and so can afford to make slow but steady progress towards his goals.Even if Trump does get in the way, it will not be for long.

Airborne

Another busy three months for the BBC Director of Editorial Policy and Standards, David Jordan, as revealed in his expenses for the end of last year. It included participation in the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union/Radio Romania International Forum in Bucharest: "Diverse and distinctive: How culture powers public service media"; the annual conference of the  Public Broadcasters International conference, hosted by Czech TV in Prague (David is Secretary General of PBI); the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union General Assembly in Seoul; and the Nordic Media Ethics Workshop, Helsinki. 

Expensive

Funny things, expenses. The BBC, in the UK, tries to tread a middle line in hotel star-rating. This is exposed in the quarterly report on senior managers expenses, and they know it.  But abroad... 

In this quarter last year, Irene Asare, HR Director in News, managed stays in the Villa Rosa Kempinski, Nairobi, 5* (The perfect fusion of European luxury and Kenyan hospitality),  The Wheatbaker 5* ("Lagos's most Iconic hotel. The amazing art-supporting boutique hotel has fashioned the “art of hospitality” for over a decade.") and the Shangri-La Eros, New Delhi, 5* ("Cultured modern luxury in the evergreen Lutyens' Delhi"). 

Jonathan Munro, now Global Director, was also at the Shangri La, but back in the UK, his hotel tastes are more modest, featuring the Gem Fitzrovia, the Holiday Inn, Regent's Park and the Radisson Red, Glasgow.  

Meanwhile BBC News finance chief Claude Sarfo, based in Droitwich, has claimed 17 taxi fares using a previously unknown expenses rationale: "faster than the Tube". 

Doubling down with less music

Extraordinary. The BBC executives behind the desperate drive for a really-oldies music version of Radio 2 have addressed the concerns of commercial competitors, by piling in more speech. One only hopes Director of Music Lorna Clarke has costed the changes. 

They include an average of 10 news bulletins a day (presumably simulcast from Radio 2); speech heavy content taking up 60% of the schedule, to include documentaries (about 55% music/45% speech) and "highly-curated" (code for DJs droning on) programmes (about 65% music/35% speech);  a new partnership with the BBC’s local and national radio stations, drawing on local experts and voices to tell the story of the significance of the music of their specific regions across the UK;  a ‘culture show’ every weekday over three hours, with 'new interviews'. 

Has the Board been properly convinced that this is vital investment, a further over-serving of over 55s, when balanced against this year's cuts, and the value-for-all mantra ? 

Radio champions

John McAndrew, Director of Programmes at BBC News, struggled a little when Feedback on Radio 4 pointed out that the two News Board members in locus parenti of radio output - himself and Deborah Turness - had no direct experience of radio. 

John, 54 (Backwell Comprehensive, Somerset and Liverpool John Moores University), defended all the cuts, reminding the audience several times that he had to be 'cognisant of the financial situation'. When defending the decision that all network radio overnight news summaries should come from the World Service, he seemed about to say that, for big UK stories, you could always switch on the telly. He also argued that, in taking away a dedicated news service from the Asian Network, he was giving audiences what they wanted - more music. This dangerous argument erodes the differentiation that sustains the BBC; Radio 1 without news is a commercial channel, but if you asked the audience, they'd nearly always say they'd rather have more pop than Newsbeat. 

Feedback might like to note that since the departure of Liliane Landor there's nobody at BBC News' top table with a radio pedigree. 

Not bad

Tim and Tom will be pleased, in general, with the National Audit Office report on the performance of BBC Studios. In particular, they will leap at the offer of revising existing financial targets to be delivered by 2027/28, because of changing market conditions. Yes folks, the targets will be easier. 

Of course, my job is to highlight the niggles. The NAO allows itself one big 'I told you so'.

In our 2020 report, we identified that BBC Studios had been less successful than planned in winning new commissions and generating IP. Since then, although generation of new IP has grown, BBC Studios has not met its targets in this area and remains reliant on the IP from BBC programmes created before it was first established in 2016. In 2023-24, of the 10 titles from its production business which provided the most profit to the BBC, only one was from new IP generated by BBC Studios. 

There are revealing bits from the investment in the USA: The revamp of bbc.com cost £25m. BBC Select, a service of documentaries for posh people, has produced 275,000 subscribers. 

BBC.com did not meet its user and income targets in North America for 2023/24.

Nonetheless

BBC Studios plans to consolidate its international digital services into a single high-quality digital offering. This would combine its existing digital services – BBC.com, its international news and sports apps, BBC Select, BBC Podcasts, and BBC Sounds international – into a single, multi-territory service. 

The NAO commends in general improvements to the governance of BBC Studios, but talks worryingly of moving targets inside the business. 

There are still some weaknesses in its reporting regime which we consider make it difficult for the BBC Commercial Board and BBC Studios’ own Executive Committee to identify whether BBC Studios is meeting its performance targets, and to make good strategic decisions.

These include rolling forward of internal targets over a three-year period resulting in no reporting against the original target set for the period, and KPIs not being agreed for the beginning of the 2023-24 financial year. In addition, BBC Studios regularly reforecasts its financial metrics during the year and subsequently reports performance against these re-forecasted levels rather than the original budget, making it more difficult to use these reports to track performance over time 

Rotation

When Zoe Ball took over the Breakfast Show on Radio 2 in January 2019, she reached 9,047,000 listeners a week over the first three months, for a show that ran from 0630 to 0930. The network as whole returned a reach of 15,356,000.

In the most recent three months, with show times unchanged, the Radio 2 Breakfast Show's weekly reach is 6,277,000, and Radio 2 gets to 13,309,000. 

New Breakfast host Scott Mills started out on Radio 2 afternoons with 6,2488,900 listeners in Q1 2023, pretty much holding on to Steve Wright's figures. Can he do the same trick in the mornings ?

No speed reading here

Perhaps too much transparency in this refusal of a Freedom of Information enquiry, because it would take too long to read 1,810 emails which might reveal details of the internal debate about paying Huw Edwards after senior BBC executives knew about his arrest..... 

Question 3 of your request asked for ‘any internal communications where it was debated 
whether or not to pay Edwards’. We asked BBC Information Security to carry searches of 
relevant mailboxes using  keywords such  as  ‘Huw’  and  ‘salary’  in  the  time  period  from  1 November 2023 until Huw Edwards resigned from the BBC. This search has returned 1,810 
returns,  after  de-duplication.  Not  all  of  these  items  will  be  relevant  to  what  you  have 
specifically asked about – internal discussions where it was debated whether or not to pay 
Huw Edwards. Each of these items would need to be reviewed to establish whether or not 
they  are  within  the  scope  of  what  you  have  asked.  Taking  a  conservative  estimate  of  1 minute per item, this would take over 30 hours to review. This would exceed the appropriate time limit under the FOI Act.