Terminal

Almost since the start, this blog has been tracking Taffia efforts to secure a new HQ for BBC Wales. According to Wales Online, a move to Cardiff Bus Station will be announced tomorrow.

The bus station (featured in Dr Who) will have to move to allow the development, nestling 'twixt the railway station and the Millennium Stadium.

Wales Online puts the cost at £170m. It'll need some scrutiny. The Taffia hope to raise £26m from their Llandaff and Ty Oldfield freeholds - no news of a purchaser as I write, so this become a fire sale. There was talk of the new home being on a 20-year lease, rather than the 30 years used by previously by other BBC schemes. On that calculation, the deal is costing £8.5m a year. Say it quick - it's for around 800 staff (pre cuts to reach DQF targets). Does the price also include include new kit and new studios ?

Leeked

BBC DG Lord Hall is in Wales - last night addressing a reception at the Welsh Assembly. And the word most of the papers have picked up from his speech is "eroded".  Thus...

Despite BBC Wales’ very real success, we must also acknowledge that English language programming from and for Wales has been in decline for almost a decade. The reduction in ITV Wales’ contribution has played a big part in this – but the BBC’s output has also been eroded. 

What does that mean for audiences here? It means, inevitably, that there are some aspects of national life in Wales that are not sufficiently captured by the BBC’s own television services in Wales, and I would include comedy, entertainment and culture in those categories.

Does this matter? Of course it does: the vitality of any nation must surely rest on more than its journalism. One cannot fully realise a nation’s creative potential or harness its diverse talents through the important, but narrow, prism of news. Now this narrowing of output was foreseeable, of course. Faced with budget cuts, BBC Wales rightly took the decision locally to prioritise and protect specific areas of national output – including news, current affairs and political coverage. 

Expect more soon from Gavin and Stacey, Rob Brydon, Katherine Jenkins and Bryn Terfel, and further monstering of the current Dylan Thomas centenary.

As good as a rubber factory - if not better

Could heritage, beloved of the Welsh, yet stand in the way of the BBC Wales building society ? The Taffia have long dreamed of a new headquarters in Cardiff, to match that of the Scots at Pacific Quay. But money is tight, and they need to max the value of the site they want to leave, at Llandaff.

Now, the great and the good of Cadw ("protect", "guard", "save", "preserve") have been asked to list it - something that scares off developers. It was designed by Dale Owen (1924-1997) of the Percy Thomas Partnership, and opened in 1966. Dale studied in the States under Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus school, and is said to have taken pleasure in getting BBC penny-pinchers to buy real Mies van der Rohe chairs for the reception area.

Henrietta Billings of the Twentieth Century Society tells Building Design: “Broadcasting House is one of Wales’s most outstanding and important modernist buildings, and one of the best remaining examples of this highly significant Welsh architectural practice.”

Professor Judi Loach of Cardiff University chimes in: “This is the outstanding modernist building of the post-war era in Cardiff and indeed one of the very few in Wales that can stand comparison with first rate architecture abroad.

“This is the most significant 20th-century building to be threatened in Wales since the loss of the grade II* listed rubber factory in Brynmawr, south Wales built 1946-51, demolished in 2001.”

Dim tacsi

The dai is cast. Rhodri The Builder and the rest of the BBC Wales team can do no more. (Cue irritating drum beat)  The final decision rests with the BBC Executive and the BBC Trust.

The short list for a new HQ for BBC Wales is down to three. As expected, there's one posh-ish Waterside site in Cardiff Bay, next to the politicians; the other two are decidedly less glam, one to the north and one to the south of the main rail station.

Rhodri Talfan Davies has shared the news, because now, frankly, the decision is down to price for a 30-year tenancy - and it would be odd for the BBC not to choose the cheapest. Particularly when there's no news of buyers for the Llandaff site.

Maybe in the business case, they can put some reduced expenses in the "costs avoided" section. There should be no taxis to and from the station in the second two options. Rhodri knocked up a healthy £5641.28 in the first reported quarter of this year for travel, accommodation and entertainment - with no flights.

More deals

Wales Online has discovered that 127 staff from BBC Wales got severance deals above £30,000 in the past five years.

No individual details were released, but the total sum paid out was £8.353m - making the average settlement over £65k. The BBC would like you to know that the two cuts programmes in operation over the period - "Continuous Improvement" and "Delivering Quality First" - have saved £149m.

Dai the Builder

The me-too-ism that has been a feature of the BBC's Celtic/national regions continued yesterday, with the news that the Taffia seek to move out of their Llandaff HQ by 2018. This campaign has been going on since 2007 - when Pacific Quay opened in Glasgow. The Welsh have still to produce a satisfactory financial strategy to deliver their significant ambitions (after six years of train journeys en masse to BBC Finance Committees) and, this time, by shroud-waving the infrastructure frailties of Llandaff, ensured a fire sale that will reduce the capital pot even further. (When will someone spot that Television Centre and New Broadcasting House Manchester were sold at a loss in any rational view of budgeting ?)

So the Welsh will be tied into a developer-led anchor tenant vanity scheme, funded by some PFI-variant bond deal, with a smidgeon of Welsh Assembly/EU support, tying their hands for 30 years, with no means of building capital for an alternative future. And the obvious answer, to refurbish an existing building, will be avoided. The we-must-have-a-new-building aspirations of BBC Northern Ireland cannot be far behind.

• You may have missed that, within a senior management pay freeze, Controller BBC Wales, Rhodri Talfan-Davies got a rise of more than 14% in April, taking his salary from £140k to £160k. 

Patten's progress

Indomitable. Lord Patten delivers quality first by blessing the Cardiff Singer of the World, then, after "breakfast with overnight", proceeds to open Digital Futures Day, at Digital Cardiff Week.

The programme tantalises. "Join Lord Patten and Rhodri Talfan Davies for a lively morning of discussion and debate". Just don't mention spending £100m and getting nowt.

• Psst, Chris. Did Rhodri mention that the Taffia still think they're owed a nice new broadcast centre ?

Betting on...

Good luck to Betsan Powys, taking over Radio Cymru. The Welsh station dropped to its lowest ever listening figures in the last quarter - 110,000.

Betsan, approaching her fiftieth year, went to the same school (Llanhari) as Guto Harri, and a couple of stars of Pobol y Cwm. She joined the BBC as a news trainee in 1989. One of her early journalistic scoops came in 1998, when she posed as one half of a swinging couple, trying to expose the use of a garden centre in Pembrokeshire as a brothel - "The Garden of Eden".  It is not known whether or not the film survives...

Bobbo the Builder

The travelling Taffia of BBC Wales seem to think they've moved a step closer to a new home, after a visit to London. According to Wales Online, the BBC Finance Committee has told them they can either stay in a refurbished Llandaff - or get a new building. The catch - any new building must be smaller than the 145,000 square foot they've bid for. How much smaller we are not told. But it means cranking out yet another business case, and another search for potential buildings, sites and partners by surveyors Lambert Smith Hampton.

Chapel News

Here's a touch of Huw Edwards with some of the purple prose that ought to feature in the 10 O'Clock News, but doesn't.

It's from the Annual Review of the National Churches Trust: here's the intro.

The past half-century, a period of base neglect, has seen hundreds of cherished buildings flattened without heed. There is a bitter twist at work here. Wales has suffered a campaign of cultural sacking approved by elected and unelected officials; but many of those responsible have had little understanding of the scale of the loss. 

In Wales today, those tokens of Plantagenet savagery, the medieval castles, are cared for with a vigilance approaching the fetishistic. We willingly revere these symbols of our oppression. And it follows that our national authorities accord them maximum listed protection. 

In this same Wales, those heroic symbols of our Nonconformist freedom, the chapels, are neglected, disdained and spurned. They lie rotting and decomposed in town centres, casually vandalised. They are invisible and irrelevant. They seldom pierce the people’s awareness, but when they do, they provoke repugnance and scorn.

Overall, tt's a pretty hard-nosed attack on CADW, "the Welsh Government’s historic environment service working for an accessible and well-protected historic environment for Wales".

Plated

The Celtic fringe of the BBC has been indulging itself. A Freedom of Information request has identified two "personalised" numberplates in the BBC's vehicle fleet.

402 BBC is on a Mercedes Sprinter Van, used by BBC Wales. "As this number plate was purchased around 15 years ago, detailed records relating to the transaction no longer exist, but it is understood that the cost was £300. The plate was purchased by BBC Wales (Resources) Ltd, a commercial operation which ceased to exist in 2001."

CU1792 - bear with me - is attached to a Mercedes Vito Traveliner Diesel 8 Seater in Northern Ireland. "To the best of our knowledge, this registration plate was assigned to a BBCNI vehicle at least 20 years ago. We do not hold any information about the purchase or transfer of this registration number".

This is where I need help - what am I meant to read into CU1792 ? 1792 was the first Belfast Harp Festival, and the year in which Catholics were allowed to practise as lawyers, and marry Protestants. I can't find a radio frequency which matches. Does it read as something in Gaelic ? Please tell me it's not staring me in the face....

Adeiladwyr

Menna may be gone, but the BBC Taffia are still desperate to get out of Llandaff and move down by Cardiff Bay. WalesOnline says Rhodri Talfan Davies and his team are looking at five options - one of which could be the refurbishment of Llandaff, funded by selling off some adjacent land for development. But the broadcasters will argue that they can't refurbish and stay on air, so making a move inevitable. And here's a bet - they won't take an existing new building and adapt it; they want their own new house, just like the licence-fee payers gave BBC Scotland at Pacific Quay.  Another headache for the new Director General...

Men

I know we're not comparing like with like, but Paxo's new BBC series, Empire, returned figures of 3.9m last night. The three parts of Andrew Marr's Diamond Queen, in the same slot, brought home 6.2m, 5.5m and 2.9m.

Paxman was, however, up against another BBC big beast - viewers in Wales got Huw Edwards' Story of Wales instead. Surely that can't have pleased either of the silverbacks ?

• 10.30pm update: And viewers in Scotland got Motorway Cops.  Based in Bromsgrove. 

Castles

I was amused to read in house mag Ariel that BBC Wales is conducting a nine-month review of options on a new "fit-for-purpose" headquarters. The timing is fabulously inappropriate, yet it demonstrates the Celtic me-too-ism that's distorting Auntie's UK strategies.

The Welsh media Taffia have wanted a new building ever since BBC Scotland opened Pacific Quay on the banks of the Clyde in 2007.  They were slightly assuaged by the "Drama Village" at Roath Lock. But now new boss Rhodri Talfan Davies (home: Bristol) has had to demonstrate that he's as remorseless as predecessor Menna Richards in en-masse train journeys to London to berate the DG at Finance Committees.

The Llandaff headquarters was built in 1966 - and, if sold, would probably only attract the interest of a major supermarket.  Not enough dosh to build new. So any new project would require a sort-of-developer PFI variant. And would probably require S4C (broke) to share the facility.  Welsh "balchder" requires new, not mend and make-do - yet the audiences just want better programmes.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, where the management pulled a blinder in building PQ much bigger than could ever be needed (without DG Thommo noticing until it was too late), there are plans to keep ahead of the Welsh. BBC Alba, which has previously boasted of its frugality in operating out of existing spare accommodation (there's tons of it) with a "virtual headquarters", has decided it is time to build. This when its output costs 21.8p per viewer hour.  The creation of a shiny new building, presumably by Gaelic architects, would coincide with drives to make Gaelic the official first language of the Islands, moves to create more Gaelic schools - and above all, making sure the whole of the UK pays for it.  

Ice Trucker man comes home

The Cardiff-based Taffia have been thwarted in the race to be new chief executive of S4C, according to Wales Online.

They say Ian Jones, currently working in New York for tv distribution firm A&E Television Networks, has got the job and is negotiating his exit and arrival.  AETN sells shows like Ice Road Truckers, Gene Simmons Family Jewels and Steven Seagal: Lawman as well many reality, crime and history series.

Ian tells the AETN story here.

More pipes

A rambling report from the BBC Trust on the "national" radio services in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, offers few crisp insights and some daft ideas.

Here's the hardest message: "Radio Scotland brings a large number of listeners to the BBC portfolio in Scotland but an eclectic schedule has been adversely affecting overall audience impressions of the station". A clear warning to Jeff Zycinski, the Bill Cotton of Inverness, to get a grip. There's also some debate in the full report about why BBC Radio Scotland costs so much to run, compared with the others - some £32.6 million last year. Four production centres, each with managers - and then managers travelling between them - would be one daft and easily removed overhead.

There are odd recommendations about music policy which, probably to the glee of the (commercial) Radio Centre, will increase the number of harp and uilleann pipe recordings heard daytime in Wales and in the evening in Scotland. The sensible bit is that the management should set new measurable objectives for all the stations AFTER the cuts in DQF have been revealed. There's also a late realisation that these "national stations" should co-ordinate more with Tim Davie's isolationist Audio & Music empire.

Meanwhile, I shall be applying for a job as Line Spacing Editorial Advisor, shortly to be advertised by the Trust.

Like father

Delivering Quality First is an audition for a job. The BBC has appointed Rhodri Talfan Davies, one of the nine leaders of DQF workstreams, as Director, BBC Cymru Wales. Menna Richards left the role in February.

Cardiff-born, Welsh-speaking Rhodri is young for the role - I guess he's just into his 40s. He began his BBC career as a regional television news producer and reporter in Newcastle, Manchester and London before being appointed Head of Regional and Local Programmes in BBC Bristol in 1999. In 2001, Rhodri got a job with  Video Networks, which developed Home Choice (now talk talk TV). In 2004 he was appointed Director of Television Marketing at NTL Telewest, before returning to the BBC in 2006 as Head of Strategy and Communications at BBC Wales. Over the last six months, he has led the "Digital" workstream for Delivering Quality First.  Not sure of this, but I suspect he may still be living in Bristol - English addresses have previously disqualified other potential candidates.

Dad Geraint, at 67, is whatever the Welsh is for "eminence grise".  He's had all the top media jobs in Wales (including 10 years in the job his son has just got), and is still Chairman of the Welsh National Opera and the Institute for Welsh Affairs (concept apparently not derived from Under Milk Wood). He is also a non-executive director of Glas Cymru Cyf (Welsh Water).

•  I'm grateful to Wales Online for pointing out that Rhodri is part of a dynasty.  His grandfather, Aneirin, joined the BBC after the second World War, and rose to Head of Programmes, BBC Wales in 1966. 

Bargen

It's not just at the BBC where the deals-to-go seem sometimes overly generous. Iona Jones left her job as Chief Executive of S4C last July.  In 2009 her package was worth £161k - and, despite her departure, this year's accounts show payments of £158k.  Her continuous service with S4C had started in 2003.  The £158k seems to be the price paid to avoid an industrial tribunal - which might well have been fun.

Reputations

An esteemed correspondent has pointed to three leaked documents from BBC Wales about the options under consideration to make the 20% cuts required by DG Mark Thompson. This is part of the process known as "Delivering Quality First".  All three are plangent cries for protection from this nonsense, which, if implemented, will reduce, apparently, BBC Wales, BBC Cymru and BBC Sport in Wales to a pitiful laughing stock, barely able to prevent a break-down of democracy in the Principality.

Document One fits the slideshow template, which is then shared in breast-beating sessions with other DQF teams.  It's the one to read, littered with shrouds such as "huge reputational risk".  All the easy cuts are in the "difficult second 10%" - e.g. getting rid of continuity announcers.   The News and Current Affairs paper, Document Two, says 20% cuts will reduce staffing from 300 to 240 - and points to "major reputational risk and failure to deliver on BBC public purposes".  The sport proposal, Document Three, talks about 24 jobs going - but never offers the base.  The shrouds are there a-plenty: "Reduce number of Scrum V Live & Y Clwb Rygbi pundits from 2 to 1. Saving £20K. Risk: Erosion of editorial diversity and authority".

It's wrong just to poke fun at Cardiff. All the DQF documents are constructed in the same daft way.   Always based on taking away; never on constructing a budget from the bottom up.   What could a commercial tv and radio broadcaster do with a mere 240 News and Current Affairs staff in Wales ?  We'll never know - they're driven by the bottom line - but benchmarking never appears in these sort of documents.  It should.

Frantic balancing act

The accountancy year in the BBC is normally well-defined, driven by an established timetable, and with plenty of people at the Corporate Centre involved in long-term planning.  At this time in the calendar, minds inside BBC management normally turn to Wimbledon, Tuscany and Proms Tickets; in 2011, things are frantic, with the drafting and redrafting of a business plan to save 20% over six years than will stand scrutiny by The Trust and their promised independent assessors. The work has to be handed in next month.

One of the major problems is balancing the spend between London and Out-of-London. Jana Bennett's ticking time-bomb left at Television Centre is to make 50% of network tv programmes outside the M25 by 2016.  The Controllers hate it - they want all their favourite shows in the capital; their favourite stars won't move, so the costs of daily business return flights to Manchester and Glasgow bust budgets - it's little wonder the progress to the target is slow.  However, there's no excuse over six years, and The Trust (unless Patten changes tack) will look for that sheet in the workbook.  So, fear of Salford hangs over BBC3 and 6Music, amongst others. Meanwhile, and ironically, as more and more network production heads out of London,  there's the first sign of shroud-waving at BBC Wales, with rumbles about downgrading coverage of the National Eisteddfod winning the headline "Future of BBC Wales Called Into Question As Savage Cuts Considered" from the Western Mail.  I expect similar lines from BBC Scotland soon.

So within the organisation, there are financial advisers to the various "Delivering Quality First" workstreams trying to reach target figures, being man-marked by financial advisors within the divisions whose role is deem the proposals unworkable.  Frantic, fairly tense - and not without casualties.