Figures

The spin on yesterday's cuts in BBC Radio is that they come from a difficult but sensible and necessary re-organisation. Some programme-makers may even experience a little schadenfreude, as commissioners working for controllers take a hit for the first time in Delivering Quality First.

But the big numbers in the 65 jobs closing are programme-makers and their teams. 38 go in Radio Production, the engine room for much Radio 4 "built" output  - and management are warning that if there are insufficient volunteers for a deal, selection for retention will be done by a paper process rather than interviews. 8 go in Radio 1, alongside the recent presenter changes. 7 go in the Radio and Music Multiplatform team, which sits oddly with the mood music about a digital future.

The creation of the "Serious" (speech and classical music) and "Fluffy" (music from Vera Lynn onwards) Hubs will cut 20 posts. Apparently all controllers retain their jobs, despite the contractions below them. This may not have been how Roger Wright, the departing of Controller of Radio 3 and the Proms, read the runes in making his decision to leave after this season's first night. Still no sign of job ads to replace him.

The future of Network Radio seems to be firmly in the hands of Bob "Gavin" Shennan and Gwyneth "Stacey" Williams, top dogs in Fluffy and Serious. And Stacey is partly beholden to Gavin, in his role as Director of Music. Confusing, huh ?

Pan-BBC breakthrough

April 2014 was meant to have seen The Bonfire of The Boards at the BBC, halving the number of "pan-BBC" groups, and driving more responsibility to individuals.

So far, I've only spotted one that's gone - a light spluttering of kindling, rather than an inferno.

So, farewell BBC Management Board, which included all the BBC Executive, plus Nations Controllers, Editorial Policy's David Jordan, Marketing's Philip Almond, Future Media's Ralph Rivera, King of the North Peter Salmon and Creative Director Alan Yentob.

Hello, phoenix-like, courtesy of them big brains at McKinsey, the Executive Team, which includes all the BBC Executive, plus Nations Controllers, Editorial Policy's David Jordan (etc, etc, etc).

Apparently, the new Executive Team looks at pan-BBC issues and ensures that all divisions are involved in delivering the BBC’s objectives. Whereas the old Management Board was responsible for managing pan-BBC issues delegated to it from the Executive Board and ensuring that the organisation met its pan-BBC objectives.  Got that ?

Tradesmen

Anyone concerned about The Telegraph's Five Pillars and whether or not they'll ever support an Entablature, is, apparently, invited to The Plumber's Arms in Lower Belgrave St, SW1 tonight.

The newspaper's NUJ chapel is meeting from 6.30pm, and "snacks" are on offer; all are welcome, "members or not", to raise issues of concern.

Bexpo

Clearly the major broadcasting event of the week is going to be the first episode of W1A, in which a team of BBC comedy producers, born and bred, assembled under Jon Plowman, get to expose the BBC b*llocks which has been the bane of their lives for years. No need for much invention, no need to make it up - just write it down, and away you go.

Oddly, the grandest period of BBC b*llocks came under plain-speaking Greg Dyke - the Common Man, after John Birt's Thomas Cromwell in A Man For All Seasons. The messianic side of Greg seriously thought he could change the culture he found on arrival at the BBC - an organisation, it was said, at each other's throats in a complex and costly internal market, laden with bureacracy, and with such low staff morale that it was hard to find a pulse.  At his side was Professor Gareth Jones, of the Henley Management College, who became for a period, Greg's HR supremo - and so the great lab experiment began. Trouble was, Greg and Gaz didn't have much time for hard pounding, preferring pints of Guinness in the King's Arms, Great Titchfield Street, where nobody knows your name. And so, a range of people took the simple idea of cheering the place up and making better programmes, and turned it into a gargantuan "project", festooned in b*llocky phrases, that in time, became as meaningless as anything concocted by Birt.

So first, we had "One BBC", and a new structure diagram, showing divisions as petals. Then, after many BBC executives had enjoyed trips to the West Coast of the USA, came "Making It Happen". This had seven "major themes";  Inspiring Creativity Everywhere (without mind-expanding drugs, necessarily); Connecting With Audiences; Valuing People; We Are The BBC (?); Great Spaces; Lead More, Manage Well; and Just Do It.  "Making It Happen" was then taken to all staff in a series of sessions called "Just Imagine" (how great the BBC could be if we all worked together to change it).  This was the bit that was supposed to be 'bottom up'; 24,000 staff coming up with change ideas.  Some of them contributed to a workstream called "Values", and if anyone was Head of Values, it was Roger Mosey, then in News, now at Selwyn College, selected to collate these thoughts and shape them into a totemic mantra for the most creative organisation in the world.

Here they are.

• Trust is the foundation of the BBC: we are independent, impartial and honest.
• Audiences are at the heart of everything we do. 
• We take pride in delivering quality and value for money. 
• Creativity is the lifeblood of our organization. 
• We respect each other and celebrate our diversity so that everyone can give of their best.
• We are one BBC: great things happen when we work together.

The values were eventually printed on the back of everyone's staff id cards. It wasn't the end; there followed The Big Conversation, The Big Brainstorm, a mahoosive leadership training initiative, Audience Insights, a drive to appraisals and performance management, and much much more. 

Then came Gilligan and Dr David Kelly, and Greg Dyke personally managing the BBC v Alastair Campbell. In the end, to nobody's surprise but his own, he lost to Blair, Hutton and the BBC Governors. 

I leave you to judge whether or not the Dyke lab experiment worked long-term, (without, for example, mentioning executive pay-offs, Respect At Work, DMI, attempts to close 6Music and BBC3 etc) and hope you enjoy W1A in a more informed way.

• 2pm Monday update: A regular correspondent notes that the BBC Values replaced instructions on what to do in case of fire on the back of identity cards. Thankfully there is so far no reported incident of people being unnecessarily burned as a result of the change. 

Portal

The SaveBBC3 petition has just broken through 200,000 signatures  - 203,043 as I write. Holt town councillor (and would-be Labour county councillor) 25 year-old Jono Read is the organiser, and, as befitting a digital media advisor to the University of East Anglia, has set up a website to go with the campaign.

Hang on, Jono, don't make it look too good. We want it to stay linear, don't we ?

Layering

Eschew sudoku. Join with me in a love of BBC organogram puzzles.

Technology staff have been told that there will soon be an advert for a new Chief Technology Officer, to replace John Linwood, once minder of the Digital Media Initiative. The new incumbent will report directly to Anne Bulford, Managing Director, Operations and Finance, in a bid to simplify reporting lines.

Since October 2012, Dominic Coles has been styled Director of Operations (no trace of an advert). This followed Caroline Thomson's unwonted departure as Chief Operating Officer, after losing out as DG to George Entwistle. Dominic was given responsibility for technology, distribution, archive, property, and a bunch of other stuff - on a package of £307,800.  He keeps responsibility for son-of-DMI, "End-to-end", now rebranded as trendy text-speak End2End, but, overall, taking away technology looks like a job scope reduction. No doubt Anne will wish to benchmark Dominic's new portfolio pretty soon and adjust salary accordingly. This would cheer up James Purnell, on a mere £295,000, stuck with not much to do til after the election, according to Maria Miller.

Meanwhile, with just three weeks left til the new financial year, there's still little detail on the "bonfire of the boards". If your board/working group/pan-BBC advisory group has been deemed unnecessary on voyage, please let me know.

Counting time

Who saved 6Music ?  I think it was a generation brought up on the Matthew Bannister/Trevor Dann version of Radio 1, from the mid-90s on. They enjoyed the blood-sport of destroying dinosaur DJs, and liked the idea of new British music by new British artists. Say they were at school then, they probably watched Byker Grove in the afternoons on BBC1; either Live & Kicking on BBC1 or CD:UK on ITV on Saturday mornings; the move of Top of the Pops from Thursday to Friday in 1997, meant a clash with Corrie, and so perhaps they sneaked out of single-telly households for a cheeky bottle of cider then. The audience for Top of the Pops sank through scheduling.

In their twenties, in the middle of the UK housing boom, came 6Music, giving them continued lifestyle support and CD suggestions.

When closure was proposed, this was the generation of Facebook and Twitter. No need for envelopes to mount a campaign. No need even to get out of bed; tweet from your mobile - 140 characters clarifies your thinking. The Trustees had to listen, and saved 6Music.

Is there a constituency that will save BBC3 ?  The presenters' union is at it, and some comedy writers. The online petition is up to around 150,000. It ought to be doing better - BBC3's weekly reach is 15.6m, admittedly measured by three minutes consecutive viewing, but, nonetheless, 27% of the population. That compares with 6Music's reach of around 700,000 when it was first threatened.

Perhaps the truth is that the BBC really lost "yoof" in the Thompson custody period. Children's telly gone to channels with embarassing names for the pre-pubescent, replaced with quizzes for Granny. Top of the Pops gone; Saturday mornings given over to posh cooking. Live music represented by Jools Holland, turning 50. Radio 1 fronted by good-time Chris Moyles, talking, talking and talking.

It may have to be the Trust alone this time - and they might just do it. Something for everyone is the bedrock of the licence fee and the Trust's view of service licences. Otherwise, let's pack it all in and go for subscription; you'll end up with the National-Trust-TV we seem to be heading for anyway - all Farrow and Ball, antiques, midwives and niceness; no skateboard parks, loud music or rude words. You're welcome.

Style over content

When the BBC News guys say BBC3 is moving to online only, it's probably right. Of course, the BBC Trust could reject the saving, and that's where the Twitter campaign will go. Who will be fielded to describe this move as best solution ?  Tony Hall, James Purnell, Danny Cohen or Zai Bennett - we'll see tomorrow.

Shifting BBC3 online (where, if you only watch catchup, it's all currently free) marks the third attempt the BBC has attempted in modern times to connect with yoof via a brand. The first was DEF II, a twice weekly insertion on BBC2, which ran from 1988 to 1994, edited by Janet Street-Porter, with some shows hosted by Normski, a rapper, currently with Hoxton FM. Normski and Janet were said to be walking out.

The second set of DEF II titles,spookily, included a hammer trying to crack a nut.



In October 2007 the BBC had another go, with Switch, under "teen Tsar" Andy Parfitt. This had programmes on BBC2 on Saturday afternoons, Radio 1 on Sunday evenings, and a web portal that included Slink, an online magazine for teenage girls ("my boyfriend was born a girl" "Try the Slink Love Calculator"), and The Cut, an online drama that ran weekdays for a year.

One daily programme was the 5.19 show, made in Grafton House. You only need to try a minute or so of this to judge standards.



In March 2010, Mark Thompson sounded the death knell for Switch, for not "reaching its target audience effectively. Although the BBC should continue to target younger teens, it must accept that its role will be secondary to that of Channel 4 and other broadcasters". I'm not sure if the Teen Tsar had his salary reduced at this stage.

Stop it with all the brand stuff - make quality programmes teenagers want to watch, and bring back some contemporary music, if not Top of The Pops, once a week on network tv. Don't pretend Glastonbury does it - average age of attendees is now over 35.

What's in a name ?

Sorry to bombard BBC hacks today, but there's a lot to digest. Many "domestic" news staff at the BBC will be looking to Linguaphone from today, with the announcement that next year BBC World Service will be creating 130 new jobs, many of them bi- or multi-lingual. I wouldn't mind betting that's close to the number of post-closures that still have to be made in UK BBC News operations to reach their final Delivering Quality First target over the next two financial years.

Peter Horrocks' announcements yesterday were also interesting about identity and integration. There will be more integration; he expects "all the teams across Global News, from the World Service, BBC Monitoring, BBC World News, BBC.com and Media Action, to work seamlessly together within News and the wider BBC."  Mmmm. This requires more trust than is current about "programme numbers" and "departmental cost codes". But he also announced a move designed to expand the World Service brand....

I want to announce one further change that will help reinforce the identity of the World Service. You will know that the Director-General has asked that BBC bureaucracy and titles be simplified. For instance Vision became TV. We have had two labels – Global News and World Service. From April 1, we will change the name of Global News. Instead there will be a World Service Group – a sort of World Service plus – consisting of WS, GN Ltd, Monitoring and BBC Media Action. It is a small but symbolic change that cements the WS name. A huge part of our heritage – vital to our future. At the same time with the end of Foreign Office funding, we’ll end the role of the World Service Board.

Global News as a BBC title arrived in the heady, bouffant, days of Mark Byford, first to own the designation Director of GN, alongside Director of World Service, when it was established in December 2002. It was always a pompous handle, redolent of Lex Luthor's take-over of the Daily Planet. I don't begrudge the spending of a fee-licence fees unscrewing a few name plates.  What's not clear to me is what Mr Horrocks' new title might be, and how, within the mighty News, the  new "World Service" balances its books with its targets.

Trend

At the end of a week in which I was personally praised for my knowledge of BBC grades by a long-serving BBC HR commissar, another Freedom of Information factoid.

The number of "Senior Manager" graded staff (Bands 1 and 2) has fallen to 408 - a drop of seven since the last reported 415.  The number of staff at Band 11, just below Senior Manager, has increased to 748, up fourteen since the last reported 734.

Tools

Some bits and bobs from yesterday's NAO report on what went wrong with the BBC's Digital Media Initiative....

184 staff and contractors were working on the project at its peak in July 2011 - that doesn't include consultants.  Things were clearly a bit frantic then, cos the project risk status had gone from "Amber" to "Amber/Red" in June - that change of status wasn't reported up to the Executive and Trust Finance committee for more than two months.

When the project first went to "Red", in December 2011, neither the Trust nor the Executive received the report; the second straight "Red", came in March 2012, but wasn't reported to the Executive til June, and the Trust til July. Red meant "successful delivery outcomes appeared to be unachievable, with major issues that did not appear to be manageable or resolvable."

The NAO report says there are three principal "assets" left from the investment - an archive database, which apparently costs £5.3m a year to operate, and which is working alongside a legacy system costing £780k a year to run; some big digital data storage units, which the BBC might use for its "End To End Digital" project (storage of the entire BBC archive will be on a USB stick by the time that works); and a music copyright reporting system, which, as of December 2013, had five users.

John Linwood, the CTO who left Auntie in July last year, says the core of his troubles with the project was that the "business" (television production teams) got cold feet about moving to standardised production tools for the rough assembly of built programmes before fine-editing. Cancelling this fundamental ambition in 2012 (when naughty tv teams knew DG Thommo was going, and had taken his eye off the standardisation prize) meant there could be no organic growth of an archive; Linwood says the digitisation of the BBC's historic archive was never part of DMI scope. His written evidence to the PAC says he's issued legal proceedings against the BBC, and (as of January 23) is still involved in an internal process with the BBC.

The key element of the NAO report, which I expect Ma Hodge to wave at former DG Mark Thompson next week: The executive board applied insufficient scrutiny during 2011 and the first half of 2012. This was, of course, the period when Thommo was buffing up his CV ahead of a new, post-Olympic career outside Auntie, and DMI, along with other more damaging issues, went straight into the "Too Difficult" tray.

Trusted guide

Mild surprise emanating from Telegraph Towers that the Seiken Scenario to Save the Scandal Sheet of the Shires, to drop the Tory from Torygraph, has passed so far without comment from the pens of various columnists.

Maybe Sunday will bring views. Jason sees the brand's future as a sort of journalistic Frommer's, a digital vadmecum, without political slant - the slant will be left to wither away with the print edition. Content will emerge from a community of journalists, rather than be directed from a newsdesk. Seiken hopes the exit of daily editor Tony Gallagher is sufficient to encourage the remaining senior hacks (many of who have Mail cvs) to come with him on this voyage of political neutrality - even through the normally dyspeptic waters of European elections, where the Telegraph's digital face will, apparently, show no scorn or side.

To encourage them further, the various grand offices around the edges of the giant newsroom are coming down - offices which housed trophies, veneered desks, Tony Gallagher, and others still employed. No word yet on what replaces them....

Naming names

The BBC spent £19,485 (including VAT at 20%) on external lawyers in trying to keep secret details of who attended the infamous "Climate Change: The Challenge to Broadcasting" seminar - and clocked up 120 hours of time within its own Litigation Department on the case.

Outglassed

Clearly there was only room for one bespectacled new media visionary at the Telegraph Group - and Daily editor Tony Gallagher had come to it too late. He started on Twitter in September 2011, and there's now a pregnant pause after 3,552 tweets to 19,212 followers. Spookily his nemesis, Jason Seikin, Editor-in Chief, only has 1,574 at time of writing - and he's been at it since March 2009. Jason's dig at Tone ? "We must reinvent the way we work and move beyond simply putting news and information online..."

Jason has been fleshing out this searing vision in the Telegraph Temple of Doom this morning - and there's something of Janus in it. The Telegraph, as a right of centre guide to modern life, will probably only continue to exist in print form. Our Jason sees the brand's digital existence as having a much broader purpose and appeal, as a guide to modern life that all can stomach. I wonder if those Barclay boys have clocked it.

He's keen on video - though says that Vice is the main competition, not Sky News - and wants to identify staff and columnists he can turn into YouTube stars. Don't all rush.

Master and Commander

Less than a week to go before BBC News boss James Harding gives the first W.T.Stead Memorial Lecture at the British Library. For £8 (£6 to me, cos I'm over 60)... James Harding surveys journalism today. We now have more ways than ever before to access the news, but how does this affect the way that news is produced, communicated and consumed? With experience in both print and broadcast journalism, Harding reflects upon the place of news in a changing media landscape. 

No idea if he's taking questions. There are some. James' declared management board costs the best part of £2m a year in salary packages - without adding the wages of Business Managers, Special Assistants and PAs. At least two salaries are undeclared, apparently because they're paid for by Global News. And salaries of newer arrivals, like Keith Blackmore, as Managing Editor, and Jonathan Munro, as Newsgathering boss, are not included. Staff will be interested in the direction of travel, as I believe they say...

Meeting requests not yet deleted

There were no helpful diagrams in yesterday's review of governance at the BBC. Lord Hall has promised to close down the work of 36 out of 56 pan-BBC boards, but the only one named so far is the DG's Finance Committee. Apparently any meaningful decisions currently taken by the 36 unnecessary meetings will be re-distributed to individuals - again, names and job titles would be useful. The Trust, for its part, said it would have fewer formal regular meetings with Executive members, accepting more information by quarterly reports, but it hasn't said which sub-committees are to close.

It's clearly a document that you can read anyway you like. Tony Hall's view? "From now on, the Executive Board will be the key decision-makers, and will ensure that Worldwide and the public service work together properly." Lord Patten? "The trust will set short, medium and long term objectives and publicly hold the executive to them".  How short is short, and when do short-term objectives morph into micro-management ?

For all the avowed love of transparency at the Trust, and published, but as yet un-re-written protocols (come ON, Kroll), there's no organogram on its site, though there is a list of eight sub-committees. The best diagram I can find was submitted to the Lords Communications Committee in 2011. We need to see more crossing out.

Gaviscon

I shall return in more detail to the BBC's review of governance after I've been to the pub; it is pretty indigestible, and clearly has been written by several hands. I highlight one chilling section, from someone who clearly gets angry, about "changing the culture" beyond the new rule book ....

It will require a willingness to share information openly from the Executive to the Trust without any implication that this cuts across the formal responsibilities of each side, or that it will be taken as an invitation for direct involvement in the matter at hand. 

It will also require the Executive to be more open to frank discussion and comment about issues the BBC has faced and understand that the Trust, in reviewing such matters, may take a different view. In return, the Trust will ensure it steps away from involvement in day to day management of issues once it is satisfied that an appropriate framework has been set. Provided the Executive works within that framework it will be left to deliver the work without additional input from the Trust.

So the Kroll Kode of Konduct for the Trust is replaced with an unworkable demand on the Executive: Tell us everything, and we'll decide if and when we interfere.

Meanwhile we note that Sir Howard Stringer (Merton College, Oxford), rejected previously as DG in 1999, and tapped up unsuccessfully as Chairman when Patten got the gig, is joining as a non-executive on the Executive. Earlier this month he got his foot in the door helping to sort out James Harding and a licence-fee funded World Service. Sir Howard, 71, seems to be collecting grandee roles in his retirement - is there a conflict of interest here already ?

I'll allow myself one "told yer". There will be a job as Secretary on the Executive.

Post post

I shall miss The Daily Post, the newspaper of my youth, and visits back to Liverpool and North Wales. In print since The Crimean War, it ceases publication for good next week.

Growing up in Huyton, it was delivered every morning, combining international, national and local news. For heritage reasons, my father chose the Welsh edition, stamped when colour printing came with a red dragon. This was sometimes printed too early to capture anything but bare results from evening football, and carried two or three pages of news from exotic places like Mold, Coedpoeth and Brymbo. But, when it did have full match reports, from Everton and Liverpool, they were long, detailed, and well-written. And they did great souvenir editions.

Kindling ready

We first hinted at the "bonfire of the boards" at the BBC back in August. Ever since then, management types have been going to meetings as usual, but shiftily exchanging glances - are we at one of the pointless ones, the pan-BBC steering groups and boards that the DG is going to axe ? It must be uncomfortable when you think there's a one in two chance your weighty discussions on position papers, your lucid action points and pithy minutes are just wasted effort.

Fear not: the bonfire IS still on Godric Smith's BBC Good News advent calendar, and may well be behind a door to be opened next week. So diaries, like Mark Thompson's from 2009, will have generous amounts of white space from January 2014.

P.S. Anyone know which door conceals the Price Waterhouse Cooper report on DMI ?

Tim pipped

Don't knock Freedom of Information enquiries; they may drive savings.

A Mr "Ben Brown" asked the BBC how much they'd spent on calls to the speaking clock for each of the past five years. Auntie swerved the big question, saying it would take longer than the rules allow to collate the information. But they did carry out a short three-month survey, and found spending of over £500 - technical staff about to go on air often check local clocks to make sure they're in synch. So now, thanks to the FOI prompt, a free internal number has been set up to provide the check.

NB: There's still something a little odd about the figures above. BT's Speaking Clock advertises its charge at 31p. Who were the BBC calling ?