Master of Puppets

Turned on BBC2 last night to see that the whacky Top Gear production team had been at it again. Give those zany presenters a bunch of guitars, bring their regular audience on stage, and see if you can fool 70,000 people in a muddy field.  Bravo, BBC.

Totemic

Whilst the wider world ruminates on the cultural significance of moving BBC3 online, do not underestimate the impact within upper floors of Broadcasting House of the news that Front Row, on Radio 4, and uber-critic and presenter Mark Lawson are parting company, after sixteen years.

Mark's presenting duties on the BBC go further back, to the Yentob-commissioned Late Show on BBC, which morphed in Late Review, before being semi-absorbed in Newsnight.

Front Row, only-begotten child of Kaleidoscope, is generally (apart from Russell Crowe days) a most civilised show - and one can't imagine Mark would give it up voluntarily, though today's announcements are at pains to stress "agreement".

Back in January, The Sunday Times reported that a petition signed by 15 members of the Radio Arts Unit had been presented to Graham Ellis, Controller of Production and Deputy Director of Radio.  The Guardian's take this evening is that Lawson, who also writes for the Guardian, is understood to have denied any suggestion of bullying, though acknowledges there were editorial arguments.

Mark will now be able to make more use of his Northampton Town season ticket, and spend more time tracking the fortunes of his beloved Leeds United FC.

Elucidatory

Still the dates come in for the perennial tour that is Alan Yentob, currently en famille at Vanessa Branson's Riad El Fenn for the Marrakech Biennale, where he is interviewing chums Julien Temple and Stephen Frears.

In April, Alan will be in conversation with Sir David Attenborough at the BFI, to mark the 50th Anniversary of BBC2.  But the big one is at the end of March, with FIFA.  No, not that one. It's the 32nd International Festival of Films on Art (at least that's how it translates from French) being held in Montreal. It bills Alan's session as "Tribute", thus....

This year, the FIFA is paying tribute to a luminary of British television: Alan Yentob, the producer of the avant-garde series Arena, with over 500 films to its credit. A screening of the film I Thought I Was Smaller – A Short History of Mel Brooks will be followed by excerpts from his films with elucidatory comments.

Entrée libre pour les membres de la Cinémathèque québecoise. Nice.

Other writers are available

Ah, the Yentob industry. Former Stuckist artist, Billy Chyldish (aka Childish) is, by my estimation, £2,325 better off, after selling out a series of three signed posters at £25 each, with the slogans "Yentob thinks Beyonce is Vincent Van Gogh", "Oi, Yentob, shut your gob !" and, my favourite, "Yentob is mates with anyone famous".

Last night we had a Culture Show special, with Alan interviewing Hanif Kureishi on the publication of his latest novel, "The Last Word".  It featured Stephen Frears, former-BBC-arts-producer-turned-film-producer Kevin Loader, and film director Roger Michell.

This, from Mick Brown in the Telegraph in 2010:

Stephen Frears lives between Dorset and a house in Notting Hill, London. When in town, he is usually to be found each Friday morning at a cafe a short walk from his home, where over the years an informal salon has grown up. At any given time this will probably include Frears's close friend Hanif Kureishi, the BBC's Alan Yentob and a revolving selection of writers and film people.

The Yentob Diaries

The BBC has published extracts from Alan Yentob's appointments diary, in response to a Freedom of Information Act enquiry. I've been reading them so you don't have to.

We start in October 2012 - George Entwistle is DG, so Alan is relegated to the regular "Wider Management Group Conference Calls" as his connection to the top.  On October 8 Alan and X are Tony Hall's guests at the opening of the Royal Opera House 2012/3 season.

The day of George's resignation - 10th November - is spookily blank. Was Alan across it ? The day before there is an enigmatic "Call HBO", an American network to which Alan is an occasional contributor. The next week, there's the first of series of catch-up meetings with Roger Mosey - though none noted with acting DG Tim Davie. On November 22 Tony Hall is announced as the next DG; Alan has three and half hours set aside for a meeting with Tony Hall the following week.  In the first week of December, Tim Davie, Tony Hall and Alan get an hour together.

The New Year, at least as far as pages released goes, starts on January 14 - and there's another hour with Tone.  By February, there's a new group forming - Alan, Tim Davie, Lucy Adams, Tony Hall, Jessica Cecil, one Greg Nugent, (former Olympics PR who was just starting a new boutique operation with Godric Smith) and James Purnell - who was to be unveiled as a Hall signing to the public the next day. Allan also gets an hour with BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten.

Tony Hall formally arrives in post 2nd April, and that afternoon there's a planning meeting, with Godric and Julian Payne. (S/N stands for "Secretary's Note", whited out)

Alan's diary soon becomes peppered with Senior Management Team meetings and a Daily Editorial conference call at 0920. There are routines with Danny Cohen, Bob Shennan and William Gresswell (Controller of Strategy for Television) - two days set aside for Glasto, and we progress nicely to the First Night of the Proms with Tony Hall.

All the way through there are meetings about "The Space", the BBC's online venture in partnership with Arts Council England; regular sessions with Tanya (one presumes the Imagine producer, Tanya Hudson), and a whole series of appointments to sort out Alan's office at Broadcasting House.

Some names you might expect are there - Amanda Nevill of the BFI, literary agent Ed Victor, ex BBC chum Jana Bennett, architect Zaha Hadid - others we can only guess at; Annie T, Luke, Richard, Geoff, 'MJ arrives from NYC'. There's rather too much time spent on an article about David Bowie for the Daily Mail.

And each week sees two or three first night/reception opportunities. As you'd expect for a man at the heart of arts and culture, not just in the UK, but around the world.

Extended credit

The Manchester Evening News reports that the awfully nice BBC has allowed Salford Council to reschedule payments destined to support the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Part of the complex gavotte between the BBC, the Peel Group and the Council that secured Auntie as anchor tenant of MediaCityUK was an agreement that the local authority would cough up £20m over eight years for the band. Since 2008 that's been coming through at around £2m per annum, but the next payment will be down to £1m, as Salford attempts to ease cuts - with the schedule extended now to 10 years.

A BBC spokeswoman said:”The BBC tries to be a good neighbour to businesses and communities throughout Salford. Building on these relationships is important to help all of us fulfill the potential of Media City."

A luta continua

Worried about Alan ?  Fear not, he'll be back. The BBC's Creative Director, inexplicably hounded by the Guardian's Hugh Muir and Media Monkey over the festive break, has been spotted in Cape Town. Perhaps redressing his contribution to the Mandela story, or perhaps grumpy that he was one few BBC staff not flown to South Africa for the funeral.

His low holiday profile may be the result of paparazzi concentrating on Cheryl Cole. On his return, his rival may be closer at hand. Lord Hall has determined to find a new arts guru, and may well already have lighted upon the talents of Ruth Mackenzie, who helped him deliver the Cultural Olympics; who is already interim director of BBC/Arts Council collaboration The Space; and who is in and out of Broadcasting House like a yo-yo consulting on Charter renewal and more.

Two of them ?

Now I am confused. Lord Hall, DG of the BBC, has told the Financial Times (reg required) that "a task for the New Year" would be to identify someone “who I . . . turn to for great ideas, who can help me build relationships with the arts and artists on TV, radio and online, and be a best friend to channel controllers.”

Dear readers, don't we know someone who already does just that ?

Mentee

Baron Bragg (Wadham, Oxford) bravely signed off the last Radio 4 "In Our Time" of 2013 with a cold and a discussion on Pliny the Younger. He'd recovered sufficiently on Wednesday to lunch with his chum Alan Yentob at the Wolseley in Picadilly. What could have been the topic ? How to reinvent a tv arts presenter as a radio sage ?

Pain postponed

A clearer December now for the management team at the BBC: Dame Janet Smith has once again postponed delivery of her report on "Savile" culture, this time til the New Year.

Witness interviews are continuing and, as a result, the Review will not be in a position to finalise its report before the end of January 2014.

The Review has been in contact with more than 720 people and continues to be grateful to the public for their support. In connection with the investigation into Jimmy Savile, the Review has had over 340 telephone conversations with witnesses (all of which have been noted) and approximately 140 witness interviews have taken place. In addition, in relation to the investigation into Stuart Hall, the Review has had over 102 noted telephone conversations with witnesses and a further 29 witness interviews have taken place.

Moving money

Increased spending on television arts programmes seems to be the key line from BBC DG Tony Hall's speech-to-come on Tuesday; it'll rise by 20%, but from what - and more importantly, from where ?

Inside the organisation, there are still two more years of cuts to make, under Delivering Quality First. In news, the unions have been warned that the next two years will bring bigger cuts, way tougher than the current target, which requires 75 jobs to go.

According to Ofcom, spending on BBC1 first-run originated programmes rose last year, up by £55m to £797m, whilst BBC2 moved the other way, down £46m to £286m. Spending on nations and regions' first-run stuff fell by 4% to £183m.

Tone moonlighting at the wheels of steel...

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Artistic

Good heavens - another consultant at the BBC. This time it's Ruth Mackenzie, formerly Director of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad (Chair, Lord Hall).

This from her recent biog:  Since London 2012, she has being doing consultancy for the Arts Council, BBC, BFI, British Council amongst others. 

• Earlier biogs show she's written papers for the BBC before. But she has myriad connections. From 1999 to 2002 she was special adviser to Culture Secretaries Chris Smith and Tessa Jowell, working alongside both Andy Burnham and, yes, James Purnell. And then from 2007 to 2010 she was billed as Expert Adviser to Purnell, Burnham and Ben Bradshaw as they moved through the Secretary's seat at the DCMS.

Fancy

Continuing our summer series on "dressing up", here are two more honorary degree uniforms.

Ex-BBC Chief Operating Officer Caroline Thomson was awarded hers by the University of York. She was keen to talk about her principal part-time role, as interim CEO of the English National Ballet. “Having taken the BBC to Salford I’m now taking ballet to Liverpool", she tells house mag Grapevine.

Whoa, right there. Both the Royal Court and The Empire in Liverpool have played host to ballet for years - the Festival Ballet (which morphed into the ENB) toured regularly from the 50s. Fonteyn and Nureyev played a week in 1966. I'm sure Liverpool will accord Caroline the appropriate warm artistic welcome for her pioneering work.

Meanwhile, I've finally caught up with Lord Hall's honorary degree at the University of Birmingham. Here's the whole thing - Tony's response starts at 9.10, including the journey from Little Green Lane County Primary, Small Heath.

Seriously

Today's Observer offers a consideration of why few women get key jobs at the top of "the arts". The piece is moved by the recent appointment of Lord Hall to the BBC, and Alex Beard to succeed him at the Royal Opera House. Novelist Sarah Dunant says there was a false dawn of hope for feminists in the 1990s, and that on the whole, "men are still at the cultural controls." And she points to particularly to Alan Yentob and Melvyn Bragg, still leading cultural commentators and powerbrokers within the BBC and Sky Television; "Now I am not saying they are not good at it, but would a woman be able to do the same for so long?"

Here are recent pictures of our artistic oligarchs out and about...

Stricken

I suspect the little old Islington Tribune will get pick-up over the weekend, for its interview with the departing boss of the Arts Council, England, Dame Liz Forgan.

She describes the moment of her sacking, by then Culture Secretary, the starey-eyed Jeremy Hunt. “I went to see him about something else and he said ‘Before I talk about anything I have to tell you something’. He looked so stricken, I thought he was going to say he had caught some fatal disease, but he said, ‘It is one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make, but I am not going to renew your contract’."

“I said, ‘Why not?’ And still to this day I didn’t get a straight answer out of him. I said, ‘Look Jeremy, I think this is wrong, it’s a mistake. People will think it’s political’. ‘Oh, no, no,’ he said. He was completely within his rights to do that. It is a ministerial appointment. It’s renewable and the expectation is that unless you’ve done something terrible you get your contract renewed."

“And I hadn’t done anything terrible. On the contrary, I had actually saved his bacon by getting the spending review sorted with the Arts Council team, having to make nigh on 30 per cent cuts to its budget of £600million..... I was pretty cross.  But, you know, that’s politics.”

Early works

OK, I'll do it myself. Tim Lihoreau, creative director and weekend presenter, has now emerged as Classic FM's weekday breakfast presenter. (Hat tip to Radio Today). This after the station lost 10% of its audience year-on-year in the last set of figures - and where the trend, in this chart from the excellent Media UK, is clear.

Mark Forrest, whose radio career has encompassed hospital radio on Tyneside, Metro, Virgin, Heart and a few stabs at 5Live's Up All Night, has been dropped, and has already turned up doing cover shifts on Smooth. (Spookily, Global now own both Classic and Smooth, subject to competition hurdles).

Tim is something of a polymath. He read music at Leeds, came to London to do a composition PhD, but dropped out to tinkle the piano in various branches of Pizza Express. He joined Jazz FM when it started, and then transferred to Classic on the production side. He's written books, blogs intermittently, and runs three community choirs with his wife from his current base in Cambridgeshire.

Rationale

The Daily Mail's Geiger counter of filth (now with improved internal filter) is sparking off the scale in all directions this morning.

Ofcom's Ed Richards can't be Director General of the BBC because Sky Channel 929 shows previews for the XXX Channel, and that's only one wrong digit away from 629, a channel for children called Pop Girls.

Sir Peter Bazalgette can't be chairman of The Arts Council because "Few would say he has made an entirely positive contribution to the cultural life of the nation".  Excoriating stuff.