Team George

The BBC Trust has, on legal advice, told George Entwistle that it won't be seeking to claw back any of his pay-off for resigning as Director-General.

We are not, at this stage, told whether or not he has spend all of the £10,000 agreed to cover “reasonable, professional communication support" that was also part of the package.  The Evening Standard reports that George turned to Portland Communications for that back-up - their advisory board includes Michael Portillo and Alastair Campbell; past and present clients include Tesco, Facebook, Google, McDonalds and The Scouts.

It's easy to see how you might rack-up £10k quite quickly - For each client and each project, we create a bespoke team. Drawn from across our communications, digital, public affairs and international practices we consistently deliver results for the world’s most demanding clients.

In and out

The BBC has published George Entwistle's contract of employment as Director-General (16 pages, including annexes) - and his compromise agreement to end the contract, in response to an FOI query.  

I was amused to read that, while the contract is specific about holidays - 25 days plus Corporation and Bank Holidays - George could choose his hours. As apparently can anyone on an executive contract.

Fixed hours are not part of the executive contract. Essentially, you must work the hours necessary to properly perform your duties, and, as such, the hours you work are your responsibility. 

Experts in BBC personnel practice will be interested to see that while his "start" date in the job is clear - "17th September 2012", his "continuous employment date" has been redacted.  We can't have been paying two DGs at the same time, can we ?

No obvious surprises for the MPs on the Public Accounts Committee in the termination - except, perhaps, that George and his family continue to get private health cover until November 2013. I wonder if some cheeky monkey has already written in for a sight of Lord Hall's contract ?

Days in

It's rather sad. The BBC has published the minutes of George Entwistle's first meeting in charge as Director General of the BBC - and it seems he had a 100 day plan. There were 46 to go when he reached agreement on terms for his resignation.

1.7 George Entwistle outlined the strands of work in the plan for his first 100 days and invited the non-executive directors to become involved in any strands they would like to. The Board discussed the benefit of having an overarching ‘strategy’ strand that pulled together all of the other strands and redefined the strategic objectives for the next 3-5 years. 

1.8 In line with the creative thrust of the plans and further to previous Board discussions, the Board asked about in house production. It was noted that redesign work was already taking place in this area but in house production would fall under the creative excellence strands.

Timing suggests we should get one more set of minutes from the Entwistle era; watch this space.

En passant

As we await Patten v Marr, just a reflection on how the events of 2 November lost the BBC its Editor-in-Chief.

It seems the Newsnight film on Steve Messham and his mis-directed allegations was almost ready to go; the editorial and legal discussion on the day was apparently aound whether or not to repeat the name Messham had offered as one of his abusers. Remember, the cry of "let them tell their story" was ringing loud post the Savile failure. Clearly, the issue of identification was assumed "banked". So the editorial minders and lawyers can't have asked that basic, and were assessing the risk of legal action, against something which collectively, they must have thought was bound to come out sooner or later. Somewhere during that day, the weasel choice of referring to a "senior Tory" was agreed - and the second major editorial failure followed. Why check with McAlpine when we're not naming him ? The other side of the coin should have been tested - do you think anyone with Tory in their CV enjoys hearing reports of unnamed paedophiles in their party ? Why, wasn't Lord Patten a "senior Tory", once ?

Patten has pre-judged the MacQuarrie report. George was going to have to sack a number of staff, some of whom are old friends, for not formally referring up and making bad calls. He must have decided he couldn't do it, when he himself had been shown to be looking in the wrong direction that day, by John Humphrys.

Wistle blown

When I last typed up the 2012 DG Stakes site (yes, folks it was me !), it was the 4th of July. Patten had got the man he wanted all along, having made the route to selection look sufficiently rigorous. I never thought I'd have to reopen the book with the year.

George Entwistle's second last missive to staff ended "Have a good weekend". It seems all a bit too rapid, but his grip on events had become so fragile, it didn't take much to loosen his hold entirely. He may even genuinely have let go himself. An honourable man, but the presentation skills that apparently charmed the Trust, who selected him over Caroline Thomson, Ed Richards and a man who cannot be named, have proved entirely inadequate. The nerves were broken by the amateur Robin Days of the Culture Select Committee over Savile/Newsnight, and clearly frayed to snapping point by the home team's John Humphrys over Unnamed Tory Grandee/Newsnight.  Nobody seemed to have coached or rehearsed him for either event; he tried to get the rather odd PR support of David Yelland, but got told off by Patten. At 50, if you're going to be a CEO, very few organisations will wait until you grow into the job. And frankly, there are few important BBC questions to which the correct answer is another attempt at a Ken MacQuarrie report.

Tim Davie, who didn't even make the final four, gets to mind the shop. Patten has three options - split the job into CEO and Editor-In-Chief, a bad solution for which the siren voices are getting louder; start the recruitment process all over again; or discover that the Personnel Officer marked Caroline Thomson "also suitable" (an historic BBC device), eat humble pie and ask her back.

Rather than speculate in three directions, as many of you would like me to do, I shall wait for grim-faced Chris on the Marr show....

Confrere

The Guardian tells me that the Editor of Today, Ceri Thomas, (disclosure: old chum, but long time no-see) is sitting on the story many BBC journalists want. He's apparently acting as "prisoner's friend" to Newsnight Editor Peter Rippon in the Pollard Inquiry.

So presumably he now knows why the Savile investigation was stopped, and whether or not there was pressure from above - and just can't say.

• "Prisoner's friends" are a long-standing feature of internal BBC disciplinary inquiries. You can choose any member of staff, as long as they are not a solicitor. Most choose gnarled and ring-savvy union reps. In the Byford-driven internal inquiry after Gilligan-Kelly-Hutton, nearly everyone called had a friend - and the numbers involved punched a serious hole in some rotas. 

Blade sharpening

It's a bit like the Ancien Regime trying to avoid Madame Guillotine.

Lord Patten, who will ultimately decide who does and does not survive Savile, has opined he expects there will be resignations. He has also revealed that the re-writing of the Rippon blog was on his orders; by similar logic, he has apologised to Grant Shapps for a letter based on the blog from BBC Public Affairs operative Julia Ockenden.

We've had leaks of semi-public rows between Meirion Jones, Newsnight and now Panorama producer, and David Jordan, Head of Editorial Policy. We've had suggestions Panorama turned Meirion down on the Savile story at the same time as he pitched to Newsnight, with the implication that he could have run to Panorama when rebuffed by Rippon, and the ten month silence on the matter from the BBC might never have happened. Today, the Independent suggests George Entwistle invited Helen Boaden to take over Audio and Music when Tim Davie moves on - but she turned him down. The Indie then spins this into "insiders" saying news has become risk-averse and needs new leadership. I've no sense that News has been more or less pusillanimous since Hutton; this is simply opportunist poisoning of an already murky pool.

The saddest new piece of the jigsaw is that Liz MacKean is reported to be taking voluntary redundancy.  

Forestry

Operation Yewtree may help. The Newsnight side of this story is much less important - but it's one of those that has BBC news staff organising cameras and reporters to doorstep their own managers and shout ludicrous questions at them. They would be better deployed on getting a handle on Yewtree - or digging around the nine BBC staff or contributors being investigated because of complaints that followed the Savile revelations.

John Whittingdale has at least agreed that his committee will not call Helen Boaden, Steve Mitchell and Peter Rippon at this stage, and will wait for Pollard. The Xmas Party season in News might be a little flat.

Help

A very grim two hours for George Entwistle in front of the Commons Culture Committee. He got no quarter from any of the MPs, and his quiet, hesistant style made him seem hunted and haunted. He was woefully under-prepared on current allegations of sexual harassment - and from then on, the Committee sensed blood, unfairly but understandably characterising him as an Editor in Chief with no interest in journalism, who's failed to get a grip.  George needed some powerful phrase-making about the independence and seriousness of the inquiries he's set up, and it just wasn't there.

He'll need more than a stiff drink when he gets home. He needs to step up his game fast. He needs better coaches and a better PR team.

Would any of his rivals for the DG-ship have done better?  Hard to say. The tangle within news seems to be of news' own making. The BBC fashion to run for "an inquiry" in the face of a crisis has been there since Hutton and Byford.  But that shouldn't stop a CEO getting the story right in his or her own mind from the start, to shape their public arguments, rather than waiting for an inquiry to report on where things went wrong.

It's clearly much more grim for Peter Rippon. It's hard to believe that there won't be others who'll find the outcome of the Pollard Inquiry life-changing.

Cherchez

BBC Recruitment Policy's principle No 1, part of an agreed statement with the unions, reads "Vacancies should be filled via a competitive selection process, using fair and robust job-related criteria".

Sadly, this only applies to jobs grade 2-11; I can't find principles for the top jobs. So the move of Tim Davie from Audio & Music to BBC Worldwide doesn't seem to break rules. It is, however, one of the few BBC jobs that many outsiders in indie-rich UK Ltd could have had a pop at...

Let's restate the worry (among others) for George Entwistle. Diversity and gender on the Executive Board. He now has Roger Mosey, 54, minding BBC Vision. Likely internal candidates for the permanent role include Peter Salmon, 56 and Danny Cohen, 38. BBC Audio and Music will by minded by Graham Ellis, ageless as far as the web is concerned, with likely internal candidates for the long-term role set to include Roger Mosey and Bob Shennan, 50. Zarin Patel is set to leave next year, and most insiders believe Dominic Coles is being lined up to replace her as CFO.

In 1993, John Birt brought in Liz Forgan, previously at The Guardian and Channel 4, to be director of radio. George has longer term plans to create a single radio-tv-and-online creative head, but, given the circumstances, that's probably on the backburner for quite a while. Running radio is, save for Brand/Ross, a a less exposed post than tv, and I expect the headhunters will be asked to have a serious trawl for this vacancy.

Pollarding

I may have got close to the judge, but didn't spot Nick Pollard coming.

The Pollard investigation needs to get its head round this, which many MPs, including John Whittingdale, don't - when was anybody in Newsnight convinced they had new evidence that would probably have convicted Jimmy Savile of committing a serious sexual offence with children, and what did they do with that information ?

TV programmes and investigations into this sort of subject are carefully put together and "lawyered" more than once; at the BBC you have the added advice available from Editorial Policy, and "referring up". George Entwistle may have been informed that there was an investigation, but unless he was told "and we've got him bang to rights, and we're ready to run", he couldn't have possibly pulled the Christmas tributes. What would have been his announcement  - "This programme has been dropped because we're not sure about one or two things about Jimmy Savile, and we'll let you know" ? Laughable.

Editor Peter Rippon has made it clear that he was looking for evidence of institutional failure - i.e. that either the social services, police or approved school system failed over time to protect children.  Some in Newsnight and many outside see this as a wrong-headed position, and in hindsight it was. To prove institutional failure, you need to evidence the offences they failed to act on; if you had strong evidence that Jimmy Savile was a paedophile, you had a story by any standards. It may have not fitted with the Editor's vision of a Newsnight investigation - tabloid and grubby - but the BBC has many other outlets. So the BBC's actions after January 2012 become as interesting as the six week investigation before Christmas. Was the investigation "paused" or "stopped" ? Because by October 2012, we have one of the biggest stories of widespread institutional failure most people can remember.

 

Fumbling

Another very messy day. New Culture Secretary, freshly power-dressed Maria Miller stumbles through the early part of her Commons statement on Savile, and talks about a Newsnight report that was "inappropriately pulled".  What on earth was written down in front of her ? DCMS spinners claim it was a "mispeak" - for what ? Very few words I can find sound or look like "inappropriate".

Meanwhile 50 per cent of reporters mishear Harriet Harman talking about Savile's previously "exalted celebrity status", and write it down as "exulted", which makes no sense at all. Harriet backs Maria on the three "independent" inquiries planned by the BBC - but then Ed Miliband decides to showboat on Tom Bradby's ITV chat show, and calls for another "independent inquiry".

Elsewhere Kevin Marsh's blog of support for beleaguered Newsnight editor Peter Rippon is greeted and re-tweeted with joy by BBC press officers - despite the fact that it also suggests that new DG George is at risk in all this. It also produces an interesting reaction from Newsnight reporter Liz McKean, who says "Kevin I could wish you'd talked to me too - you might reconsider some of the remarks in your blog :)"  Kevin is apparently on the case...

And in the middle, George Entwistle decides it's right to "offer himself" to the DCMS Select Committee next week, which can only be an act of extreme masochism. A relentless straight bat on the remit of the inquiries and the probity of their leaders is not going to sate the appetites of the Tories who want raw red meat.

Who to lead the Newsnight inquiry ?  Not a job anyone would fancy. Prof Ian Hargreaves? Stuart Prebble?  Tim Gardam?

Formal

Buffeted - and not in the deep-fried-breaded-mushrooms with prosecco way. George Entwistle, and press chief Paul Mylrea, looked really uncomfortable in front of the odd stretched-skin trampoline set in New Broadcasting House yesterday, grilled by the media press.

And, instead of a firm hand on process, we have daily change. The let's-all-talk-this-through-with-BBC-Scotland-director-Ken McQuarrie process of looking at Newsnight's editorial processes has been rather hastily dropped, in favour of an inquiry, chaired by an external, independent, unnamed person, and reporting to Dame Fiona Reynolds, non-executive, who will apparently chair the BBC Executive for consideration of this report. Here's an idea - when producer Meirion Jones makes the film for Panorama he wanted to make for Newsnight, let's have captions indicating the material he had in the can when it was dropped, and captions indicating the new stuff - then we can all make our own call on whether or not it could and should have run last December.

Meanwhile, well done to HIGNIFY for a steady seven minutes on the issue - starts at 09.55 if you want to catch-up on iPlayer.

By the way, Newsnight made its final broadcast from Television Centre last night - and ended the show with a glimpse of the new HD set at Broadcasting House.

Improvising

I love, sad person that I am, re-constructing BBC Executive meetings from their cold, clinical and unhelpful minutes - latest issue July 11th.

Imagine the fun, just seven days after George Entwistle's appointment as DG-Designate, as former rivals and new supplicants assemble for the meeting - the high point of which, it seems, is a workshop on "risk appetite", including, yay, breaking into groups and reporting back. It must seem aeons ago; would a risk assessment in the 1970s have stopped Auntie hiring Jimmy Savile ?  Did the introduction of service companies as vehicles for paying on-screen talent have a traffic light dashboard ? And newboy George's heart must have sunk at this one:  "The Board acknowledged that although reputational risk sat across the risk themes it would be appropriate for the Director-General to ‘own’ this risk".

Onwards. Imagine the frisson, as they discuss gender and diversity targets. Who, I wonder, prompted the note "that it would be useful to consider gender balance when looking at succession planning, particularly at lower levels within the organisation."

Imagine the puzzlement as "Mark Thompson and Zarin Patel left the room briefly at this point, returning for the Local TV Multiplex paper".

Imagine the joy from the output side as CFO Zarin Patel reports "good progress had been made in the divisions and it would be prudent to reforecast the budget plan in the autumn". Trebles all round, Jo Malone on the way again for talent, airline tickets afore Easter, etc.

Imagine too, discussions with John Smith on The New Commercial Framework - still obscure at this stage, but presumably, fairly clearly, a framework without the current CEO in the driving seat.

• A simple sentence may have important consequences for BBC staff at Caversham, where international wire services and broadcast output are monitored for news, political and business intelligence: "It was agreed that public service money should not be used to fund BBCM[onitoring]".  

No more fiefing

BBC DG George Entwistle has raised expectations of a real structural change in the organisation, with a talk to staff working in Future Media.

According to staff organ, Ariel, he said  'The territorial and fiefdom approach has come down from the top of the BBC. That's what I need to fix first.'

Apparently, at his first, newly-reduced management board meeting he said that he didn't want it to be a meeting where you 'don't own up about your cock ups' for fear that colleagues will gloat or go off and tell their teams.

But don't get over-excited - there isn't yet a plan 'We will learn how we want to be different organisationally in due course'. I suspect that means that the Deloitte guy has it pencilled in for Year Two.

• One organisational change already made still confuses me. In his first move, George apparently busted the Operations Division (which allows Caroline Thomson to get a redundancy package). Now it emerges that Dominic Coles is to be described as Operations Director. Clearly quite a different job..  I'm sure George will have run that one past HR. 

Where are they now ?

BBC DG George Entwistle has trimmed the old, second tier, Direction Group in Auntie's organogram, and invented the leaner Management Board. Some of the losers in this process have appeared as direct reports to George, but the detail on others has not been made public.

Those losing their seats at the table include Creative Director Alan Yentob and Pat Younge, Chief Creative Officer, Vision. Roly Keating, heading Archive, has already left for The British Libray. Jessica Cecil, head of the DG's Office when Thommo was here, has new responsibilities for a faster-track complaints handling process. Sarah Jones looks after legal matters. Paul Mylrea runs Communications. John Tate runs strategy and chairs BBC Studios. Bal Samra also boasts two titles: Director, Vision Operations,and Director, Rights & Business Affairs BBC.

Another big cheese missing from the new Management Group is Chief Technical Officer John Linwood. Ralph Rivera sits on the Executive, as Director of Future Media, but the perception has always been that he leaves hardware and big systems to Mr Linwood. Is he still active ? Who speaks for technology at the top table now ?

We've banged on a bit about George's diversity problems, on and off screen. We'd like to remind him that, when Zarin Patel leaves in the next year, he'll have no UK ethnic minority representation on his two top boards, unless things change.

P-p-p-party

So the departing DG's do is over. No marks to the BBC spinner who said the big screen tribute to Mark Thompson was being paid for by Worldwide, so that it wasn't a burden on licence fee-payers. It's still money that could have been used to make real programmes. Unless there was some savage last minute sharpening, the film had "worthy" rather than "gag-fest" written in the weft; hosted by, yes, Alan Yentob, and featuring El Tel Wogan, Miranda Hart and vignettes from Hugh Bonneville and other cast members in their 2012 comedy personae.

Guests evidenced by Twitter included Raymond Blanc, Kirsty Wark, Stephen Moffatt, ex press chief Donald Steel, BBC correspondent Frank Gardner and some bloke from the Church and Media Network. Was that Jools Holland on the piano ?

Meanwhile, scrutineers of the new Entwistle organogram note that today's changes mean George has an odd new bunch of direct reports, including said Yentob, strategist John Tate and Worldwide money-spinner John Barry Smith. Is this some sort of Deloitte naughty step ? What do they have to do to get off it ?

Canapes

Gagmeister Lord Patten will be running through his material on the bus from Barnes today, ahead of the leaving party for ex-BBC DG Mark Thompson at Broadcasting House. BBC spinners have tried to tell us it's an "austerity do", lasting only two hours. Have you any idea how many deep-fried breaded mushrooms it takes to keep them quiet over that period ?

Meanwhile, the organisation moves on - and, if the Mail is to be believed, new boss George Entwistle has decided to break up the Operations Division (started in 2006, and doubled in size in November 2010 with the addition of BBC People, Property and Marketing). This may help with an exit deal for George's rival for the DG role, Caroline Thomson, COO - we told you she was on the move last Friday. And unless he's cute with the restructuring, Lucy Adams, Director of Business Operations, might be busted back to just HR.  However, I have every confidence George will be cute.

By the way, the Mail suggests George has specially hired someone from consultants Deloitte to help with this conundrum. No need for that - there's one round every corner.

The future is bright....

New BBC DG George Entwistle breaks away from the Corporate shackles of grey and blue, and goes for an orange banner on his new website, to match the hue that permeates the new bit of Broadcasting House. And the font ?  Not the dreaded Comic Sans, but surely a second cousin. Anyone got George's real signature ?

Tweet not

And, on day one of the real George Entwistle starting as BBC DG, you'll notice that the rather-near-the-knuckle Twitter Parody account, BBCDG, which used George's mugshot, is no more.

http://twitter.com/account/suspended