Howay, man

 

BBC DG Matt Brittin travelled to Holy Island this week, visiting the set of an episode of Northumbria Mysteries, a new crime series, featuring Jerome Robson as Jack Ruby, an ex-con and gambler who turns to detective work. Right is Lesley Douglas, co-founder of Lonesome Pine Productions, who are making the series for the BBC. Lesley was Controller Radio 2 until she resigned over the prank calls broadcast on the Russell Brand show. 

Jason's Voyage

The BBC, like many other parts of the media, embraced Jason Arday when he became the youngest black professor at Cambridge. 

He also previously made some Radio 4 appearances when an Associate Professor at Durham University; Salford religion and ethics producer Dan Tierney used him in an edition of The Moral Maze on racial justice in 2020, and produced a Lent Talk in 2021 in which "Dr Jason Arday reflects on the health and social barriers he has faced and overcome throughout his life with a positive and grateful outlook."

Over at Liverpool John Moores University, their website seems to have been cleared of pictures of Jason with his Ph D supervisor, Professor Phil Vickerman. That doctorate transformed the future for a boy who left school with GSCEs in PE and textiles, and was guided from PE teacher to sociologist. 

Another media connection comes with Jason's ghostwriter, Eve Claxton, credited co-author of Great and Unfortunate Things, coming out from Simon & Schuster this month. Eve, from Manchester, now lives and works in Brooklyn, and has produced "StoryCorps", a weekly oral history project for NPR, a bit like Radio 4's Listening Project.  

Steady-ish

No enormous swings, up or down, in the latest quarterly radio listening figures.  And if you're judging performance year on year, please note that the RAJAR monitors have adjusted their figures of the UK population over the age of 15 up to 59.047m, a 1.4% increase on last year. So, to stand still, you have to do better than that... 

All BBC Radio together fell 1.3% in weekly reach year on year, though listeners that remained were listening slightly longer - an average of 14.3 hours per week.   Matt Deegan reminds us that, whilst Radio 2 remains the biggest single station in the country, their weekly reach of 12.6m is their lowest figure for 20 years. Interim breakfast host Gary Davies can be very pleased with figures up 3% on Scott Mills in 2025.

At Radio 3, Sam Jackson's breakfast banker, Tom McKinney is up 10% year on year, and getting back to Petroc Trelawny's levels. A quiet mention for Aaron Paul, the football commentator doing a straightforward news job on Radio London breakfast - up 79% year on year. At Times Radio, breakfast reach is up 18% year on year; though at Talk, where are lot less effort is put into a Jeremy Kyle simulcast, he's up 28%. 

Zing

The BBC News website has some sizzlers on offer today, and it's not even the weekend. 

Are summer sandals killing your feet ?

The cost of being single – and how friends are teaming up to beat it

Vegetables to get smaller and more expensive due to hot weather, farmers warn

And from around the new, improved Nations digital offering: 

'I was addicted to porn while training for the Olympics'

Couple woke to find shirtless intruder in Travelodge room

Skating

The BBC formally shut down operations at Maida Vale last Friday, ending with a session by the Fontaines recorded for Steve Lamacq on 6Music, broadcast on Monday. 

Built in 1909, The Maida Vale Roller Skating Palace and Club was said to be largest indoor-roller-skating rink in Europe, with a capacity of 2,900, an orchestra balcony, viewing galleries and a 'refreshment lounge'. It was the idea of American entrepreneur Louis Napoleon Schoenfeld, who had moved to the UK in 1899; he commissioned British commercial architects Lionel G Detmar and Theodore Gregg. . 

Their vast rectangular structure had an elaborate Edwardian Baroque façade along Delaware Road.  Classical figures, inlcuding Hermes, were among the embellishments. A grand opening attended by local dignitaries and a champion figure skater was held on 19 February 1910, but despite initial excitement, the rink immediately ran into financial difficulties as the enthusiasm for skating began to wane. The American Skating Palace Company was eventually wound-up in September 1912 and Schoenfeld was declared bankrupt.

The BBC announced plans for new music studios at Stratford in June 2018, and talked about moving there in "2022/23".  

Rod Liddle

A number of readers have already suggested I "write up" Rod Liddle. I've never been sure where I stood on his very extreme 'strengths and weaknesses'.  His ability to confuse and confound will continue after a very untimely death. 

Let's add some odd notes to the record. Keith Flett, a contemporary in Middlesborough, thinks his teenage interest in the SWP was really to get gigs for his punk group Dangerbird under the Rock Against Racism umbrella. At the other end of his life, his death has been mourned by Nigel Farage, Darren Grimes, Dan Wootton, Kevin O'Sullivan and Ross Kemp. 

He was certainly a different voice when he arrived at the BBC after three years at the South Wales Echo, and three years working for the Labour Party, whilst also taking a degree (a wank degree?) in social psychology at the LSE. His accent, bearing the London twangs of Sidcup, embedded til nine years old, mangled with years in Nunthorpe, was different, and, depending on the meeting, profanities were abundant. I have to say, in his early years, not much of his iconoclasm made it to air on programmes like The World This Weekend. When I shared a brief time with him on Today, as another assistant editor, he was attracted to any newspaper story headlined "Village of Fear", and like another Mad Rod before him (Rod Pounsett) drove hard to get the people at the heart of stories to, at least, a phone interview.  Often, these stories were in The Daily Mail. 

Management wanted to 'develop' Rod. They sent him to edit The World Tonight, which passed without alarum, before letting him run Today. The programme was well staffed, and Rod began to enjoy "off-the wall" appointments at reporter and junior producer level. He also began to enjoy the slight celebrity the role brought. The problem was that you couldn't see a further promotion ahead; the change of career to columnist and controversialist might even been concocted by friends in management. 

As he launched into this part of his 'journey', let's remember there were regular appearances on "Call My Bluff", relaunched with Fiona Bruce; a forgotten Sunday morning yoof politics show with Kate Silverton on BBC2; and many panel show appearances on Radio 4. One suspects his circle of chums drove him to believe there was more money in expressing deliberately contrarian views in newspaper columns. He was certainly better at it. 

Age, red wine and cigarettes puffed Rod up from a John Cooper Clarke into a Frankie Howerd. In recent years he returned to the North East, shared recipes for pease pudding, and walked and walked with his dog. Trips to London, in hotels, for News International's shilling, were loucher.  His chosen party, the 'continuity' SDP, allegedly conservative-left, made pacts with Reform UK.

It was hard to tell whether and when he meant what he wrote. Often, with extreme leery Benny Hill-ery, he just made your jaw drop. In later years he repeated the belief that Clause 28 was 'right', that the abortion debate should still be a live issue, and that the BBC was consistently beastly to Israel. He was nostalgic for life as a teenager in Nunthorpe, and wanted some form of return to the values of those times; or did he ?

The Crown

Huw 'Dylan' Edwards has shared a long poem on his Substack site, in Welsh and English. 1015 words in Welsh, 1213 in English. 

It's on this year's theme set by the National Eisteddfod for the Bardic Poetry Crown - Achnabod, translated variously as 'Recognition' or 'Knowing'. Huw heads his Substack posting "Knowing Me, Knowing You, Ahaa"

Following tradition, Huw has given himself a pseudonym, Gelyn, which Huw translates as 'Enemy'. 'Foe' would be an alternative.  But has he actually entered in the competition ?

Two years ago, following a unanimous vote at the Eisteddfod Court meeting, the Board of Trustees terminated Huw Edwards' membership of the Eisteddfod and expelled him from Gorsedd Cymru, an honour bestowed in 2022.  The rules of the poetry competition demand that the judges make their decision without knowing the identity of the entrants, though the organisers do.  We'll know the winner at 4pm this afternoon. Has Huw made the journey to Llantwd ?

I'll see your 'busted flush' and....

One hopes there's some creative thinking going on at the Treasury. If the licence fee is a 'busted flush', they'll need to come up with a viable alternative, that can be supported and sold. 

Whatever options appear in the White Paper, most of the papers will condemn them as a 'tv tax'.  The OBR already count funds raised through the licence fee as a tax, so the problem is not a huge change in the burden of taxation, it's the difference between a fixed impost and "progressive taxation" as called for this week by Rebecca Long Bailey. 

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has previously rejected the idea of adding it to Council Tax, but the BBC still thinks it's a good idea. It's possible Lisa's been briefed on Burnham's Deepest Thoughts, and that Labour may risk real changes to the current system of supporting the work of local councils, the police and fire services.  I think, if Council Tax stays as it is, there's a risk of "BBC Avoidance" tying up magistrates' courts event more than with the licence fee; there could well be a politically-driven, newspaper supported campaign to leave the BBC precept out of people's payments, at least to tie up collection resources. 

As ever, I will mention my view that something could be raised on the back of the means of delivery; in this case a levy on broadband providers. They are not 'licenced' by Ofcom, but subject to a General Authorisation.  The Government currently 'gives' to the broadband companies by supporting Project Gigabit to the tune of £5bn up to 2032, but also takes away from the providers by charging business rates on some of their infrastructure. They all claim hardship, but a levy collected via their bills would at least have some relationship with media consumption in the future. 

Implications

I know it's hot, late and August, but I feel there could be more analysis on the BBC website of the Manchester mayoral election results. OK so only 500,000 voted, but that's still 250 times the size of an average opinion poll.... 

D listed

BBC Entertainment have unveiled their contribution to the current savings target - by axing Blankety Blank, Live at the Apollo and Celebrity Mastermind.  The logic must be that they can be replaced in schedules by something cheaper, or perhaps just more repeats. 

Another driver might be the risk of a report to some sort of media Trading Standards body for misuse of 'celebrity'.   This was the cast list for the 2025/6 series. Clive has already recorded the 2026/7 series - will it be any better ? 

Maryam Moshiri
Chesney Hawkes
Desiree Burch
Danny Robins

Sally Ann Matthews
Yinka Bokinni
Felicity Ward
Michael Bradley

Gareth Malone
Gamba Cole
Yewande Biala
Lucy Beaumont

Will Best
Laura Smyth
Nikita Kuzmin
Jayne Wisener
Matt Edmondson
Sonnaz Nooranvary
Lewis Goodall

Dean Franklin
Chloe Petts
Ashley John-Baptiste
Robyn Cowen

Iwan Thomas
Sophie Aldred
Mobeen Azhar
Ashley James

Tia Kofi
Lauren Patel
Josh Jones
Izzie Balmer

Charlotte Hawkins
Stephen Bailey
Ekow Quartey
Belles Berry

Colson Smith
Nadia Jae
Grace Campbell
Joel M

Alexander Dragonetti
Janine Harouni
Laura Davies
Greg McHugh

JB Gill
Susie McCabe
Lucy Shepherd
Richie Anderson 

James Cracknell
Jen Brister
Craig Rowe
Bradley Riches

Stuart Pearce
Gemma Cairney
Axel Blake
Phil Dunning

The cancellation is also a loss to out-of-London, with all episodes recorded in Belfast.

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