Bbc

I’m sorry to say that I was a Salford refusenik. When the BBC first got the itch, almost 20 years ago, to send its London-based staff to new locations around the country, as a senior executive at the time I thought the idea was a grisly one. That’s not because I don’t like the north of England: I come from Bradford. But as director of sport I was being asked to put my staff and their families onto buses making a one-way trip to the Greater Manchester docklands – leaving behind the power centres of the BBC and the lifestyle of a capital city. I wrote grumpy emails to the

The BBC is attempting today to break out of its London-centric mindset. The new Director General Tim Davie told BBC staff in a call this morning that the corporation will move 400 jobs out of the capital, and promised to make programmes that are more relevant to people who live outside the M25. Mr S wonders though if simply sending BBC staff up north will be enough, if BBC Breakfast (which broadcasts from Salford) was anything to go by this morning. On the show, housing secretary Robert Jenrick was interviewed by BBC presenters, who ended the segment by sniggering at the minister’s Union Jack in the background of his office and

Ofcom’s tight grip on current affairs broadcasts has been likened by some observers to a choking collar. Clive Myrie, one of the BBC’s most decent and best educated correspondents, disagrees. But Myrie’s robust defence of Ofcom’s role, which he put forward in the inaugural Harold Evans Memorial Lecture this week, should trouble anyone concerned with preserving free speech on air. Myrie took a simple line: to compare the US and UK broadcasting landscapes. In the US there is not, and under the First Amendment probably could not be, any regulation of how news is presented. The result is overbearing influence exercised by presenters on channels such as CNN or Fox; a ‘trust deficit’ as regards

So, farewell then, The Mash Report. This morning the Sun reports that the newly appointed BBC director general Tim Davie has ordered the axing of the notoriously unfunny BBC Two show after four series. The show’s creators were told at the time of the appointment to find a better balance of targets than ‘digs at the Tories’. Not that this seems to have been taken on board by the show’s hosts.  Sources close to the Beeb’s top man report reportedly thought it disproportionately critical of Brexit — perhaps unsurprising given its main star Nish Kumar declared to the Guardian in 2019 that he had ‘still not got over it’. With the programme canned to ‘make

In these chill winter days it’s good to know that at least one old lady is warmly wrapped up. The announcement that the BBC licence fee will rise in line with inflation is another modest, but comforting, layer of financial insulation wrapped around Auntie’s well-padded frame.  The new cost will be £159, up by about £1.50; so nothing to get excited about perhaps. But each time the licence fee is raised it focuses attention on the funding privileges that the Corporation enjoys and fuels the debate about whether those privileges should continue. The BBC, in its defence, makes what at first glance seems a very sound ‘value for money’ argument.

It won’t come as much of a surprise to learn that the National Audit Office thinks the BBC faces ‘significant’ uncertainty over its financial future due to changes in viewing habits. The NAO’s findings are about as ground-breaking as your average anodyne Beeb drama, but they do tighten the cilice on a funding model that is impossibly outdated in the 21st century.  In the past decade alone, there has been a 30 per cent decline in BBC TV viewing; on average, the amount of time an adult spent watching broadcast BBC TV fell from 80 minutes per day in 2010 to 56 minutes in 2019. When it comes to younger