Tag Archives: BBC

Media Release: BBC axes deputy director general post and Mark Byford

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The BBC has announced it will cut the role of deputy director general, making current incumbent Mark Byford redundant. Byford took up the post in 2004 and has been at the BBC for 32 years.

Speaking in a release, BBC director general Mark Thompson says:

We have concluded – and Mark fully accepts – that the work he has done to develop our journalism and editorial standards across the BBC has achieved the goals we set to such an extent that the role of deputy director-general can now end, that the post should close at the end of the current financial year, and that Mark himself should be made redundant.

Byford will step down from the corporation’s executive board at the end of March and depart from the BBC in early summer. Helen Boaden. director, BBC News, will join the executive board to represent BBC Journalism in April.

Full BBC press release at this link…

OJB: New BBC linking guidelines

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Paul Bradshaw takes a look at the BBC’s new linking guidelines for its website and journalists and finds particular improvement in linking out to primary sources, such as scientific journals.

Full post on the Online Journalism Blog at this link…

The BBC has previously trialled inline links to a limited number of external sources, but has since pledged to double its external linking by 2013.

Courtesy of Guardian Technology via Scribd here are the guidelines in full:

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BBC unions prepare staff for strike action

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BBC staff unions have posted a series of questions and answers for staff in preparation for potential strikes over pension proposals, which could start next week if an agreement cannot be reached.

Last week union members voted in rejection of new proposals put forward by the BBC earlier this month and the union said it will now “press ahead” with its plans, while maintaining negotiations.

The NUJ and BECTU have published a Q&A for members about the strikes. In their responses they say that, “in the absence of a significant new offer from the BBC”, strike action will commence at 00.01am on 5 October and end at 23.59pm on 6 October, which will coincide with the Conservative Party conference.

A final decision on strike action is expected to be announced on Friday.

This week it was also announced that the NUJ’s general secretary Jeremy Dear will be speaking at a Coalition of Resistance protest against government spending cuts outside Downing Street on 20 October, another date earmarked for strike action at the BBC.

Jeremy Hunt: Providing local content should be condition of broadcasters’ licences

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Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt will say today that he intends to make the provision of local content a condition of the licences given to commercial broadcasters like ITV, Channel 4 and Five.

In a speech today to the Royal Television Society, Hunt will also tell those channels with a public service broadcasting remit (PSBs) that retaining a prime position in the Electronic Programme Guide or future equivalent would depend on their commitment to “content with a social or cultural benefit”.

I will begin the process of redefining public service broadcasting for the digital age by asking Ofcom to look at how we can ensure that enough emphasis is given to the delivery of local content.

Of course not all PSBs will want, or be able, to be local broadcasters. But I’m determined that we should recognise the public value in those that do.

Echoing the sentiments of his party’s ‘big society’ idea, Hunt will warn broadcasters about not investing in local news:

If we remain centralised, top-down and London-centric – in our media provision as in the rest of government – we will fail to reflect the real demand for stronger local identity that has always existed and that new technologies are now allowing us to meet.

Hunt will add that he has been “strongly encouraged by the serious thought that the BBC has been giving to how it might partner with new local media providers”.

He is expected to say that, despite the UK “fast becoming one of the most atomised societies in the world”, those looking back in the future will see its media as “deeply, desperately centralised.”

They will be astonished to find that three out of five programmes made by our public service broadcasters are produced in London.

They will note that there is nothing but national news on most of the main channels, beamed shamelessly from the centre.

And they will discover token regional news broadcasts that have increasingly been stretched across vast geographical areas – with viewers in Weymouth watching the same so-called “local” story as viewers in Oxford. Viewers in Watford watching the same story as viewers in Chelmsford.

Hunt will also set out his vision for local TV provision:

My vision is of a landscape of local TV services broadcasting for as little as one hour a day;

Free to affiliate to one another – formally or informally – in a way that brings down costs;

Free to offer nationwide deals to national advertisers;

Able to piggyback existing national networks – attracting new audiences and benefitting from inherited ones at the same time;

And able to exploit the potential of new platform technologies such as YouView and mobile TV to grow their service and improve their cost-effectiveness.

In June, Hunt scrapped plans for new local news networks set up by the previous government. Hunt called the plans for Independently Funded News Consortia (IFNC) in Tyne Tees and Borders, Scotland, and Wales “misguided” and claimed they “risked turning a whole generation of media companies into subsidy junkies, focusing all their efforts not on attracting viewers but on persuading ministers and regulators to give them more cash”.

Read Jeremy Hunt’s RTS speech in full here (PDF)

Mediating Conflict: Blogging and the curse of comments

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An interesting look at blogging journalists and their relationship with commenters by Mediating Conflict, following BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew’s comments on Twitter that he stopped his BBC blog because of the comments left on it.

There seems to be something of a backlash against the value of comments on blogs at the BBC. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that existing reservations about comments on blogs are beginning to surface.

Only last month, the BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson, described them as “the biggest problem” with his Newslog blog.

Now cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew has revealed he stopped blogging at the BBC because his posts were “always full of appalling comments“. Agnew now publishes a column on the BBC website instead and says he simply wouldn’t write a blog open to comments any more – “even with moderation in place“.

Full post on Mediating Conflict at this link…

BBC News: Ray Gosling gets suspended sentence for wasting police time

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Broadcaster Ray Gosling has been given a 90-day suspended sentence for wasting police time, after claiming in a documentary that he had killed a dying lover, the BBC reports.

The Inside Out programme on mercy killings was broadcast in February and Gosling’s claims in it led to an initial arrest on suspicion of murder and a six-month police investigation. His sentence was handed out after the claims were determined to be false.

The BBC has also issued an apology for broadcasting Gosling’s claims:

In light of the plea given in court today we regret that we broadcast a claim by Ray Gosling which has effectively been withdrawn by him. We apologise to viewers and to those most closely involved for any distress this may have caused.

Full story on BBC News at this link…

What the BBC learned from using Crowdmap tool to cover tube strikes

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On Tuesday, Journalism.co.uk reported that the BBC were using Ushahidi’s new Crowdmap technology to record and illustrate problems on the London Underground caused by the day’s tube strikes.

The BBC’s Claire Wardle has helpfully followed up on her experiences with a post on the College of Journalism website explaining how it went, what they changed and what they would like to do with the technology next time.

She explains the reasoning behind decisions taken throughout the day to amend their use of the platform, such as moving across to Open Street Map as a default mapping tool and the introduction of a time stamp at the start of each headline. She also provides some suggestions on how the platform could be improved in the future, including provisions for greater information outside of the map.

It would have be useful if there’d been a scrolling news bar at the top so we could have put out topline information which we knew everyone could see by just going to the map. Something like ‘the Circle Line is suspended’ or ‘the roads are really starting to build with traffic’ was very hard to map.

See the full post here…

BBC to revamp travel news site with added mapping

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The BBC is launching a new-look version of its travel news site later this year, with the sneak preview now online.

On the BBC’s website, it says the new site will improve presentation and introduce maps for the first time. Data-handling processes will be better so it will take less time for site visitors to get information.

The new site will have a wider page layout and larger text, as well as improved navigation and interactive mapping, which can be minimised if you prefer to see traffic incidents as just a text list. There will be clearer time-stamping of incidents and still images will be frequently updated from traffic jam cams showing conditions on motorways and trunk roads. The local weather forecast from the BBC Weather Centre will also be available on the site for the following six hours.

For fans of the old site – the BBC insists that travel and traffic information will still be updated round the clock, and the map can be minimised, which will put the functionality of the site back to the way it used to be.

The door-to-door journey planner remains a feature, but has been made more prominent, and in the final version of the site, it will be possible to see a country-wide overview of motorways or major roads from every page.

BBC pensions update – strike ballot result expected today

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BBC staff unions are expected to announce the result of a ballot for strike action later today, following pension proposals put forward by the broadcaster in June which could see the introduction of a one per cent cap on increases in pensionable salary and the closure of the final-salary scheme to new joiners.

In a blog post, NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear says the union expects the results to show “a massive vote in favour of action”.

He adds that an announcement is expected to be made between 3:30pm and 4:00pm today. The BBC previously told Journalism.co.uk it would be making further proposals at the beginning of September following the backlash from its initial suggestions. Its 90-day consultation period closes later this month.

More to follow later this afternoon.

How to interview Mark Thompson, what his speech looks like, and more

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This weekend, BBC director general Mark Thompson gave the James Mactaggart Memorial lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, where he discussed the future of the BBC and British television as a whole.

He told the audience that broadcasting is a battle today which will require organisations to work together and “break the habit of a lifetime”, while he urged critics not to focus on small matters, such as the governance of the BBC, but the bigger issues.

We have, don’t we, a kind of genius in our industry for talking ourselves into a crisis – and then of always being somehow disappointed when the crisis turns out to be imaginary or when the cyclical turns out to be just that – cyclical. Instead, we should concentrate on what matters most and on the issues and actions that could actually make a difference. We should think big, not small.

The speech was awarded extensive coverage by the Guardian, from video reactions from audience members to reflective blogs in the aftermath. There is even a short but entertaining post from Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy on “how to interview Mark Thompson”, following his post-speech interview with the director.

If anyone so much as suspects you are giving him an easy ride you will be despised for it, so you are probably about to overcompensate and be a bit rude for a Saturday-morning chinwag that is, after all, on a subject that can be described as “only telly”. Fortunately, I had no shortage of help in planning the interview. “He can talk for a long time when he’s on stage, so you’ll have to interrupt him,” said one adviser. So I did. Another friend had suggested an interesting tack on executive pay: “Ask him if he is motivated by money? Does it threaten his legacy as DG?” It elicited the only “tumbleweed moment” of the session, as I left his firm rejection of the idea hanging for a moment.

Most other news outlets focused on staff and pay cuts announced by Thompson, who said the broadcaster was “committed” to reducing the number of senior managers by at least a fifth by the end of 2011.

Criticisms fell on the Times, which was accused by the New Statesman of being biased for having “glanced over” Thompson’s negative comments in relation to Sky, which Thompson claimed is not investing enough in original British content.

The News Corp-owned paper reported on Thompson’s speech but somehow glanced over his remarks on Sky and its parent company. Contrast that with the approach of the BBC, which last year reported extensively on James Murdoch’s polemical assault on its “chilling” ambitions.

For a more general, illustrative view of the messages behind Thompson’s lecture, Journalism.co.uk has put together a Wordle below of his speech.