Tag Archives: Mark Thompson

Guardian: ITN chief executive’s pay package nearly £700K

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ITN chief executive John Hardie earned £682,000 in 2010, the Guardian reports.

The boss of the commercial broadcaster received less than the director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson for the year, however.

According to this article in the Telegraph published in July last year, Thompson received £838,000, including a £163,000 pension top-up.

The ITN chief executive, John Hardie, saw his total remuneration package rise last year to £682,000 as the broadcaster recorded a pre-tax profit of £400,000.

Hardie received a base salary of £350,000 in 2010, as well as a further £300,000 in bonus and benefits payments, according to the ITV News and Channel 4 News broadcaster’s full-year accounts published last week.

The former Disney executive took home a total remuneration package of £238,000 in 2009, after joining the company in June that year.

The Guardian’s full article is at this link.

Comment: Is the director general of the BBC overpaid in relation to the ITN boss? Or is the ITN boss, who is operating in a harsh commercial climate, underpaid?

BBC CoJo: In defence of Mark Thompson’s visit to Downing Street

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Last week several news outlets, including the BBC, reported on a visit to Downing Street by the BBC’s director general Mark Thompson, who was allegedly there to discuss BBC news coverage of the government’s spending review.

It was suggested that such a visit may risk damaging the impartiality of the broadcaster, with Thompson reportedly trying to ensure a good relationship with the government in light of a licence fee review on the horizon. Others indicated that the meeting was on the order of senior government figures who wanted to “quiz” Thompson on content.

Commenting on the press coverage, Kevin Marsh, editor of the BBC College of Journalism criticizes what he regards as a promotion of appearance and impression over the facts in a post on the College of Journalism discussion blog.

Is it really a surprise for example, to learn that David Cameron’s press chief, Andy Coulson, had lunch with the BBC head of news, Helen Boaden, and that the subject of spending review coverage came up? Or that Mr Coulson would press for more ‘context’?

(…) Now, I have no special knowledge or insight here – but certainly when I was running Today or World at One it wasn’t that unusual to recruit senior executives to put in a good word when you were trying to fix big interviews.

And it’s easy to see that with a huge, high-profile season on the horizon – and the spending review season will run across all of the BBC’s national and regional programming as well as the news website – a bit of shoulder work from the chaps at the top is no bad thing.

See his full post here…

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.

#IWD: Chie Elliott – ‘Sidelining of TV’s older women could be reflective of society’s warped views’

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Blogger and freelance journalist Chie Elliott (@orangeblossomer) has written a wide-ranging piece to mark International Women’s Day and its relevance to the media/publishing industries. The post can be read in full on her own blog at this link.

It wasn’t that long ago that BBC boss Mark Thompson came under fire for replacing a mature female judge in a popular dance show with a pop star 36 years her junior.

The fact that in television, older, grey-haired male presenters carry on commanding respect well into their retirement age, whereas their female counterparts get sidelined as their age starts to show, could be a reflection of a society’s warped views about women, and not exclusive to the industry.

Women’s value and employability should not be conditional to age or appearance, but women in highly visible jobs such as television or film, do not always seem to have a choice. Ramenbet casino , yüksek kaliteli hizmet ve heyecan verici bir oyun sunmaya odaklanmıştır. Her cihaza uyarlanmış yüzlerce slot, kart oyunu ve canlı krupiyeli oyunlar bu platformda sizi bekliyor. Kolay ve hızlı para yatırma ve çekme işlemleri, gereksiz gecikmeler olmadan keyifli bir oyun deneyimi sağlar. Anna Ford, a journalist worshipped by her male peers as something nearing a sex goddess in her heyday, decided to retire in April 2006, at 62, saying:

“I might have been shovelled off into News 24 to the sort of graveyard shift.”

The BBC’s  drive to recruit older female newsreaders, announced soon after the Strictly Come Dancing judge swap saga, strikes me as laughable. I can visualise a screaming headline: “Older women join ethnic minorities and the disabled under positive discrimination scheme.” Or, more bluntly, as The Independent put it: “Must be Female. Young Need Not Apply”.

Is the BBC really falling out of love with blogging?

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From reading recent media news you might think the the BBC’s passion for blogging was cooling.

First off, we learnt (via the Times initially, and then confirmed by the BBC) that the corporation is to significantly cut back its web content and reduce the number of online staff.

Then on Tuesday evening, BBC political editor Nick Robinson said he no longer read the comments on his own Newslog. Rather than widening the political debate, commenters were “people who have already made their minds up, to abuse me, to abuse each other or abuse a politician”, he said at an Election 2.0 debate at City University London.

Finally, as academic and blogger Alfred Hermida flagged up, the BBC Strategic Review labelled the blogosphere as “vast and unruly”. The report says:

Above the vast and unruly world of the blogosphere, professional media power may actually concentrate in fewer hands. Individual plurality may increase but collective, effective plurality decrease – with societies around the world left with fewer reliable sources of professionally validated news.

Professor Hermida, who specifically researches the BBC,  was surprised by the language and suggests reminding director general Mark Thompson that the BBC is part of the blogosphere itself:

Perhaps Forrester analyst Nick Thomas when he says that “Mark Thompson does not ‘get’ digital in the way that even his much-maligned predecessor John Birt did.”

But before we get carried away with the BBC’s blogging / web apathy, let’s take a step back. Malcolm Coles’ easy-read guide to the Strategic Review comes in handy here.

For one, as Coles notes on Econsultancy, halving the number of sections on the site is not quite the same as halving the size of the site. “The overall quality will be improved by closing lower-performing sites and consolidating the rest,” he reports.

And proactive web interaction will be developed. From Coles’ post:

The BBC also plans to open up its programme library (outside the areas with high commercial value) “over time” within BBC Online as a publicly accessible ‘permanent collection’.

The review says it will make programmes available on demand “alongside the component parts of those programmes (segmentation), programme information (full catalogue) and additional, complementary content (programme support”. And the site will look to deliver audiences through propositions like the BBC’s Wildlife Finder “which maximise the public value of archive programming”.

(…) It’s pledged to “turn the site into a window on the web” by providing at least one external link on every page and doubling monthly ‘click-throughs” to external sites: “making the best of what is available elsewhere online an integral part of the BBC’s offer to audiences”.

Anyway, read the report – or Coles’ summary – for yourself. PDF at this link.

Times Online: BBC to cut web pages by half?

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The Times claims to have seen details of the strategic review of BBC services director-general Mark Thompson that recommends the closure of digital radio stations 6 Music and the Asian Network and a severe reduction in the size of its website. The report is due to go before the BBC Trust next month.

The corporation’s web pages are to be halved, backed by a 25 per cent cut in staff numbers. Its £112 million budget will also be cut by 25 per cent. It is also pledging to include more links to newspaper articles to drive traffic to the websites of rival publishers.

While the plans to link out more are nothing new, the review reportedly includes a pledge to never “produce services at a ‘more local’ level than is currently the case”.

Full story at this link…

BBC review of online activities: a better deal for local media?

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The BBC Trust has published more details of the strategic review of the corporation’s activities, which it announced in July, led by director-general Mark Thompson.

One focus point of the review will be ‘streamlining the BBC’s online services’ to ‘narrow the focus on distinctive content and help to create a more open BBC’, the Trust said in a release yesterday.

This includes considering which online services could be stopped

“The Trust recognises external concerns over scale and growth of BBC online operations. Equally, it’s an immensely popular service with audiences and an important tool for the UK economy,” said Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the Trust.

“We have no intention of diluting BBC commitment to universal access to free news online. But beyond that we want to question honestly what licence fee payers really expect to get from their licence fee and what they might be surprised to see the BBC doing in the online world.”

At the Society of Editors conference last week David Holdsworth, controller of English regions, discussed BBC Online plans to bring in RSS feeds from newspaper websites – just one example of how the corporation could be a better neighbour to local media, he said.

The Trust said Thompson’s review must take these kind of relationships into consideration and ask ‘how can the BBC work with the rest of the industry to ensure its investment creates the greatest possible value?’ This question has been a sticking point for many local media groups following the dispute over the corporation’s plans to increase its local video offering online, which were later rejected by the Trust.

Additionally, sharing or linking the BBC’s websites with other public or not-for-profit cultural and creative organisations, such as community radio services, should be looked at, the Trust recommended.

The first findings of the review will be published in early 2010 and opened to public consultation.

BBC denies ‘radical’ overhaul of websites

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What’s the difference between a refresh and a re-launch? We’ll leave that for the Guardian and the BBC to fight out…

The Guardian today reported that a ‘radical redesign’ and re-launch of BBC websites is planned for March 2010, with a focus on social media – according to the paper’s sources.

Among the changes outlined were a ‘a new homepage and underlying hosting platform,’ radical changes to news navigation, commenting facilities on programmes, the launch of the Open iPlayer and new connections to third party platforms.

The BBC, however, denied such a ‘radical overhaul’ to Journalism.co.uk, although it said ‘a refresh of the BBC News site’ will take place in due course – as previously reported.

In a statement it said:

“We’re always looking to improve the BBC experience for our users but contrary to reports, we are not planning a radical overhaul of the BBC’s websites.

“We are looking at how we can genuinely make BBC Online part of the web and meet our users growing expectations that they can contribute in different ways to our web site, and more broadly how we can share our technologies with other media companies.

“The website for Strictly Come Dancing as well as the Open iPlayer are examples – and as previously announced, we are planning a refresh of the BBC News site in the new year. Any investment in BBC Online is tightly assessed for market impact and public value before we commit to it.”

Further explanation will be given further down the line, a spokesperson told Journalism.co.uk.

In March 2009 director-general Mark Thompson announced that the BBC must cut £400 million from its budget within the next three years to avoid going over its statutory borrowing limit. Thompson said the corporation was targeting a five per cent cost reduction for television programme cost, year-on-year, for the next five years, a cumulative saving of 20 per cent.

This month he has talked of a ‘radical’ review of a different kind, one which will not necessarily dismiss the notion that the BBC has reached its limit of expansion (a suggestion originally made by culture secretary Ben Bradshaw).

Speaking at the BBC Open Day in August journalism controller of BBC Future Media & Technology, Nic Newman, said there will be no new editorial launches; rather users would see a ‘re-arrangement’ of content in the new year.

Greg Dyke claims BBC is part of ‘Westminster conspiracy’ preventing democratic change

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Oddly, it looks like the BBC and Politics.co.uk are the only two news organisations to report on Greg Dyke’s appearance at the Liberal Democrat party conference, where the former BBC director-general claimed that the BBC is part of a ‘conspiracy’ preventing the necessary ‘radical changes’ to UK democracy.

[Update: The Belfast Telegraph and The Herald in Glasgow also reported some of his comments – please do send over any other sightings]

Dyke – who was director-general from 2000-2004, before resigning after the verdict of the Hutton Report – made the comments on Sunday at a fringe meeting about MPs’ expenses at the Liberal Democrat party conference.

Dyke said a commission should examine the ‘whole political system,’ but added: “I fear it will never happen because I fear the political class will stop it.”

Major changes he had wanted to make to the BBC’s coverage of politics had been blocked, Dyke claimed. Some of his comments, as reported by the BBC:

“The evidence that our democracy is failing is overwhelming and yet those with the biggest interest in sustaining the current system – the Westminster village, the media and particularly the political parties, including this one – are the groups most in denial about what is really happening to our democracy.”

(…)

“I tried and failed to get the problem properly discussed when I was at the BBC and I was stopped, interestingly, by a combination of the politicos on the board of governors, one of whom was married to the man who claimed for cleaning his moat, the cabinet interestingly – the Labour cabinet – who decided to have a meeting, only about what we were trying to discuss, and the political journalists at the BBC.

“Why? Because, collectively, they are all part of the problem. They are part of one Westminster conspiracy. They don’t want anything to change. It’s not in their interests.”

Politics.co.uk reported a slightly different angle: Dyke also claimed that politicians damaged by the expenses scandal should not be allowed to conduct financial scrutiny of the BBC or other public bodies. Dyke said:

“When I was director-general of the BBC I regularly appeared before select committees and had often quite I thought quite dumb people coming and giving me tough questions.

“How can those people question you now? How can someone who’s flipped their mortgage possibly sit there and start asking me about expenditure at the BBC? Because you just come back to them. I think some people are completely undermined by this. They should go because they can’t do the job.”

A blog search picks up a little more mention of the comments and this video interview with Greg Dyke by Mark Thompson (Lib Dem ‘Mark Reckons’ blogger, not the current BBC D-G):

Hat-tip: MediaLens.

Mark Thompson on the defence: BBC review will be ‘radical and open-minded’

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BBC director-general Mark Thompson yesterday responded to the various criticisms of News Corp’s James Murdoch and culture secretary Ben Bradshaw at the Royal Television Society’s binnenial convention in Cambridge.

While Thompson said that he agreed with parts of Bradshaw’s RTS speech and said that a ‘radical and open-minded’ review of the BBC would not dismiss the suggestion that the coporation had reached its limits of expansion, the director-general said he found some of Bradshaw’s ideas ‘frankly puzzling’.

“He [Bradshaw] set out a long list of the current BBC public services. By the way, I don’t know many broadcasters who haven’t launched multiple services over the past decade. But with one or two exceptions, these new BBC services weren’t approved by the BBC Trust. They were approved by the Government of which Ben is a member. Indeed, the Government asked the BBC to launch a range of new services to help with their policy of encouraging the public to move to digital television and radio. Ben’s surprise at these services is itself surprising.”

The speech can be read in full at this link.