BBC Trust approves BBC Executive’s budget plan, which includes steps towards saving £1.9 billion by 2012/3.
Yesterday BBC director-general Mark Thompson said the BBC must cut its budget by £400 million within three years to avoid going over its statutory borrowing limit.
The BBC has been on the receiving end this weekend of some fairly heavy criticism for not broadcasting an appeal from the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) for donations to help people in the Gaza region.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, a group of 50 MPs launching an Early Day Motion, 11,000 viewers and protestors outside Broadcasting House have urged the corporation to reconsider its stance.
“What we’re not going to do is run a free-standing appeal on our airwaves. We do want to cover the humanitarian story, we want to cover it in our news programmes where we can put it in context and we can do it in a careful, balanced objective way,” said director-general Mark Thompson on BBC Breakfast.
Thompson also explained the decision via the BBC Editors Blog.
Sky News joined the broadcaster today in saying it will not show the DEC message – following up the announcement with an online debate with foreign news head Adrian Wells.
But elsewhere Al Jazeera will run public service announcements relating to the campaign from today and the 10 Downing St website is carrying a news release and link to the DEC site.
Meanwhile Tony Benn used an appearance on the Today programme to mention the appeal despite the BBC’s stance.
As such, there’s an argument that the BBC’s refusal to broadcast the charity’s appeal is generating even more coverage for it.
Blogger Martin Belam points out that an info box on DEC is carried on several pages of bbc.co.uk.
“Depending on where you stand, the BBC decision over the DEC appeal is either a fig-leaf to cover a previous lack of impartiality, evidence that the BBC will do absolutely anything to appease their Israeli masters, or a cunning ruse to to gain even more publicity for the appeal than merely broadcasting it ever would have done,” writes Belam.
As such, what is inarguable is the heated response that any coverage of the Gaza situation by the BBC will receive and the disagreement it will cause, says Belam.
A lose-lose situation for the Beeb?
UPDATE: The video has now been aired on ITN and you can view it here.
Peter Mandelson had to be a last minute addition to the list because the magazine had already gone to press: being offline seems to be a recurring theme for the London Evening Standard’s 1000 most influential Londoners list, out this evening.
Can we get an online version? Can we heck! After time wasted going round the editorial houses through the Evening Standard switchboard, Brighton-based Journalism.co.uk is getting sent a print version.
So in the meantime (till the print copy arrives) here’s the online media and general media types we’ve spotted on the list of 50 that are featured on the website. And it looks like new media gets a fairly good representation.
The little ‘see new media’ under the names almost had us thinking we could click on links… no chance. Well, we’re not in London; we don’t really exist, clearly.
Shiny Media’s three founders are included – and quoted as being “highly influential in the UK online world”. They aren’t among the very top 50, but you can see a scanned in bit of the list on the Shiny blog.
Media/Online types from the top 50:
Outside of the big 50 we’ll have to rely on the Guardian’s Media Monkey for information:
“…chief exec James Murdoch, Ashley Highfield, chief exec of the Kangaroo on-demand TV project and, drum roll please, Evening Standard owner Lord Rothermere, chairman of DMGT! Who’d have thunk that thisislondon.co.uk was such a groundbreaker?
Other media bods on the list were Paul Darce, Rebecca Wade, Ed Richards, Mark Thompson, Simon Cowell, Simon Fuller, Nick Ferrari, Emily Bell, Eric Huggers, Evan Davies, John Humphrys, Jay Hunt, Peter Horrocks, Alexandra Shulman and Gok Wan.”
The BBC’s executive directors’ pay rose by £708,000 in 2007/8 with pay for the 10 directors totalling £4,960,000, according to figures from the corporation’s annual report.
Jana Bennett, director of BBC Vision, received a bonus of £41,000, while outgoing director of Future Media & Technology Ashley Highfield received £34,000. Director general Mark Thompson rejected the offer of an annual bonus.
Both the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and BECTU have challenged the rises in light of 2,500 proposed job cuts at the corporation announced in October.
“Management should have the decency to show restraint at a time when so many BBC staff are under huge pressures following major cutbacks. This announcement will only serve to disillusion staff further,” Paul McLaughlin, NUJ broadcasting organiser, said in a statement from the union.
Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, reiterated the need to improve the management structure of bbc.co.uk before approving further investment. In May the site’s management was blamed for losing ‘effective control’ after a £36 million overspend.
More figures from the report:
BBC Worldwide
Analysis of BBC Worldwide (part of the annual report and separate reviews released) emphasised the importance of online in growing its global audience. The service’s online audience rose 34 per cent year-on-year. However, the review highlighted the failure of Spanish-language site BBC Mundo to meet the demands of increased internet access.
The launch of BBC Arabic came in for particular praise in the review, creating ‘trimedia’ BBC coverage in Arabic:
“With the launch of BBC Arabic television, our multimedia strategy took a giant step forward. That moment in March 2008 marked the successful culmination of a four-year journey to secure funding and deliver a high-quality television service in a vital region of the world.”
Online revenues accounted for 2.7 per cent of total sales for BBC Worldwide in 2007/8 – rising from 1.1 per cent previously, the report said. The creation of bbc.com and syndication deals with YouTube and iTunes were cited as key revenue drivers for the service.
Those guys at Tribune know how to have a laugh don’t they? Take this ‘hilarious’ press release I received today about the US media group’s latest appointment:
Surely You Can’t Be Serious? Marc Chase – President Of Tribune Interactive!
Randy Michaels’ run of acquiring radio-management stars
came to a screeching halt today with Chase’s appointmentCHICAGO, April 7, 2008 — Another freaking Clear Channel
Communications executive on the payroll and this one’s been
named President of Tribune Interactive.Tribune Broadcasting’s Randy Michaels’ past finally caught
up with him when Marc Chase obviously blackmailed his way
into a position he is not remotely qualified to hold.
Insiders are irate. Chase is a fraud. A source inside
Tribune HR, who wished to remain anonymous, pointed out that
Marc Chase’s resume (below) was obviously fabricated. First
of all, his name isn’t even Marc Chase–it’s Mark Thompson.
The whole thing is a sham.MARC CHASE
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington DC 20500 202-456-1111PROFESSINAL EXPERIENCE
Vocabulary Advisorist for George W. Bush
President of the United States of America
Washington DC, 2004-presenteBay
President of Buying Crap
San Jose, California 2003-2004
Executive Vice President of Finding Crap Anywhere
Mountain View, California 2001-2002Microsoft
Senior Executive Vice President of Technology and Stuff
Seattle, Washington, 2000-2001CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX Television
Vice President of Watching TV A Lot
Los Angeles, California 1999-2000Harvard University
Dean of School of Internetology
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1998EDUCASHION
Nearly Graduated with Honers
School of Alabama in Atlanta Georgia 1985COMMUNITY SERVICE
400 Hours (reduced from 600)
Judge gave time off for good behaviorChase was quoted as saying, “Timing and infrared photography
are everything. I couldn’t be happier! I know Randy is
relieved to finally have me on Sam’s payroll.”Tribune has undergone major changes in the past year, with
billionaire Sam Zell acquiring the company last April in a
complex deal that left it with $13 billion in debt. Since
then, Zell has brought in new executives to fill key roles.
This one takes the cake.Last December, Zell hired Michaels — who helped Zell to
build Clear Channel into a radio behemoth that he could then
sell — to oversee Tribune’s broadcast and Internet
divisions. It is obvious Michaels has lost his mind with
this hire.–By Hugh Jass – A Reputable Media Source
© 2008, Bogus Information, a division of Dewey, Cheatum, and
Howe. All Rights Reserved.
While you’re sewing you sides back together (and trying to make sense of the whole thing), you have to ask why? As Gawker points out Marc Chase has been hired – that’s about all you can determine from the message – but is it appropriate to send out a spoof release as the Tribune company faces mass redundancies?
Mark Thompson, the director-general of the BBC, put himself up for some close public scrutiny yesterday when he agreed to answer questions from Telegraph.co.uk readers live on the site.
“I can’t, off the top of my head, think of a more potentially hostile environment for him,” writes Currybet’s Martin Belam in his excellent summary of the event. However, he notes that Thompson got a relatively easy ride in the Q&A.
Judging by the questions posed, the application of regional and clipped RP accents across the Corporation appears to be one of the main issues of contention for the readers of the online version of The Telegraph.
A few questions – offering enough for more than a cursory skim read – about criticism of the coverage of the Madeleine McCann story and Parliamentary scrutiny, did pop up. But these were subjects that the DG could tuck into with gusto.
A question about access to BBC TV in Australia got this interesting answer:
“I would like to be able to offer people around the world on demand access to more of the BBC’s domestic content – and maybe to complete home services. We’re working on that.”
The Telegraph’s Shane Richmond notes: “We let our Q&A guests choose the questions they answer and our more cynical readers will probably argue that the more difficult questions are overlooked.”
It’s something to bear in mind. On the whole the questions selected were of the reactionary kind and easy for a shrug off – I would have liked to see more sustained questions about the Corporation throwing money at platforms, channels and programming that painfully attempts to reach out to certain demographics with little or no obvious success – yes, BBC3 – what are you for?