The Baron’s ‘B’ and the Beeb.
The Barons ‘B’, Barnes and Birkenhead, have their feet firmly under the table. The Baronial table that is. The one that has Jessica Cecil standing guard outside to protect the duo from the wilder excesses of their fiefdom.
The Baron Barnes, better known as Chris Patten, or Pang Ding-hong as the Chinese called him, has long been used to exalted position. He has been ensconced in one comfortable sinecure after another, ever since he lost his parliamentary seat in Bath. Governor of Hong Kong, European Commissioner, now Chairman of the BBC Trust. He has long since given up any pretence of being ‘a man of the people’.
The Baron Birkenhead, on the other hand, came bounding into his first day in his new fiefdom yesterday as plain ’Tony Hall’, man of the people. Ignore all that stuff about him being ‘culturally elite’, Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House; he was keen to display his credentials at the new Director-General of the BBC as one of being down-wi-da-youf. Wasn’t he once a trainee reporter for BBC Belfast? A Producer for World at One; didn’t he launch News 24?
‘He’s one of us’, went the cry at BBC headquarters, as he spoke:”I am confident about the future for the BBC for two key reasons: the calibre and quality of its people and the values we all share.”
He tried to become Director-General once before and failed; went off to run the Royal Opera House. Now he returns in triumph.
We’ve had an earlier Director-General who was ‘a man of the people’ in the 1960s. Hugh Green. He changed the whole tone of the BBC from its lofty Reithian upper middle class values, to a dumbed down publicly funded entertainment channel that drove Mary Whitehouse barmy. Some of the nitty gritty programmes such as ‘Up the Junction’ were classics of their genre, and rightly applauded; but he also introduced Radio One, along with its motley collection of over-sexed DJs, and ‘Til Death Us Do Part’ – a programme that the BBC would not dare to show today. It became a BBC that lauded the regional accents, the more impenetrable the better; dressed its presenters in multi-coloured sweaters to look like Slovakian refugees, and believed that it could only compete by aping the commercial channels obsession with sex and violence. It’s nadir was surely Jonathan Ross asking David Cameron whether he had masturbated whilst thinking of Margaret Thatcher.
Was this really the ‘inform, educate, and entertain’ ethos that we were forced to pay £145.00 a year for?
We’ve been fed carefully planted stories in the media to suggest that the BBC is ‘cutting costs’ in recognition of the new age of austerity. Indeed, we were told that Mark Thompson had taken a pay cut. He might have done, but the new boy is getting a rise. From a lowly £250,000 a year (though he did manage some ‘add-ons’!) for screwing 28 million out of an unwilling public, to £450,000 for screwing £5 billion a year out of an even more unwilling public. It doesn’t seem much of an increase for overseeing such a vastly increased budget to me.
The Baron Hall of Birkenhead’s new office is on the fourth floor of Broadcasting House right next to the sprawling news room. A room full of giant egos, and bruised feelings that will make the prima-donnas of the Royal Opera House seem like pussy-cats in comparison. A room that has lost the trust of the British public, that is unsure whether it is in the business of sensationalism, a la the debacle of Newsnight’s Lord MacAlpine non-naming, or whether it should be the calm voice in the storm of digital and dead tree ‘race to the death’ of keyword chasing. Is it trying to out-Guido Guido with the latest political gossip; is it the voice of the ‘oppressed and vulnerable’ working hand in hand with the child protection agencies to do the work of the Police; is it the unofficial opposition party; or is it the old fashioned father figure to the news hungry nation – the last bastion of investigative journalism that the commercial boys can no longer afford. Analysing the wilder excesses of the internet and excitable politicians, giving us truth and facts where others deal in supposition and speculation?
Imagine a news service that NEVER employed the words ‘might’, ‘could be’, ‘it is feared that’, ‘campaigners claim that’; would you really mind paying 40p a day for such a reliable trustworthy service? Boring, for sure. Way down in the ratings – and why should it even appear in the ratings? But a ‘verified Wikipedia’, a place where you could be sure that what you read had actually occurred, and here were the facts. Mind you, he’d have to heave half of the current intake of journalists out of that fourth floor window to achieve that; far too set in their tabloid ways. Personally, I’d pay a voluntary licence fee if he did so.
Why it would be the sort of news service that people would risk their lives tuning into in war time conditions; the sort of news service that the BBC was once lauded for providing!
April 4, 2013 at 11:49
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I am only a humble BBC listener/viewer all my life. I would be desolate if
it disapeared or became commercial. It has been over taken by the fractioning
of what is on offer elsewhere on Sky particularly and the Virgin offerings.
Yes the fat cats should not be paid those huge salaries with money forced out
of reluctant viewers. No one, however exalted they might think they are, needs
that much money to do a job rather ineptly. Listening to LBC radio I am
irritated by constant adverts, endlessly repeated. The same on freeview…they
seem to go on forever. As for that strange enclosed culture at the Beeb, I can
well imagine, a left slanted, politically correct, strangely cannibalistic
culture… as ,with poker face, the presenter tells us about the latest beeb
boob, or the Beeb disected on Question Time. As for the JS legacy, when are
they going to give it a break? I did see a discrete extract from a top of the
pops show on a late night music show…..there are some good ones…..how
amazing!
- April 3, 2013 at 22:15
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I am eternally grateful for the mediocrity of the ‘golden age’ of British
television during the late sixties and seventies, for two reasons. I had time
to discover, explore and enjoy the wonderful world of books, and the discovery
of the world of shortwave radio, which brought the world directly to my
headphones, through my old valve radio set, via a long piece of copper wire
strung from my bedroom window to the end of the garden…
- April 3,
2013 at 15:56
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There was a time when those who knew would rather take the Birkenhead to
Paddington train rather than Liverpool Lime Street to Euston. Slower, but much
more scenic and with a superior restaurant car. FE Smith used to be Lord
Birkenhead, how times change. It is all a game of musical chairs (sic) among
our elite. We just pay for it.
- April 3, 2013 at 16:06
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Forget the diner. Had I had the chance, I would have chosen a Princess on
the Lots More Smoke in preference to a King on the Great Way Round any day
Poncey copper tops.
-
April 3, 2013 at 20:16
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Quite how we managed to move the discussion from the Biased
Broadcasting Corporation to the relative merits of the Lost, Mangled and
Smashed and the Greasy, Wet and Rusty I’m not entirely sure; but a welcome
diversion nonetheless. Personally, I’d like to put in a word for BR
Standards – better than even Kings and Lizzies. Especially if you ever
have to operate any of them.
(PS – After BR Standards, I’d take a West
Country pacific or a Western ‘Manor’ – poncey copper top an’ all.)
Apologies to all the sane readers, and the landlady, for this
unwarranted diversion.
-
April 3, 2013 at 20:44
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I call you, with a Peppercorn A2, complete with Kylchap double
chimney, multiple valve regulator, and two whistles.
-
April 3, 2013 at 21:07
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Well, an A1 would certainly be possible! Goes like the wind, I’m
reliably informed….
-
April 3, 2013 at 21:12
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Indeed, along with GR1s and GR4s too. But can you think on a more
inappropriate sobriquet than ‘Bonnie Dundee’? LOL
-
April 3, 2013 at 21:07
-
-
April 3, 2013 at 21:13
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That’s quite impressive! And 7822 is an old friend….
-
April 3, 2013 at 21:23
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Runs on this base
You have to have ‘Steam’ installed, and it needs a seriously well
endowed up to date PC to run smoothly, with a proper graphics card,
not just some MOBO integrated chip. There are a few other quirks on
set up, but they are fairly easy to deal with
The DLC and independent add-ons available are extensive, routes,
locos, rolling stock. You may have seen that Justtrains have both Std
5 and 6 classes in development
Maybe I shouldn’t be putting temptation in your way though
But much more fun than the BBC
- April 3, 2013 at 14:39
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“The Baron Hall of Birkenhead’s new office is on the fourth floor of
Broadcasting House right next to the sprawling news room. A room full of
giant egos, and bruised feelings that will make the prima-donnas of the
Royal Opera House seem like pussy-cats in comparison.”
For a moment there I had visions of giant styrofoam egos attacking ‘plucky
lasses’ dressed up as pussy-cats and the dreadful thought hit me: “Not Stuart
Hall? Surely not Stuart Hall!”
But dear Stuart is otherwise engaged aat the moment I guess.
- April 3, 2013 at 14:27
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Whether Dacre is paid too much is neither here nor there. He is paid by
results. If the Mail loses readers his position will be under
review.
Meanwhile over at the Beeb…..
….. its staff can be personally subjected to the most malevolent attentions
of political opportunists, complaints campaigns, and allied nastinesses
orchestrated by the…. [fill in the name of whichever tabloid you like] …. on
behalf of what is disguised as widespread public outrage, but which really
represents, at best, a very small minority, even from within its sanctified,
sanctimonious, prurient, and highly offendable ‘readership’, and, in reality,
probably often nothing much more than a reflection of the predelictions of its
owners or editors, which they know that most of the people who indulge in
their pap will swallow without any critical examination or thought
whatsoever
- April 3, 2013 at 15:00
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@ which really represents, at best, a very small minority, even from
within its sanctified, sanctimonious, prurient, and highly offendable @
Are we talking about the BBC viewer here? It sounds quite like their
journalists just now…..
The Mail is no more full of crap than any other newspaper, and a darn
sight less full of crap than the sanctified, sanctimonious, prurient, and
highly offendable Independent these days, which just makes me laugh out loud
when I read it.
I thought we all agreed at the Raccoon Arms that the meeja is full of
shit anyway. Not that I mind you arguing which is worse, but why pick on the
Mail? It is two things the BBC is not just now: Popular and profitable…..
- April 3, 2013 at 15:11
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you didn’t read the bit which said…’ [fill in the name of whichever
tabloid you like]‘…did you?
- April 3, 2013 at 15:16
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It never occurred to me that the Indy was a tabloid…… but I suppose
you are right…..
-
April 3, 2013 at 15:40
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That probably explains a lot then. Stephen Glover must think the
Mail’s a broadsheet.
- April 3, 2013 at 15:58
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April 4, 2013 at 12:55
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But would you place the Mirror, Sun & Star in the category
“Media” or in the category “Comics”..?
-
April 4, 2013 at 16:48
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Leaving the comics to one side for a moment, there’s always the
Chronicals of the Dementors. Multiple independent contributors, but I
wouldn’t expect even Dacre to participate, much less knowingly give
any of them a byeline
https://twitter.com/RothleyPillow
-
April 3, 2013 at 15:36
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‘two things the BBC is not just now: Popular and profitable….’
Let’s think about that a moment, shall we?
Popular? Well, to some, of course not, and to others, it will be. My
Mum for instance, or should I maybe assume that people like her don’t
count? After all, she’d probably approve of the Mail
Profitable? Not to those who don’t know better, it seems
To coin a phrase, Let me entertain you, with this excerpt from BBC
Annual Report
‘Commercial operations
The licence fee is supplemented by income from the commercial
exploitation of licence fee funded content and infrastructure through
three commercial subsidiaries – BBC Worldwide, BBC World News and BBC
Studios & Post Production (S&PP).
As a result of its activities in 2011/12, BBC Worldwide returned a
record £216million of cash to the BBC (2010/11: £182million), equivalent
to 6% of licence fee income. Despite unpredictability in some of its
markets, the company has continued to grow. Underlying sales (excluding
sales of Magazines) increased 5.4% to £1,085million and the headline
profit (excluding exceptional items) increased to £155million.
During the year, BBC Worldwide wrote down the carrying value of its
investment in Lonely Planet by £16million. This was caused by continued
appreciation of the Australian dollar. At the date of the annual
impairment review in January 2012, the Australian dollar was at a
28-year high against sterling. Lonely Planet management have taken steps
to reduce the company’s Australian cost base to mitigate the potential
impact of further appreciation.
BBC World News continued to deliver high-quality journalism to an
international audience. Although both revenue and profits fell slightly
overall in the face of tough economic conditions, advertising revenue in
particular came under pressure. Distribution revenue fared better and
was able to show a small improvement. The company also benefited from
the first full year of a significant cost saving plan.
In a difficult trading environment, S&PP recorded a headline
profit of £5million this year. The company continued to broaden its
customer base, compensating for the loss of income after BBC Sport and
Children’s activities relocated to Salford where S&PP has no
operating base.’
Profitable? Yes, if you look at the bits that are supposed to be…but
that’s unlikely to satisfy the die hard …
And if you examine the detail,
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/annualreport/pdf/bbc_ar_online_2011_12.pdf
it looks like the commercial surplus contribution will probably
decrease because of the pressure that was put on them to sell off the
bits that were profitable. Like that’s a great deal for the licence
payer, isn’t it?. You can’t remember whose idea that was, can you?
-
April 3, 2013 at 15:51
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I’ll save you the trouble
Culture, Media and Sport Committee – Fifth Report
BBC Commercial
Operations
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmcumeds/24/2402.htm
9 Conclusion
112. There are major benefits from the BBC undertaking commercial
activities. Most importantly, the profits generated by the
exploitation of the BBC’s intellectual property can be reinvested in
the BBC’s public services, to the benefit of licence fee payers. We
fully support this principle. However, the manner in which some of the
BBC’s commercial revenue is generated, and the governance arrangements
within which the BBC’s commercial arm—BBC Worldwide—operates, cause us
and others increasing concern. Worldwide has proved successful in
recent years in exploiting new commercial opportunities. Its expansion
was largely made possible by a loosening of the rules that govern the
limits to its operations. However, there is clearly a balance to be
drawn, between Worldwide generating a return for the BBC, and limiting
Worldwide’s operations in order to ensure it upholds the BBC’s
reputation and does not damage its commercial competitors.
113. The new businesses in which Worldwide has become involved,
particularly its minority stakes in overseas production companies, its
controversial acquisition of Lonely Planet, and its growing portfolio
of magazines, suggest that the balance has been tipped too far in
favour of Worldwide’s unrestricted expansion. Worldwide’s new
activities risk jeopardising the reputation of the BBC and have had an
adverse impact on its commercial competitors. Furthermore, it seems
likely that the BBC could gain a better return for the licence fee
payer if it sold more of its rights on the open market rather than
offering them exclusively to Worldwide. We believe it is in the
interests of the UK’s creative economy as a whole that BBC Worldwide’s
activities are reined back. Among our other recommendations, we
therefore recommend that the BBC Trust reinstates the rule that all
BBC commercial activity must have a clear link with core BBC
programming.
You can’t have it be more commercial, or profitable, if your
elected representatives actively conspire to stop it being so, can
you. And you’ve just got to laugh at
‘Worldwide’s new activities ……………. have had an adverse impact on
its commercial competitors’
Haven’t you?
- April 3, 2013 at 16:12
-
I know the BBC ticks off News International enormously because of
it’s all-embracing ability to enter every market-place. That’s not
necessarily the same thing as being profitable of course. I was
reading the Telegraph is going pay-per-view too now too so the Mail
and the beeb will probably rub against one another more and more.
The BBC always has been a very *spoiling* organisation. When the
commercial companies tried to launch a moderately highbrow Morning TV
company all those years ago, the beeb gave us Bough jumpers and Selina
sofas, and eventually the commercial people had to turn to Roland Rat
to bail themselves out of penury.
-
April 3, 2013 at 16:16
-
‘the commercial people had to turn to Roland Rat to bail themselves
out of penury.’
/me clears throat….Surely what you mean is that they weren’t
‘popular’ enough without the rat?
- April 3, 2013 at 16:33
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In the old commercial world popular = profitable. The rise of
subscription makes such races to the lowest commonality redundant I
guess, because niche markets can become self-sustaining without
requiring mass viewership – as the survival of boxing has proved. I
was reading yahoo paid a 17 year-old £17M for an App the other day.
That’s the new fat cattery I expect.
-
April 3, 2013 at 18:28
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“BBC Worldwide returned a record £216million of cash to the BBC
(2010/11: £182million), equivalent to 6% of licence fee
income.”
Remarkably high given that a very large proportion of BBC
programming is, necessarily, so parochial and/or time-sensitive that
it has almost no foreign sale or DVD sale potential.
-
April 3, 2013 at 19:03
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‘given that a very large proportion of BBC programming is,
necessarily, so parochial and/or time-sensitive that it has almost no
foreign sale or DVD sale potential’
That might be thinking a little bit too narrowly….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Worldwide
- April 3, 2013 at 14:06
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The difference between the Beeb and the Mail?
I can choose to buy the
Mail, or I can buy another paper- or none.
With the BBC I have no choice. I
have to pay the licence by law.
Whether Dacre is paid too much is neither here nor there. He is paid by
results. If the Mail loses readers his position will be under
review.
Meanwhile over at the Beeb…..
- April 3, 2013 at 12:04
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I quite agree that it would be worth paying for a factually reliable news
service of any kind, properly discernible from mere opinion piece or tabloid
mulch. There is indeed also a bit of ‘chicken and egg’ as to which ‘side’ of
the media dragged the other down, and this will be argued long after my dust
has fed the daisies
But on the salary question, there are some interesting comparisons can be
made from the publicly available online Annual Reports, which are easy to
find.
Let’s start with BBC 2011: Total Income £4993M Remuneration Report
highlights: All 7 Directors £2560K Dir General £622K…..(that would have been
mark Thomson, I believe)
Moving on to the Group that owns the Daily Mail 2010: Total group revenue
£1984m ( incl the subsidiary that ‘includes’ the DM – £850m) Remuneration
Report highlights -All 14 Directors (7 paid less than £100K ) £13384K. Group
Chief Exec – £1290K. Daily Mail’s editor – £2785K, incl once off lifetime
recognition bonus of £1000K, or, as was reported in the opinion of another
fleet street rag, a basic salary which ‘reinforced his reputation as the
best-paid of his class on Fleet Street recently by taking home more than £1.7m
from his employer’, where the ‘£1.725m remuneration package also included a
cash allowance of £10,000 and £25,000 for benefits such as a company car, fuel
and medical plans’. And, while its UK subsidiaries probably do account for
their tax in the UK, the ultimate holding company is registered in (I think it
was) Bermuda. How patriotic.
Anyway, interesting relativities, don’t you think? Or do those better paid
directors just really do so much more for their money, both in the quality of
their production output and with regard to the benefit delivered to all of us,
ie the public in general, as opposed to merely their readers and
advertisers?
As an aside, if we relook at the BBC ‘freelancer’ saga, stoked up by (what
must be obvious is) my favourite tabloid, amongst others, they weren’t telling
their readers how many articles in the printed media are written by
‘freelancers’, nor proportions, in number or value, were they? Nor did they
make clear how they pay their own columnists, ie as employees or otherwise.
For instance, one tabloid has a columnist who reputedly lives for ‘much of the
year in the United States’, but we don’t know if they are paid on PAYE, or if
they are resident in the UK for tax purposes, or not.
Anyway, one could conclude that there seem to be fat cats, and fatter cats,
with the fatter cats possibly, strangely, being be so much better at not
publicising their relative porkiness to the masses that they pander to, and
pamper them. I wonder how they manage that?
- April 3, 2013 at 11:20
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Anna, love that last line risking lives tuning in in the war – great ! I
remember the night before the first Guilf war started, listening to what I
thought at the time was a coded message broadcast just before the midnight
news on Radio 4 ! It was possibly’ just my imagination running away……’ but it
felt good if that’s the right way of putting it given the carnage that
followed !
Perhaps this new guy ‘hear no evil’ will stay a tad longer than
the last – someone should send him an email suggesting a Jim’ll fix it night
on BBC4. Imagine the ratings for that night’s telly !
- April 3, 2013 at 10:48
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Hi Anna
I am not sure you are entirely fair to Hugh Greene. He was still DG when I
joined the BBC in September 1967 as a trainee assistant film editor. In charge
of TV were two remarkable programme makers–Huw Weldon (Monitor, etc) and David
Attenborough. Weldon would often roam around the innards of the BBC (they are
extensive) and drop the cutting rooms to chat to such lowly creatures as
me.
And Attenborough was and is fantastic. I remember a talk he gave when
running BBC 2 or as Director of Television. There is only one good job in the
BBC, he told us young things. And that is making programmes. Everything else
is peripheral. Good as his word after his stint in admin, he went back to
making films. I spent the 1970s in the Science and Features department working
on Tomorrows World, the Burke Special and Horizon, etc. There were perhaps 80
of us in various capacities making films about science and medicine. It was
wonderful!
On the Guardian blog where I hang out a bit, I am not infrequently accused
by the fems of being a misogynist. Little do they know I was the first person,
ever, on Horizon to use a woman narrator. It was Rosemary Leach. Why? Because
my then wife was reading The Female Eunuch? Nah! It was a film about
childbirth and a woman’s voice–or Rosemary’s anyway–seemed appropriate for the
story we were telling.
- April 3, 2013 at 11:35
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I’ve just come across this wonderfully splenetic tirade by Jonathan
Meades. Worth a read!
Tony Hall, take a long knife to the parasites the BBC calls
managers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/02/tony-hall-bbc-parasites-long-knife
- April 3, 2013 at 11:41
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Shame he has to invoke the Rise and Fall of Savilisation at the end
though.
Meades was much wittier when he was fat.
-
April 3, 2013 at 12:47
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Moor Larkin – ditto I’ve responded to the guardian article – let’s see
the response. My post to the telegraph got wiped – so much hatred these
people have !
- April 3, 2013 at 09:17
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The BBC seems to have traced a curious form of reverse-evolution wherein it
began life as a Reithiosaurus, equipped with a tiny but functioning brain. As
the epochs of the decades have passed, and the environment altered, rather
than breed from itself, it seems to have simply broken down into a squirming
mess of writhing nematodes, some of whom have adopted the simplest survival
mechanism of the closed community, and that is to just eat the most nutritious
members.
{ 35 comments }