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BBC Annual Report 2009
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mediawatch-uk responses to consultations
NEWS STORIES ABOUT THE BBC IN 2009 See also 2005, 2006 and 2007
BBC's Robert Peston in Furious Face-to-Face Row with James Murdoch
 The
BBC's business editor, Robert Peston, was involved in an astonishing
slanging match with James Murdoch following the News Corporation
chief's speech to television executives in Edinburgh where he accused
the BBC of mounting a "land grab".
Peston, like other BBC
executives, was critical of Murdoch's MacTaggart lecture to the
MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV festival on Friday, in which
the News Corp chairman and chief executive in Europe and Asia described
the size and ambitions of the BBC as "chilling".
Murdoch also
heavily criticised the media industry regulator, Ofcom, calling for
regulation to be scaled down, and accused the government of "dithering"
and failing to protect British companies from the consequences of
online piracy.
The Observer 30/8/2009
Read more... Read full speech
Cut the Licence Fee, says James Murdoch in Further Attack on BBC
 James
Murdoch repeated his call for the BBC to be reined in today, saying
that the corporation should have its licence fee funding reduced by
government so that it becomes "much, much smaller".
In a
question and answer session at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh
International Television Festival following last night's MacTaggart
lecture, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation in Europe
and Asia suggested the licence fee should be reduced significantly.
"If
you simply constrained the expenses - with plenty of advance warning -
the next [licence fee] settlement or something like that - [you say]
the number is 'X'. We have got a huge debt pile in this country. We
have financial issues. I think the BBC would prioritise pretty fast,"
Murdoch said.
He added that the corporation's 24-hour news
channels and website were inhibiting the ability of commercial
competitors to invest in news. "The news operation is creating enormous
problems for the independent news business and it has to be dealt
with," he said.
MediaGuardian 29/8/2009
Read more... Broadcastnow
Jana Bennett, BBC TV Chief, says Stars' Pay is Too Complex to Understand
 The
BBC will not disclose the salaries of its top stars because the public
would not understand why they are so high, according to one of the
corporation's top executives.
Jana Bennett, head of the BBC's
television channels, said that members of the public could not fully
comprehend the complexities of the television industry or contribute to
the debate about the pay of stars such as Jonathan Ross, who is
reported to be on a £6 million-a-year deal with the corporation.
Speaking
as part of a panel on presenters' fees at the Edinburgh International
Television Festival, Ms Bennett, director of BBC Vision, said that BBC
staff deserved to be treated differently from workers in other areas of
the public sector.
She said: "The BBC is in a market; in
the broader sense it's part of the creative industries. It performs a
fundamentally different role than that performed by, for example,
policemen or teachers. It is a category error to suggest that the
public would actually be able to contribute to working out what we do
about it. It's like me talking about Tom Cruise's movie deals. I'm not
of that sector."
The Times 29/8/2009
Read more...
James Murdoch Hits Out at BBC and Regulators at Edinburgh TV Festival
James
Murdoch tonight launched a scathing attack on the BBC, describing the
corporation's size and ambitions as "chilling" and accusing it of
mounting a "land grab" in a beleaguered media market.
News
Corporation's chairman and chief executive in Europe and Asia also
heavily criticised media industry regulator Ofcom, the European Union
and the government, accusing the latter of "dithering" and failing to
protect British companies from the threat of online piracy.
Delivering
the MacTaggart lecture at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International
Television Festival 20 years after his father Rupert, Murdoch described
UK broadcasting as "the Addams Family of world media", comparing it
unfavourably with the industries in India and France and complaining
about the "astonishing" burden of regulation placed on BSkyB, the
pay-TV giant he chairs.
"Every year, roughly half a million words are devoted to telling broadcasters what they can and cannot say," he said. However, his most withering comments were reserved for the BBC. "The corporation is incapable of distinguishing between what is good for it, and what is good for the country," he clamed.
"Funded
by a hypothecated tax, the BBC feels empowered to offer something for
everyone, even in areas well served by the market. The scope of its
activities and ambitions is chilling."
MediaGuardian 28/8/2009
Read more... Edinburgh Television Festival
'Bully Firms' Cash in on Contracts for TV icences
 BBC
chiefs were accused of treating viewers with contempt last night after
refusing to halt a multimillion pound gravy train that allows private
companies to make recession-proof profits for collecting licence fees.
Call centre companies and advertising firms are raking in
hundreds of millions of pounds to run a collection agency that
regulators have criticised as "bullies". At least £120million of
viewers' money drains into the private hands of TV Licensing every
year, equivalent to almost a million licence fees.
The cash
is subsidising an army of enforcement officials, an unknown number of
"detector vans" and last year a £10million pay, shares and bonus
package for the boss of Capita Business Services, the main member of
the collection consortium.
John Beyer, director of viewer watchdog mediawatch-uk, said the spotlight should now be shone on Capita's role. "Viewers
will be horrified that such large amounts are being paid to a private
organisation they haven't even heard of rather than into programme
making. This dead money is simply fuelling a bureaucracy and profits
for someone else."
TV Licensing said its costs were just
3.4% of the BBC budget and had been substantially reduced over the past
decade. It added it had been successful in driving "record sales" of TV
licences, which meant more money for programme making.
Sunday Express 23/8/2009
Read more...
Opera Perks Hit Wrong Note
 Despite
some BBC bosses earning more than the Prime Minister, it appears some
just can't resist the temptation of a high-brow freebie. In less than
two years BBC directors have been showered with free tickets to operas
and ballets worth up to £12,000.
Mark Thompson, who earns
£834,000 a year, accepted two free invitations to the opera in the
space of 10 days, a dossier of the director general's perks revealed.
Only Mark Byford, the BBC's deputy director general, has made a habit
of donating the value of his freebies to charities and other causes.
John Beyer, director of mediawatch-uk, said Mr Byford's example should be applauded. "It's good to know he has the common sense to make donations like that, so I would praise him for it."
Sunday Express 23/8/2009
Read more...
Famous Women Head BBC Four Season
 A
series of dramas about famous British women of the 20th Century leads
the autumn season on BBC Four. Jane Horrocks will play singer Gracie
Fields, while Helena Bonham Carter portrays children's author Enid
Blyton.
The series, which also sees Anne-Marie Duff as
ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn, explores what spurred on these women at
the height of their artistic powers. Another drama sees actress Sophie
Okonedo play Winnie Mandela, former wife of South African leader
Nelson. The biopic looks at the controversy that has surrounded her
life in the public eye.
BBC News online 20/8/2009
Read more... BBC News release BBC4 TV
Fury at BBC Ban on Funeral Flowers
 BBC
staff have reacted furiously to a ban on sending flowers to the
funerals of staff who have died in service. They have attacked the
corporation's management as "crass", "star struck" and in need of
recalibrating their moral compass in a row over the expenses rules
which permit senior execs to send gifts to talent but do not allow
sympathy bouquets at staff funerals. The issue came to light
earlier this month after human resources and development manager Isabel
Cosgrove wrote to BBC in-house magazine Ariel to ask "how on earth"
execs were allowed to claim for flowers.
BroadcastNow 17/8/2009
Read More...
BBCW Hire Nigella Brand Guru to Spearhead Licencing Push
 BBC
Worldwide has hired Nigella Lawson's brand guru William Miller to
launch new retail ranges for its major on-screen talent. Miller - who
helped launch Nigella Lawson cookware and developed homeware ranges for
Kirstie Allsopp, Sebastian Conran and V&A - joins the commercial
arm of the BBC as director of talent and brand ventures with immediate
effect. Managing director of content and production Wayne Garvie said: "William
is a rare beast: someone who has excelled in both television production
and the retail world, and combined both. He will be taking talent
literally outside the box, building an awareness of them overseas and
establishing new routes to market for them around the world." Miller added: "BBCW
is already extending key television brands around the globe such as
Dancing with the Stars and Top Gear. Britain has some of the best on
screen talent in the world so I'm really looking forward to creating
new commercial opportunities with them and BBCW in the same way."
BroadcastNow 17/8/2009
Read More...
Strictly Come Dancing scraps Sunday Show to up War Ratings War
 It's strictly one show from now on. BBC1 intends to dominate Saturday nights by screening an extended version of Strictly Come Dancing.
Bosses have abandoned the format of the past two years, in which a
prerecorded results show, complete with dance-off, was screened on
Sundays after Saturday's main show.
Instead, for the first
time in Strictly's six-year history, the dancers will compete and then,
after public voting and a danceoff, one act will foxtrot off. A BBC
spokeswoman told the Mirror: "We wanted to make Strictly Come
Dancing an unmissable TV event so we are packing all the action into
one dramatic show. Audiences will be watching, voting and seeing who is
in and who is out on Saturday night."
The Mirror 12/8/2009
Read more...
To Save the BBC, Strip It of the Licence Fee
by Frank Field
The
BBC is dying. The race is on to save public service broadcasting for
the nation. Auntie's death is not coming about by hostile market
forces. The commercial sector of broadcasting is in even worse shape.
It is, rather, the steady, remorseless march of the digital revolution
that spells the end of the BBC as we have known it.
The idea
of the BBC, and its role as the provider of public service
broadcasting, was very much the result of the limited scope for
transmitting broadcasts back in the 1920s when our story begins. A
strict limitation on the number of broadcasting wavelengths - and then
TV channels - lasted until quite recently and made the case for a
dominant BBC position.
Sunday Times 9/8/2009
Read article Abolish the Licence Fee?
Jonathan Ross Loses 540,000 Listeners From his Radio 2 Show in a Year
 Listeners
are deserting Jonathan Ross's Radio 2 show in droves following the
Andrew Sachs phone scandal. The controversial presenter has seen
ratings for his Saturday morning show slump in the past three months.
The
presenter's average weekly audience between March and June has been
2.85million. That is 180,000 below the average of 3.03million for the
first three months of this year, and 540,000 down on the 3.39million
from the first quarter of 2008.
Ross's falling audience
figures come at a time when radio listening as a whole has hit an all
time high, with middle-class favourites Radio 3 and Radio 4 enjoying a
boom.
Daily Mail 7/8/2009
Read more... MediaGuardian
How BBC Keeps it in the Family
A
staggering £1.2million has been paid by the BBC in the past year to
companies owned by relatives of corporation executives. Details of the
huge pay-outs emerged as another BBC boss came under fire yesterday
over her husband's lucrative links with the broadcaster.
Days
after the revelation that BBC1 controller Jay Hunt helps run her
husband's media training company which coaches BBC staff, the second
row involved Jana Bennett, the third highest paid executive at the
corporation on a basic salary of £406,000 a year.
The BBC
vision director's husband Richard Clemmow is a director and 10 per cent
stakeholder in Juniper Communications, which received £715,000 of the
£1.2million in the last year. Altogether the company has raked in more
than £2million of licence-payers' cash for making programmes for the
BBC.
The chief executive and majority shareholder in Juniper
is Samir Shah, a non- executive member on the BBC board, and his wife
Belkis is the third shareholder. The fresh revelations raised new
doubts about the BBC's conflict of interest regulations and prompted
renewed calls from MPs for a formal investigation by the corporation's
governing body.
Daily Mail 7/8/2009
Read more... BBC in the News
iPlayer Doubles its Reach
 BBC
iPlayer has more than doubled its reach in the past year and is five
times more popular than ITV's catch-up service, Ofcom's annual
communications market report has revealed. The regulator has published
figures from Nielsen Online that reveal that 15% of web users - 5.2m -
access iPlayer compared to 3.3% who use ITV Player.
Demand
Five, 4oD and Sky Player all have a 1% reach. Almost a quarter of
homes watched catch-up TV online in 2008, up from 17% in 2007 to 23%.
The BBC launched iPlayer on Virgin Media's on-demand service last April
and by the end of the year BBC content was receiving 17m views a month
on the platform.
However, viewing remains primarily online,
with 41m views in December. Channel 4 is experiencing the reverse,
with 5.9m views of 4oD content on Virgin in December compared to 5m
online.
Broadcastnow 6/8/2009
Read more... Major gap in regulation ATVOD
Programme Spending 'Cut by £13m'
.jpg "Image") The
BBC and STV cut spending on programmes in Scotland by £13m last year,
said industry watchdog Ofcom. Spending dropped by 20% to £54m for
viewers, according to a report published by the body. Scottish Culture
Minister Mike Russell said he was "extremely disappointed" with the
findings.
BBC Scotland said it was reinvesting money in
services following an efficiency drive, while STV insisted it was
increasing original programmes. The overall decrease, Ofcom said,
included a £11m cut in areas such as comedy, drama and news, although
spending on current affairs went up in Scotland by £2m - a 72%
increase.
BBC News online 6/8/2009
Read more...
Sir Terry Pulls Ahead of Moyles
 BBC Radio 2's Wake up to Wogan
is the UK's most popular breakfast radio show, according to new figures
from industry body Rajar. Figures for the first three months of 2009
suggested Radio 1 presenter Chris Moyles might be gaining on his
rival. But new data shows 7.93 million people tuned in Sir Terry each
week, compared with 7.72 million who prefer Moyles.
Elsewhere,
BBC Radio 3 has reason to celebrate after achieving its biggest
audience for more than two years. A total of 2.02 million people tuned
in each week during the last measurement period of 30 March to 28
June. Rajar
figures also show BBC Radio 4's audience now exceeds 10 million after
attracting around 465,000 new listeners in the past year.
BBC News online 6/8/2009
Read more...
BBC Casting 'Not Up To Ministers'
Ministers should
not interfere in the BBC's casting decisions, its creative director
Alan Yentob has suggested. His comments came after two ministers
expressed concern over Arlene Phillips' exit from Strictly Come Dancing.
"Everybody
around the building would like to be the person who decides who goes on
that show or that show," Mr Yentob told London's Evening Standard.
Maybe Ben Bradshaw and Harriet Harman are no different." Neither minister was immediately available for comment.
BBC News online 5/8/2009
Read more...
Click on page 2 below for stories from May 2009 - July 2009...
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