Post by Teddy Bear on Sept 26, 2012 21:49:12 GMT
Outgoing BBC chief operations officer, Caroline Thompson, who last year earned received a salary of £330,000 and runs up a taxi bill of about £11k, decides to 'bare all' before she leaves. She has declared 'Executives, eat and drink with, marry and have affairs with each other,' as if we couldn't have guessed already. She goes on to say 'the corporation could too easily become 'arrogant' and 'above itself' and 'forget about everyone else.'.
What a revelation
I'd have a bit more respect if she wouldn't have said 'could' since we all know they ARE - including herself.
2 articles on the subject
Cristina Odone at The Telegraph adds her 2 cents:
What a revelation
I'd have a bit more respect if she wouldn't have said 'could' since we all know they ARE - including herself.2 articles on the subject
The incestuous BBC: 'Executives, eat and drink with, marry and have affairs with each other,' says outgoing boss
Caroline Thomson said the corporation could too easily become 'arrogant' and 'above itself'
By Larisa Brown
A departing BBC chief has criticised the culture of its London-based staff claiming senior executives 'marry each other and have affairs with each other'.
Caroline Thomson, who leaves her position as chief operating officer today after 37 years, also warned the BBC could too easily become 'arrogant', 'above itself' and 'forget about everyone else.'
Speaking at a conference yesterday, she offered advice to George Entwistle, the man who beat her to become the new director-general.
At the end of her speech at the Church and Media conference: 'My advice would be to make sure the BBC is confident but not arrogant.
'That is easier said than done.
'It's quite easy for the BBC to get a bit above itself and forget about everyone else.'
Her comment about executives having affairs with each other was in response to a question about the BBC shift from London to Salford.
When Miss Thomson was asked if more of the BBC would move, she said: 'That was certainly the policy last year, so I assume it 's going to happen.'
She said that units like those in Salford with a few thousand people were 'much more likely' to be outward-looking that those with 10,000 people in one building, 'when they all eat and drink with each other and marry each other and have affairs with each other and so on.'
About a sixth of the corporation's output is now made in Salford
It was announced last year that a further 1,000 posts were to be moved north, including the entirety of BBC3.
Some senior insiders now fear this might not now take place after a reluctance for employees to move from homes in London and a failure to attract high profile guests on certain shows.
Miss Thomson - who last year earned almost £330,000 - had been expected to leave the corporation after losing out to Mr Entwistle.
However she is leaving the corporation sooner than expected, amid reports of an 'awkward' relationship between her and Mr Entwistle.
The 58-year-old’s post is being axed and the bureaucratic Operations Division she ran is being dismantled to save money.
The BBC is facing budget cuts of 20 per cent, with around 2,000 job losses, as a result of a tough licence fee deal with the Government.
Miss Thomson first joined the BBC after starting as a trainee journalist in 1975 and was a key player in the licence fee settlements in 2007 and 2010.
She will leave next week with a £1.71million pension pot and could get up to 12 months of redundancy pay.
Since the BBC began publishing the expenses claims of its top executives, her taxi claims have received attention with her regular use of cabs costing thousands of pounds of licence fee money each year.
In a written transcript of her speech she said: 'It is always when the BBC loses sight of what it is here for that it runs into trouble with Licence Fee payers.'
The news comes after MailOnline yesterday revealed that a BBC site offering 'in depth analysis' and research is available to everyone in the world except British licence fee payers.
The BBC Future site is heralded as the new international technology, science, environment and health site, but isn't available to people in the UK because it is an arm of the BBC that is not funded by the licence fee.
This means, that despite Britons forking out almost £150 a year for a TV licence to fund the corporation, they are excluded from the international content.
But BBC Worldwide say it is the same 'genre' of content already provided for UK citizens - though the stories are not the same - and it was created for audiences outside the UK.
Mr Entwistle, who started his position as director-general last week, is set to reshape the BBC radically and has been working with the accountancy firm Deloitte in recent weeks.
The new BBC boss has hired consultants to help him reduce waste and slash the number of managers at the corporation.
He is understood to have spent weeks hold up in an office looking at how to cut unnecessary waste and bureaucracy.
Earlier in Miss Thomson's speech she also criticised James Murdoch, of News Corporation.
She said: 'James Murdoch complained about government media regulation in the UK. He complained that because it was publicly funded the BBC was a threat to independent journalism, arguing that profit was the only reliable guarantor of independence. A lot has happened in those three years - need I say more?'
She added: “At this year’s Edinburgh Television Festival, his sister expressed a different view, calling for profit to be pursued ‘with a purpose’.
'But just because the BBC is a public service broadcaster doesn’t automatically give it the moral high ground either. We have to be clear about our values.
'They define us in our audiences mind, not just in the UK but around the world. The particularly important point is ‘trust’. Lose that and you have lost everything.'
Caroline Thomson said the corporation could too easily become 'arrogant' and 'above itself'
By Larisa Brown
A departing BBC chief has criticised the culture of its London-based staff claiming senior executives 'marry each other and have affairs with each other'.
Caroline Thomson, who leaves her position as chief operating officer today after 37 years, also warned the BBC could too easily become 'arrogant', 'above itself' and 'forget about everyone else.'
Speaking at a conference yesterday, she offered advice to George Entwistle, the man who beat her to become the new director-general.
At the end of her speech at the Church and Media conference: 'My advice would be to make sure the BBC is confident but not arrogant.
'That is easier said than done.
'It's quite easy for the BBC to get a bit above itself and forget about everyone else.'
Her comment about executives having affairs with each other was in response to a question about the BBC shift from London to Salford.
When Miss Thomson was asked if more of the BBC would move, she said: 'That was certainly the policy last year, so I assume it 's going to happen.'
She said that units like those in Salford with a few thousand people were 'much more likely' to be outward-looking that those with 10,000 people in one building, 'when they all eat and drink with each other and marry each other and have affairs with each other and so on.'
About a sixth of the corporation's output is now made in Salford
It was announced last year that a further 1,000 posts were to be moved north, including the entirety of BBC3.
Some senior insiders now fear this might not now take place after a reluctance for employees to move from homes in London and a failure to attract high profile guests on certain shows.
Miss Thomson - who last year earned almost £330,000 - had been expected to leave the corporation after losing out to Mr Entwistle.
However she is leaving the corporation sooner than expected, amid reports of an 'awkward' relationship between her and Mr Entwistle.
The 58-year-old’s post is being axed and the bureaucratic Operations Division she ran is being dismantled to save money.
The BBC is facing budget cuts of 20 per cent, with around 2,000 job losses, as a result of a tough licence fee deal with the Government.
Miss Thomson first joined the BBC after starting as a trainee journalist in 1975 and was a key player in the licence fee settlements in 2007 and 2010.
She will leave next week with a £1.71million pension pot and could get up to 12 months of redundancy pay.
Since the BBC began publishing the expenses claims of its top executives, her taxi claims have received attention with her regular use of cabs costing thousands of pounds of licence fee money each year.
In a written transcript of her speech she said: 'It is always when the BBC loses sight of what it is here for that it runs into trouble with Licence Fee payers.'
The news comes after MailOnline yesterday revealed that a BBC site offering 'in depth analysis' and research is available to everyone in the world except British licence fee payers.
The BBC Future site is heralded as the new international technology, science, environment and health site, but isn't available to people in the UK because it is an arm of the BBC that is not funded by the licence fee.
This means, that despite Britons forking out almost £150 a year for a TV licence to fund the corporation, they are excluded from the international content.
But BBC Worldwide say it is the same 'genre' of content already provided for UK citizens - though the stories are not the same - and it was created for audiences outside the UK.
Mr Entwistle, who started his position as director-general last week, is set to reshape the BBC radically and has been working with the accountancy firm Deloitte in recent weeks.
The new BBC boss has hired consultants to help him reduce waste and slash the number of managers at the corporation.
He is understood to have spent weeks hold up in an office looking at how to cut unnecessary waste and bureaucracy.
Earlier in Miss Thomson's speech she also criticised James Murdoch, of News Corporation.
She said: 'James Murdoch complained about government media regulation in the UK. He complained that because it was publicly funded the BBC was a threat to independent journalism, arguing that profit was the only reliable guarantor of independence. A lot has happened in those three years - need I say more?'
She added: “At this year’s Edinburgh Television Festival, his sister expressed a different view, calling for profit to be pursued ‘with a purpose’.
'But just because the BBC is a public service broadcaster doesn’t automatically give it the moral high ground either. We have to be clear about our values.
'They define us in our audiences mind, not just in the UK but around the world. The particularly important point is ‘trust’. Lose that and you have lost everything.'
Cristina Odone at The Telegraph adds her 2 cents:
Bonking at the Beeb: why BBC staff can't keep their hands off each other
By Cristina Odone
Caroline Thomson blew the lid off the BBC's dirty little secret
When Caroline Thomson lost her bid to become DG of the BBC, she decided to go with a bang: she has blown the lid off the BBC's biggest secret. No, it's not cabs ferrying talent between London and Leeds, or the fat cat salaries drawn by the top echelons of the corporation. No, Thomson's revenge lies in exposing the fact that staff are all at it – with one another. From Andy Marr (recently caught canoodling with one of his producers) backwards, the Beeb is a cauldron of sexual tension. You could make an old-style sex romp about it – Carry On Auntie.
No wonder. Its more than 23,000 staff are firmly convinced that they have been selected as the best and the brightest in their field. They work long hours (well, most of them) and sit cheek-to-jowl in open space newsrooms. Employees may be, as per the Corporate Manifesto, a wonderful rainbow mixture when they gain access to the Beeb, but the corporation's homogenising powers are such that it spits them out looking and sounding exactly the same.
Which is why they find each other so attractive: this is not just the world's biggest broadcasting corporation, this is the world's biggest mutual appreciation society. Producers, directors, managers (and perhaps caterers and cleaners too) find one another irresistible because they've been made in the same image: right-on opinions, estuary English, casual attire. Heck, they even read the same paper – The Guardian.
To this self-worship let's add a more traditional factor: hierarchy. The BBC is a rigid structure, where status is respected and gossip is always about who's up who's down. A young aspiring producer can't help but know that if he/she has a powerful mentor, the climb up the greasy pole is a lot less arduous. And so they climb into bed with the more powerful. This leads to more incestuous liaisons than among the hillbillies in Deliverance. Yes, some of these couples eventually get married; but most of them pursue illicit affairs and cannot be named for fear of libel.
The Corporation frowns on such goings-on. One insider told me that when a famous broadcaster was discovered to have been carrying on with his producer, the bosses moved him – but perversely seemed to be promoting him, as they took him out of his department to star in a current affairs programme. Only at the Beeb.
By Cristina Odone
Caroline Thomson blew the lid off the BBC's dirty little secret
When Caroline Thomson lost her bid to become DG of the BBC, she decided to go with a bang: she has blown the lid off the BBC's biggest secret. No, it's not cabs ferrying talent between London and Leeds, or the fat cat salaries drawn by the top echelons of the corporation. No, Thomson's revenge lies in exposing the fact that staff are all at it – with one another. From Andy Marr (recently caught canoodling with one of his producers) backwards, the Beeb is a cauldron of sexual tension. You could make an old-style sex romp about it – Carry On Auntie.
No wonder. Its more than 23,000 staff are firmly convinced that they have been selected as the best and the brightest in their field. They work long hours (well, most of them) and sit cheek-to-jowl in open space newsrooms. Employees may be, as per the Corporate Manifesto, a wonderful rainbow mixture when they gain access to the Beeb, but the corporation's homogenising powers are such that it spits them out looking and sounding exactly the same.
Which is why they find each other so attractive: this is not just the world's biggest broadcasting corporation, this is the world's biggest mutual appreciation society. Producers, directors, managers (and perhaps caterers and cleaners too) find one another irresistible because they've been made in the same image: right-on opinions, estuary English, casual attire. Heck, they even read the same paper – The Guardian.
To this self-worship let's add a more traditional factor: hierarchy. The BBC is a rigid structure, where status is respected and gossip is always about who's up who's down. A young aspiring producer can't help but know that if he/she has a powerful mentor, the climb up the greasy pole is a lot less arduous. And so they climb into bed with the more powerful. This leads to more incestuous liaisons than among the hillbillies in Deliverance. Yes, some of these couples eventually get married; but most of them pursue illicit affairs and cannot be named for fear of libel.
The Corporation frowns on such goings-on. One insider told me that when a famous broadcaster was discovered to have been carrying on with his producer, the bosses moved him – but perversely seemed to be promoting him, as they took him out of his department to star in a current affairs programme. Only at the Beeb.