Post by Teddy Bear on Mar 19, 2014 22:42:08 GMT
A glimpse into the inner goings on at the BBC from somebody who used to work there.
Is the BBC facing financial apocalypse?
By Damian Thompson
Here's an extract from a book called Is the BBC in Crisis? in which lots of experts give their view. You can order it by clicking here. This is the bit that caught my eye – on financial accountability at the Beeb. It's by Bernard Clark, an independent producer who has worked for the BBC over the course of decades. He's a supporter of the licence fee but deeply disturbed by what he sees on the horizon:
A small street-worth of annual licence fees gone up in waffle. Nicely put – and I don't see that changing without radical reform and showers of P45s. But can that change happen within the context of the licence fee? I'm keen to hear your thoughts.
By Damian Thompson
Here's an extract from a book called Is the BBC in Crisis? in which lots of experts give their view. You can order it by clicking here. This is the bit that caught my eye – on financial accountability at the Beeb. It's by Bernard Clark, an independent producer who has worked for the BBC over the course of decades. He's a supporter of the licence fee but deeply disturbed by what he sees on the horizon:
There’s not so much a cloud on the horizon, but an approaching apocalypse. It is called financial accountability, one thing the BBC has been very short of under the Trust and, indeed, throughout its history, which Parliament is now on to, with significant support from the public. In a phrase; we love the programmes, abhor the extravagances, even if we know they are exaggerated by most of the press who always bash the BBC. Whatever we defenders of the Corporation say, we know something has to change pretty radically, that the laissez-faire, aka the bubbling jacuzzi, has to stop.
I have a hunch that with the next charter the governance of the BBC, broadly, will be split into two – Content to Ofcom and Finance (essentially supervision of the income from the licence fee) to the National Audit Office (NAO). Paradoxically, so long as editorial freedom is protected and guaranteed, this could lead to the programming bosses genuinely deciding how to spend the money, rather than internal BBC bean-counters, which will be good for the BBC and, therefore, the viewer and listener. The key is the way the BBC’s editorial bosses deal with the NAO, a less-than-sparkling organisation itself. It must be wholly on the BBC’s terms, in particular, that the directors and controllers of television and radio and news decide how the money is spent.
Surely, you will say, that’s how it works at the moment. Think again. If Director of Television Danny Cohen and Controller of BBC One Charlotte Moore really have the freedom to decide how to spend even a quarter of BBC1’s £1.5 billion a year I would be surprised, because there are so many layers (I once counted nine) of administration and bureaucracy between commissioning decisions and audience, many of them just in the way. In fact, it was a former MD of Television who said to me: "Programmes get made in spite of the BBC, not because of it." So this friction between the commissioners and the organisation is nothing new. But it certainly has got worse.
When I last worked in Television Centre, on the way to my office I would pass the main meeting room for the News Department, a long room with a single glass corridor window. Many times it was full of perhaps 20 to 30 people passively listening to a couple of bosses – bosses of what I do not know – pontificating, while writing on a white board or referring to single-spaced typed documents. Occasionally, I knew a couple of the attendees, who would raise their eyebrows with the desperation of the truly bored, dutifully going through corporate purgatory. As an ex-trainee cost accountant, I calculated the cost of such meetings. Presuming 25 people, at an average of £15 per hour, with overhead, establishment costs and depreciation, it worked out at about £3,000 for a two-hour meeting (some were much longer). That’s a small street-worth of annual licence fees gone up in waffle. Being a curious sort of character, I once asked what the meetings were for. Staffing, internal communications, I learned: that sort of thing. One was about new office seats, which I later discovered were £295 each, with special orthopaedic support.
I have a hunch that with the next charter the governance of the BBC, broadly, will be split into two – Content to Ofcom and Finance (essentially supervision of the income from the licence fee) to the National Audit Office (NAO). Paradoxically, so long as editorial freedom is protected and guaranteed, this could lead to the programming bosses genuinely deciding how to spend the money, rather than internal BBC bean-counters, which will be good for the BBC and, therefore, the viewer and listener. The key is the way the BBC’s editorial bosses deal with the NAO, a less-than-sparkling organisation itself. It must be wholly on the BBC’s terms, in particular, that the directors and controllers of television and radio and news decide how the money is spent.
Surely, you will say, that’s how it works at the moment. Think again. If Director of Television Danny Cohen and Controller of BBC One Charlotte Moore really have the freedom to decide how to spend even a quarter of BBC1’s £1.5 billion a year I would be surprised, because there are so many layers (I once counted nine) of administration and bureaucracy between commissioning decisions and audience, many of them just in the way. In fact, it was a former MD of Television who said to me: "Programmes get made in spite of the BBC, not because of it." So this friction between the commissioners and the organisation is nothing new. But it certainly has got worse.
When I last worked in Television Centre, on the way to my office I would pass the main meeting room for the News Department, a long room with a single glass corridor window. Many times it was full of perhaps 20 to 30 people passively listening to a couple of bosses – bosses of what I do not know – pontificating, while writing on a white board or referring to single-spaced typed documents. Occasionally, I knew a couple of the attendees, who would raise their eyebrows with the desperation of the truly bored, dutifully going through corporate purgatory. As an ex-trainee cost accountant, I calculated the cost of such meetings. Presuming 25 people, at an average of £15 per hour, with overhead, establishment costs and depreciation, it worked out at about £3,000 for a two-hour meeting (some were much longer). That’s a small street-worth of annual licence fees gone up in waffle. Being a curious sort of character, I once asked what the meetings were for. Staffing, internal communications, I learned: that sort of thing. One was about new office seats, which I later discovered were £295 each, with special orthopaedic support.
A small street-worth of annual licence fees gone up in waffle. Nicely put – and I don't see that changing without radical reform and showers of P45s. But can that change happen within the context of the licence fee? I'm keen to hear your thoughts.
