Reduced License Fee Gives 'Excuse' for Bad Quality

[Teddy Bear]

So what's been their excuse until now for the endless repeats?
So now they use 'cuts'!
Notice these 'cuts' requiring them to do less work, didn't stop the 'big guys' giving themselves hefty raises.

One very positive note in this story I highlighted below
As for the final sentence, I'd 'miss' a toothache if it suddenly wasn't there after plaguing me for 10 years. I wonder if they asked that same 70% if they believe the license fee justifies their perpetuating the BBC, how many would agree.

We’ll have to show more repeats, says BBC in a new series of cuts
Dan Sabbagh, Media Editor
Repeat programming will have to increase on the BBC as a consequence of a below-inflation licence-fee settlement, the corporation’s bosses said yesterday.

The change means that popular series such as Life on Mars and Planet Earth will be shown again as a “catchup” service on BBC channels because they are more acceptable to viewers than more reruns of Only Fools and Horses.

Mark Thompson, the Director-General, said that the BBC “was in many ways going to have to get smaller” and that there would have to be “more repeats across our network” – although it was intended to keep repeats away from peaktime BBC One and push them instead on to newer digital channels Mr Thompson was speaking on the day that the corporation’s annual report was published, which contained an admission that the long-term goal of eliminating peaktime repeats on BBC One would not now be met.

The franker than usual report also included a warning from the BBC Trust, the corporation’s regulator, that the corporation “must show more creative ambition” at the expense of ratings, and a concern that BBC Three programmes such as Me and My Man Breasts were offputting to viewers.

BBC One’s running costs rise, but viewers are down
Top executives’ pay was also spelt out, with Mr Thompson earning £788,000, up £18,000 on the previous year. However, Mark Byford, his deputy, had his pay cut by £19,000 to £437,000.

No BBC boss took home a bonus because targets for ethnic-minority recruitment were not met. But total pay for the top 11 staff was £4.25 million, a rise of 2 per cent.

The proportion of repeats on BBC One was down from 8.9 per cent to 8.4 per cent, but the report added that the BBC Trust would “continue to review policy in this area”.

That is code for saying that the policy, instituted by Michael Grade when he was Chairman, is no longer tenable.

Sir Michael Lyons, Mr Grade’s successor, said that the BBC would have to distinguish between good and bad repeats, arguing that some viewers “would welcome the opportunity to see something they missed the first time around”. Repeats on digital channels would also help to cut the costs of BBC Three and BBC Four, which are among the worst value for money for viewers.

Late last year the Government forced the BBC to accept a series of below-inflation licence-fee settlements, under which the broadcaster will have to give details of a series of cutbacks in October. That announcement is likely to include job cuts – possibly as many as 1,000 – from the existing 23,000. But until yesterday there had been few hints as to what areas of the corporation might be affected.

Soon after the report had been published, Mr Thompson gave evidence to MPs on the Culture Select Committee. He said that hopes of investing more money in children’s programming would have to be jettisoned, although he declined to blame Labour for the problems. “We get over £3 billion from the licence fee. We have to be able to manage on that.”

BBC Three, a youth-orientated channel, was singled out, with the BBC Trust saying that “there was a debate to be had about some of the channel’s programme titles”. Over the past year, BBC Three has shown F*** Off I’m Fat and 34-Stone Teenager Revisited, and it seems that BBC executives now believe that the titles may have dissuaded some viewers from tuning in.

Sir Michael confirmed that, after the row about Jonathan Ross’s £18 million pay packet, the BBC would look at the cost of top stars. The chairman said that the broadcaster might consider going public on pay. “It’s not out of the question that we might look at what danger there would be in greater disclosure of some of these figures.”

Other figures show that 18 per cent of viewers believe that the BBC is biased, compared with 16 per cent a year ago. The report also said that 70 per cent of the public would miss the BBC if it were abolished.

[Teddy Bear]

The Times runs an article today on the subject. It highlights the bullshit excuses of the BBC, in reminding us that the 'cuts' they describe were not cuts, but a rise in line with inflation. It was simply NOT the inflated amounts that the BBC was asking for.

From The TimesJuly 5, 2007

BBC Three and Four, your number’s up
Our columnist on the corporation’s cockeyed priorities
Camilla Cavendish
Alan Johnston, emerging from Gaza yesterday, said that there are many other reporters in captivity about whom we know little. It was a generous thought from a man who knows that he might never have seen daylight again, save for the world’s respect for the BBC. I ate my toast teary-eyed yesterday morning as Messrs Humphrys and Bowen exuded a dignified joy on the Today programme, and felt a swell of pride about this one man and his quintessentially British institution.

Then I got on the Tube, opened the paper and bing – there was that other Beeb we know equally well. “We’ll have to show more repeats, says BBC, in new series of cuts.” Life on Mars is to be recycled, apparently, because the public can already mouth every episode of Only Fools and Horses. The “cuts” are, strictly speaking, cuts in ambition rather than the status quo. But having provoked the Treasury by asking for an outrageous increase in the licence fee, BBC bosses are now in a sulk because they have only received an inflationary raise. No matter that at least they now have a guaranteed income for another ten years, unlike commercial broadcasters, whose advertising revenue has plummeted to lows not seen since the dot-com bust: the Beeb does self-pity almost as well as it does fearless reporting.

Talk of 1,000 job cuts is wildly exaggerated. But Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC, does face real challenges. If the BBC continues to play in every game that’s going, in fear of missing some opportunity, it could sacrifice some of the very quality that Alan Johnston personifies.

Let’s take those repeats. Some will be shown on BBC Three and Four, the digital channels, to help to lower their costs. But a repeat is a repeat is a repeat, no matter what channel it’s on. If these channels require this kind of surgery, might it not be better to put them out of their misery altogether?

Background
We’ll have to show more repeats, says BBC
BBC 'failing to provide exciting programmes'
BBC One’s running costs rise, but viewers are down
BBC Three, home to Me and My Man Boobs and other treasures, barely scraped government approval for setting it up in the first place. No one could explain what it was for. Now it has become a box into which broadcasters struggle to lure 16 to 34-year-olds. In a fit of delusional hyperbole that one can only admire, the BBC Trust said on Tuesday that the channel’s “punchiest titles may have put people off watching what was highly informative and well-made content”. I, too, failed to watch F*** off I’m Fat, and 34 Stone Teenager Revisited. But I wonder whether their titles were the sole problem. Why is the BBC spending £120 million a year to get down and dirty with E4 and ITV2, when these spend half as much to get twice as many viewers? BBC Four has launched some good new programmes. But it has even fewer viewers, despite the corporation’s phenomenal power to promote its own stuff.

The BBC’s annual report, published this week, states that it is more vital than ever to demonstrate “real public benefit”. There is hand-wringing over the rigged phone-in competitions on Blue Peter and Saturday Kitchen, and what may be a concerted attempt to address allegations of bias. But there is no hint of where the boundaries of the empire might lie.

Over the past five years there has been a remorseless expansion. The BBC now regards itself as a producer of every variety of information, entertainment and news on every platform: TV, digital, radio, internet. Its news website is superb. But it has repeatedly encroached on to territory occupied by perfectly legitimate small businesses. For more than five years, it has been pushing an online schools service. That has finally been suspended while the EU investigates allegations that it is illegal state aid. It is time to pack up that toy.

But the BBC can be dangerously stubborn. Some experiments were fine, when the BBC was high on what Mark Thompson, in his previous incarnation at Channel 4, once described as a “Jacuzzi of cash”. But that time is gone. Mr Thompson said this week that the corporation is “in many ways going to have to get smaller”. But he also said, this year, that he would not drop any channels or radio stations. Why not? Keeping BBC Three and Four going costs £200 million a year. On a cost-per-viewer basis, these are the two most expensive channels after BBC Parliament. On a cost-per-hour basis, BBC Three outstrips even BBC One. And excellent as they are, the public service value of Radio 1 and 2 must be questionable.

I have been in and out of the BBC quite a bit in the past two weeks. There is much anxiety and gloom. A number of talented people are quietly leaving, not because they have been pushed but because they feel quality is suffering. There seems to be less time to research and to get things right. There are fears that the proposed centralisation of news gathering will make news bulletins more uniform, and reduce the discretion of individual editors. One producer I particularly admire says that top people think that presenters are programmes, and so ignore the danger of having more and more junior people putting the jigsaw together.

Yes, these people are perfectionists who like to gripe. But that is why they are so good at what they do. Yes, the BBC still has luxuries of resource unknown to most of us in other parts of journalism. But its expertise and cash is not wasted, in my view, when it is spent on Planet Earth or Real Story or much of Radio 4. There is simply no reason to blow it on the crasser items. Lord Reith’s original vision was to offer something to everyone, something which was “better than they knew they wanted”. That is just as valid an ambition today.

Mr Thompson should not exaggerate the cuts. But he must also protect the kind of diligence and integrity that put Alan Johnston in a completely different universe from, shall we say, Castaway.

[steevo]

I still get a smile knowing your popular journo personalities are called stars. Actually its quite honest in comparison to ours.

Yes a 2% increase in non-brainwashed viewers in 1 year, (this last year) is worth highlighting. Lets hope its a trend to continue.

As far as their cuts in line with inflation, their 'excuse' is identical to what our Dems have used when smearing Republicans for 'cutting' social programs. Liars disseminating pure propaganda.

[Teddy Bear]

Here's today's 'Editors Blog' from Helen Boaden. Before going on I strongly suggest that NO-ONE try to read what she has to say on a full stomach. You are going to feel like you are covered in slime that she think is treacle. Remember I warned you!

Here's a 'mild' preview: "You will have noticed how our language on the licence fee has changed. Where once we called it “disappointing”, now we use that all-purpose management euphemism “challenging”."

Or how about this one: "Now…there’s a paradox about the BBC. From the outside it can often seem overbearing, over confident and frankly, at times, overwhelming – like a great big elephant apparently hoovering up audiences and stomping all over markets and shareholder value.

From the inside, it’s very different. There the BBC often feels less like an elephant and more like a mouse."

Doesn't it make you just want to grab your wallet and send them double the license fee?
Or like me, does it just want to make you vomit?

The really sick thing is that the BBC believes that issuing these toady self-serving platitudes is all they have to do to 'win hearts and minds'.

What's the future for News?
Helen Boaden 6 Jul 07, 05:15 PM

I gave a speech at Broadcast's Future of News conference on Wednesday. You can read what I said there below. Let me know what you think.

I’d like to start by firstly thanking all the people here – broadcasters and journalists – who have stood by the BBC during the long 114 days of Alan Johnston’s captivity.

We are of course overjoyed that Alan has been released but we are also hugely grateful to everyone inside and outside the business who have shown him and us such support and solidarity. It really made all the difference.

Now…there’s a paradox about the BBC. From the outside it can often seem overbearing, over confident and frankly, at times, overwhelming – like a great big elephant apparently hoovering up audiences and stomping all over markets and shareholder value.

From the inside, it’s very different. There the BBC often feels less like an elephant and more like a mouse. Inside the organisation, we sometimes feel we’re too timid, too slow, not modern enough. And in that mode, you can forget the three billion or so of guaranteed income; forget the 80 years of glorious history with its extraordinary record of innovation and imagination; forget the organisation’s unique ability to unite the nation, if not the world, on the big occasions.

Over the years, BBC insiders have often had a frankly baffling ability to see their own situation in negative terms. Talk to any of the BBC leakers that crop up on Media Guardian and they will whisper that morale has never been so low, management has never been more out of touch and the future has never been bleaker.

It’s all a little perplexing given the real privilege and power of our unique position in the media marketplace.

Yet there are real challenges facing the BBC and my part of it – BBC News. And today I want to share some of those and talk about how we are planning to survive them and thrive.

Firstly the threats: what keeps me awake at night fretting now that Alan Johnston is safely home.

Well it’s not the obvious concerns like the new licence fee.

You will have noticed how our language on the licence fee has changed. Where once we called it “disappointing”, now we use that all-purpose management euphemism “challenging”. And in that shift we reveal the journey we’ve been on from dismay to disappointment to a new sense of realism. As Mark Thompson said on Monday, our much tighter funding along with the government’s proposed 3% efficiencies per year over the next five years, requires a change of size and of attitude. The BBC of the future will still pack a powerful punch but it will be smaller.

Do I hear the sound of hollow laughter from some of you at the very idea of the BBC shrinking itself ? It is genuinely radical I know. But we recognise that the economics of our new situation will inevitably determine our size.

For News it’s likely to be an uncomfortable and difficult time as we adjust to a thriftier world. The BBC will always protect its journalism but no-one is immune from the pressure for efficiencies. We are working hard on ideas which we hope will meet the efficiency targets. I can’t talk in detail about those proposals because they need approval from the BBC Trust before we can implement them. We expect the Trust to give their judgement in the autumn.

I don’t relish another round of job losses after three years of Value for Money cuts. No-one in BBC management does. But I am a realist and I can confidently predict that within five years, BBC News will be somewhat smaller, even more efficient and as Mark Thompson has outlined, packing a punch in a multi media world.

So I do worry about the money but not obsessively.

Because I started my journalistic life in a commercial radio station that nearly went bust – I actually took voluntary redundancy and walked into a BBC job the next week - I know exactly how lucky we are at the BBC to have guaranteed income at all. I thank God for Lord Reith and the remarkable resilience of the licence fee.

So what other real issues should I be fretting about?

Well there have been suggestions that our precious licence fee should be top-sliced. Clearly if that proposal is serious, there’s an argument to be had - but that’s not my biggest concern.

Nor is the new regulatory framework we are learning to enjoy at the BBC. No-one could dispute that the new BBC Trust is keeping us on our toes and demanding a greater accountability and transparency from us. And since those are things our journalism often points out are missing from other organisations, it’s not unreasonable that the BBC should have to demonstrate them.

And even the growth of new and daunting competition isn’t my top worry – though it comes quite close. And by competition I don’t just mean the tried and true competitors whom we love to beat but hold in real regard like ITN, Sky and CNN. It’s also the new boys on the block. I worry that a recent survey of the most trusted news providers in the world showed the BBC was top, followed by CNN. But it was Google – which doesn’t actually provide any of its own news but aggregates everyone else’s – which those surveyed decided was their third most trusted news provider.

So what is my top worry for BBC News – if all these aren’t enough?

Well it’s really about our relationship to the people who matter most – our audiences.

It’s about capturing and keeping their hearts and minds.

The one thing that we need to guard against more than any other is the possibility that BBC News could become a heritage brand – living on past glories and brand value but increasingly irrelevant to a significant part of the audience.

It’s not that people don’t think News is important

It’s just that gap between what people say and what they do.

Now that may sound daft when at the moment we reach 80% of the adult population with BBC News on TV, radio or online. But the picture is complicated:

TV consumption is dropping as we all know. And the online services aren’t yet making up the gap.

And with particular audiences, it’s clear that like other broadcasters, we are struggling. It’s not a disastrous story – we know that 70% of 16- 24 year-olds are connected to BBC News in some way every week.

But the ways they get their news are definitely changing.

Fewer than 25% of 15- 24s watch 15 consecutive minutes of BBC News on TV in any given week.

For the record, I am not someone obsessed with “The Young” – I used to run Radio Four so I know the value of the so-called “older demographic”. I also recognise - as perhaps more of us should - that we are an aging population and we ignore that trend at our peril.

But if BBC News is not to slip silently and gently into a service for the Saga generation, it needs to connect deeply with the interests and habits of the young whilst being confident enough not to feel it is simply led by them.

In our search to find new ways to connect to this vital audience, we are lucky to have a fantastic model in Newsbeat on Radio One which is the epitome of a confident news service utterly in touch with its audience but unafraid to give them the difficult, public service stuff too. For example, if a story on the European Union is really important, Newsbeat will find a way to do it with as much intelligence and insight as they would a major entertainment story.

And it’s often Newsbeat listeners who alert us to important stories with wider implications. It was Newsbeat listeners who told us about the army equipment failures in Iraq. Why? Because among Newsbeat’s audience are a large number of squaddies and their friends and families. And they trust Newsbeat to tell their story.

But of course we need much more than Newsbeat. And in recognition of that fact, we’ve recently completed a major piece of work which we’ve called Creative Futures. You will have seen and read both Mark Thompson and Mark Byford – the Head of BBC Journalism – talking about it.

What that revealed was that while many of the young may rate the BBC, we can’t assume, as we did with their parents, that at a certain point they will simply migrate to being BBC News consumers. They are growing up with far more choice in terms of their news providers.

What’s more, we have to ask ourselves how much they will actually want the kind of News that we like now once they are adult.

In all honesty, I don’t think most teenagers have ever really been passionate about news. I certainly wasn’t. But we’ve relied on them becoming more interested as they took on financial and family responsibilities.

That may happen again. But we can’t assume that today’s under-25s are as interested in civic society and the wider world as their parents were. They certainly don’t seem to share the baby boomer’s enthusiasm for marching in support of social and political change.

But we have to be careful here. Their reluctance to vote and their apparent political apathy does not mean that they aren’t interested in what’s going on around them Our research suggests they feel passionately about all sorts of issues – but they expect to get their News in ways that work for them.

Remember : this is the generation of Facebook and YouTube - which can seem a tad trivial and self-obsessed to an older generation. But they are simply a way of life for many teenagers in Britain today.

So how are we planning to woo the next generation into News ?

Well no-one pretends it’s easy but we are working on several fronts.

The heart of our approach is the strategy you need with any audience : start where they are not where you would like them to be.

So we know that the penetration of broadband is higher among audiences which currently consume less journalism (the young and those in digital TV homes).

While 16-24s are watching less TV than their counterparts in previous decades, they spend three times as long using new media than over 25s.

We also know that in the US, the internet is the primary source of news for people under 30.

So you will be unsurprised that our major focus for reaching the young is interactivity via the web and mobility. We have plans – still to be approved by the Trust - to build on our prize-winning website to create a service we are provisionally calling My News Now.

This will be a service which allows highly sophisticated personalisation – so whatever your age or interests, you can get the subjects and the styles of news which you find attractive – when you want them, for the present moment or to download for later. There will be audio and video on demand and aggregated pages on a huge range of specialisms.

This should also be a service which offers you incredibly detailed information and news on your local area.

And of course, all of this should be available as a mobile service – as long as we do it with sensitivity to those already in the market place.

But interactivity isn’t just about personalisation. It’s also about reshaping the relationship we have with our audiences so that those who want to engage directly with the News – and that will often be the young – can do so easily and effectively.

Our user generated Hub – the rather pompous description of the desk that takes in the texts, e-mails, stills and video which our audiences send us – has been expanded and expanded but is still struggling to keep up with the huge amount of material that our audiences send us. The 7 July London bombings demonstrated that there were hundreds of newsgatherers out there who could collect images which we couldn’t.

And last Saturday’s attack on Glasgow airport was another sharp reminder of the newsgathering capacity of the general public with a mobile phone camera or video.

This kind of two-way relationship is now so important we are opening our UGH hub for 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

But as I made clear earlier, it’s not just about the way we deliver news; it’s also about what we deliver.

And this requires a really subtle and often difficult balancing act between being inspired by what the audience is interested in – without being led by it.

Let me be quite clear. If the BBC ever simply followed audience taste in an unthinking way, we should hand back the licence fee. We are not a market-led organisation. We get the privilege of the licence fee to give people more than they expect. It is our job to make news judgements about what is important and significant - as well as what is popular.

And part of that balancing act is clocking where subject work best for audiences. So on Radios One and Two and the Six O’clock News on BBC One, there is a genuine appetite for intelligent news about big brands, entertainment and major developments in the lives of superstars. Whereas on the Ten O’clock News on BBC One, there is much less appetite for entertainment news.

Lord Reith might not have liked it – he had a problem about the very idea of entertainment on the BBC at one time – but if we are to remain relevant to a new generation, we have to engage with subjects that once seemed quite alien to us and apply our usual values and journalistic rigour.

Once upon a time the BBC cringed when a major Royal story hit the headlines and we left it to the newspaper review to tell the public what was happening. Now we have two incredibly effective Royal correspondents who manage these stories with confidence and all the journalistic rigour you’d expect from an story on the BBC.

Eventually of course, we can envisage a world where many audiences have abandoned news on channels altogether and will simply log on to connect to the range and type of stories they feel like watching or listening to that day. They won’t bother to find out what the BBC thinks is the most important – top of the bulletin – story. When that time comes, tensions about where and when entertainment news appears on air will disappear.

But I think that day is some way off.
In the meantime, we will be pursuing as much innovation as possible within the idea of interactive news via broadband. It’s not just about connecting to the young now. It’s about making sure that when they are middle aged, they feel engaged with the BBC because it’s absolutely not a heritage brand. It gives them news they trust in ways that are convenient and in a style that resonates with them.

And that word “trust” brings me finally onto our values.

Because when I worry about us becoming a heritage brand, I never worry about our values.

They are perhaps old-fashioned, though I would never claim that the values of accuracy, impartiality and fairness are ours alone. I have far too much respect for our domestic competitors.

But in a highly crowded news market place where there is pressure on everyone to make impact, there could be an inevitable drift towards views not news in all parts of the media.

And we know that some audiences like that. The Fox News model works incredibly well for a lot of viewers.

But for the BBC to earn its money – and continue to have outstanding trust levels – I can’t ever see a time when we would abandon impartiality as our core value.

At its crudest, it means we don’t take sides either implicitly or explicitly. That may not make us friends in parts of the press, the chattering classes or indeed parts of the audience – but it’s the bit of our heritage brand we lose at our peril.

So – if you ever think of me lying awake at night fretting about the future of BBC News – remember that what I am really worrying about is the most fundamental and important question of all. How we keep the engagement, the interest and above all – the trust - of audiences now and in the future.

And to end, I would like to share with you a seven minute film we have made about BBC News in the future. It should give you a flavour of how the world is changing – and how we are hoping to change with it.


Helen Boaden is director, BBC News

[Teddy Bear]

Now bear in mind that the license fee has NOT been reduced in any way. An increase in this fee HAS been granted in line with inflation.

So how does the BBC justify MORE repeats and less quality???

Because they are a corrupt bunch of unethical. ignorant, self-serving retards who long ago lost the beings who understood how to produce creativity. Creativity requires intelligence beyond recognizing that GW Bush has a speech problem, and that taking the piss out of it has only limited humour, and even then only to other retards.

Notice the paragraph at the end of the following article:
A BBC2 spokesman said: "The Knowledge strategy calls for a closer working relationship between BBC2 and BBC4 to create more high impact factual seasons."

Knowledge strategy??? High Impact Factual Seasons???
What a load of crap!

BBC channels to show even more repeats
By Nicole Martin, Digital and Media correspondent
Last Updated: 12:46am BST 28/09/2007

Television viewers are to face even more repeats as the BBC broadcasts the same shows on two different channels in a bid to save money.

Children 'are made to cry on Supernanny'
Under proposals being considered by the corporation, the majority of programmes shown on BBC4 would be screened on BBC2, sometimes within days of each other.

advertisementThe plan is part of a drive by Mark Thompson, the director general, to close the £2 billion funding gap left by the less-than-expected licence-fee settlement.

There had been speculation that the digital channels BBC3 and BBC4 would be axed but that was ruled out last week when Mr Thompson met with the BBC Trust to discuss a raft of cost-cutting measures.

BBC2 viewers are already used to watching the most popular BBC3 and BBC4 shows on BBC2, such as Little Britain and The Thick of It.

But television insiders told Broadcast magazine that BBC2 and BBC4 would soon be co-commissioning programmes to be shown on both channels in an attempt to reduce production costs.

One BBC source said: "It effectively makes BBC4 a BBC2+1. As a programme maker I would rather have a properly funded BBC2 than two underfunded channels."

The proposal follows a speech last week by Jana Bennett, the director of BBC Vision in which she said, "I would rather have one special piece of content delivering impact on both channels than risk ending up with two indifferent programmes which were underfunded."

Mr Thompson also warned viewers in April that the BBC's current "reprioritisation" exercise could lead to more repeats across its channels.

John Beyer, the director of Mediawatch UK, which represents the interests of viewers, said the move would leave licence-fee payers feeling cheated.

"Repeats are expected, given that programme making has become more expensive, but that's no consolation to licence-fee payers," he said.

"Showing the same programme on two channels gives viewers the impression that their money is buying less and that can't be a good thing."

Cuts have to be made allow Mr Thompson to fulfil his commitments, including moving some BBC departments to Salford, investing in the corporation's multimedia future and helping to fund digital switchover.

His will present his final plans to the BBC Trust, the corporation's sovereign body, on October 17 when a final decision is expected to be made.

A BBC2 spokesman said: "The Knowledge strategy calls for a closer working relationship between BBC2 and BBC4 to create more high impact factual seasons."

[ascendinglark]

"The Knowledge strategy calls for a closer working relationship between BBC2 and BBC4 to create more high impact factual seasons."

I wasn't aware they had David Brent working for them now.

"Ipso facto....viz-a-vis....knowledge....integration....challenge....melting pot"

[Teddy Bear]

;D

More likely they were the inspiration for Ricky.