It is a “social good” and they do not want it changed

Above: autumn has arrived - raindrops on a cobweb on a dried stalk of cow parsley in the corner of a commercial car park.

Apologies for writing so much about the “meeja” recently, but when you work in a PR agency (albeit on the marketing side) you are obliged to take an interest in media issues otherwise you are not taken seriously. For instance, you need to know what is going on at the BBC with the projected £2 billion cuts, since there are so many implications for the communications industry (not least in releasing hundreds of personnel who are likely to be absorbed by the PR industry). So although no-one at work is going to see these entries, the effort of composing and posting them on a semi-public site serves to fix the information in my mind.

The BBC cuts were discussed on Newsnight last night. The Corporation intends to achieve £2 billion cuts by making two thousand staff redundant (which averages out at a one million pound saving per redundancy!). The £2 billion shortfall was caused by the government restricting the income from the licence fee (the licence is the main source of income and no official advertising is allowed on the BBC). The government is still seeking to evaluate the BBC along “rational” lines and they havn’t grasped the fact that the Corporation is in many ways like the NHS - however much people might grumble, it is a “social good” and they do not want it changed.

On Newsnight Sir Michael Lyons, Chairman of the BBC Trust, was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman. Sir Michael had a blustering “crisis what crisis” style, saying that the changes would be for the better. His hand movements were unusual - he held his hands as if he was about to throttle someone (reminding me of the Emperor Nero who wished the Roman populace had only one neck so he could strangle it).

Later a twerp from BBC3 was in a discussion about the cuts, whining “who are you to judge?” whenever a journalist from the Daily Telegraph criticised the low standards of BBC3 programmes.

On the World at One this lunchtime Martha Kearny interviewed BBC Director General Mark Thompson about the cuts. Despite her cajoling he couldn’t be made to depart from what was obviously a (very wooden) prepared message that everything would be fine and the cuts would result in better quality. Andy Duncan, the Chief Executive of Channel 4, came on the programme and said nothing very much.

More on social goods: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good