BBC One and bureaucracy spared in Auntie cuts The BBC has safeguarded Radio 4 and BBC One from moves to slash £700m from its £5bn annual budget, but it will axe a further 2,000 jobs. Director General Mark Thompson made good on his pledge not to ditch any specific services – but BBC supporters and critics alike will be disappointed that the top-heavy bureaucracy isn’t being …
It isn't really a 20% cut as such, it is a price freeze. The 20% relates to the extra amount they were planning to gouge you for over the next few years.
If they are looking to save £700M for the next 5 years, that presumably means that they were hoping to get an extra 3.5 billion in accumulated fee increases over that time? Jesus.
Any organisation which pays people millions a year to *present a light entertainment show* whilst simultaneously complaining the don't have enough money is beyond repair.
No idea how much Sky costs to run but I do know that I pay Sky £24.50 a month for my basic package. My TV license (if I paid by monthly direct debit) would cost me £12 a month. BBC wins every time as to me, the BBC is far better value. Of course it is so cheap mainly because you have almost no choice about whether you pay the license fee.
I pay £20.50 a month to Sky (just enternatment +discovery packs), and for that I get:
SkyOne (aka The Simpsons Chanel), SkyAtlantic, Living, Syfi, FX, Alabi, an dozen or so Discovery channels, with the +1Hour options of all of those and the ITV's, Channel 4 & 5, and Film4. There are lots of other channels that get used now and then (Comedy Central, Halmark,etc...), basically not bad value.
There are also lots of radio channels and the picture quality is usally better than freeview.
For the £12 TAX I get:
Repeats of Dad's Army, New Tricks, Dr Who (I cannot think of anything else I've watched for about 4 years). PLus a hugh mass off utter crap designed for the consumption of the dumbest members society, with the likes of Eastenders, Holby, Celebrity(Dancing,Skating,Crapping in the woods...) and CGI Dino-twaddle. Plus a news service that is about on par with FoxNews with its in depth reporting or wahtever advertising was passed its way and re-reporting what was on SkyNews the day before.
A complete wast of money!
In the twelve months to 30th June Sky had a revenue of £6,597million. No they could have spent a good chunk of that on programming but instead they only spent 2,188 million, Their marketing spend was almost half that at £1,179 million with the rest taking it up to a total spend of 5524 million.
So to answer your sarky comment, it was the Sky FY Press Release from 10/11 that gave me the figures. - http://corporate.sky.com/documents/pdf/latest_results/fy_press_release_1011
Getting the BBC "bureaucracy" to reduce itself is like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas.
Still rather annoyed with the BBC over its underhand Sky F1 deal, and had occasion to make a comment regarding this on its "Internet Blog". The BBC bods were crowing about yet another web site redesign (about the 5th or 6th in as many months). I happened to ask why the dear old Beeb was blowing cash on tarting up websites while killing off BAFTA winning sports events that attract 6m viewers?
Instantly got my post moderated because, and I quote:-
"a comment of the form "I do not like [topic of post], the BBC should instead have spent the money on [off-topic segue]" is off-topic."
I used to be a supporter of the BBC and the "unique way it is funded", but things like the Android iPlayer cock-up, the F1 fiasco, and anally retentive control-freakery like that exhibited above are starting to make me think its time it was put out of its misery.
Whilst normally an anarchist, I'm tempted by the idea severe draconian punishments for those that use "deceptive presentation of statistics" techniques to make a point, such as making bar charts that have zero as the baseline to exaggerate differences.
ICON = Pedantic statistics nazi alert?
I will vote for any political party that will privatise the BBC, abolish the TV license and let them earn their money through subscription and/or advertising like every other broadcaster. Currently the BBC is just a parasite feeding off our taxes.
Don't aggree.
I like the license fee idea, whenever I watch tele, which isn't often, most of the shows/documentaries are on the beeb, mostly iPlayered. Plus i listen to radio 4 all the time. I was a little gutted about the F1 thing
Considering i was wasting £35 a month on Sky for very little watchable content, I think £145 a quid a year is fine.
Each to their own I guess.
Wouldn't go so far as voting anyone in purely on that fairly unimportant single issue but I agree with the sentiment.
The beeb is a total leach and I get the feeling that lots of people seem to think that the fee goes to other channels as well or they don't actually know which ones they watch.
The only things they air that are any good are shows from the US which they run months late and cut the gritty bits out of anyway.
Gimme a £5 / month stream of HBO and I'll gladly pay it. Till then though I'll just manage in other ways. Either way though I'll never pay the TV tax again.
I seem to recall something in the BBC's charter which prevents it from directly competing with commercial TV, specifically because of how the Beeb is funded.
As for the F1 debacle - it's utterly shocking that the the "agreement" reached over freezing the licence fee has resulted in the best F1 coverage for years being lost. I would pay the licence fee for the F1 coverage alone, so the fact I get gems like Dr Who, Planet Earth and Sherlock as well is fantastic. I dread to think of quite how badly Sky will present F1...
I don't mind paying for something I watch. However, when I lived in the UK I *never* watched the BBC, or the other ones. (really, my TV wasn't even tuned in to terrestrial channels). Yet I still had to pay for them.
I'm fine with having the BBC, but let's have it so that only the people who watch it pay for it. According to the above that's still 4/5s of the population, so should be plenty.
As an aside, I had a friend who worked for the BBC as a manager, and he often boasted to me about how many jollies his chums and he went on on the Beeb's ticket. Great value I'm sure.
Should I ever live in the UK again I won't be getting a TV at all.
and stop competing with commercial tv with its various celebutards being judged by other celebutards doing singing/dancing/cooking/whatever. Sure it gets good ratings but its not exactly going to be remembered in decades unlike other stuff the BBC has done in its time like the comedy's/docs/drama an
......To create future savings.. they are going SELL freehold property they *own* and instead pay RENT no doubt at the usual hyper inflated market value.... yeah that'll be the next excuse.. we are paying out so much in rental on the buildings we need... The term *Asset Stripping* comes to mind.
This is the same shower that don't understand that 50% of a motor-sports season is not worth having - especially as their own news channel delights in screaming results of events that take place during our night..... cant afford sport yet we can afford to prop up a welsh language channel with almost zero audience.
Time to axe the tv tax!
Dull but important: Freehold property = asset. Rent = liability. If you sell an asset, your size (as measured in money) reduces, and is reduced further because you now have a liability to fund.
This could have two motivations: 1) "Look what we've done Mr Cameron, we're much smaller now", or 2) "Look at the cost of rent Mr Cameron, please can we put the licence fee up?"
There are also considerations of maintenance costs if the freehold buildings are old and in need of a lot of work, and if the Beeb are now shedding thousands of jobs it's better to sell an inflexible building and rent flexible space instead which can grow or shrink as required.
So not a bad thing then really.
How come they survive the chop?
I mean, how many paper-shufflers, quasi-managers and trick-cyclists do you need to run a media company, FFS.
In this whole recession, I think I've only seen one company actually aim the cuts and the management/paper-shufflers which is where the biggest savings can be made, and it wouldn't affect the capacity to actually produce and deliver products & services.
A smiling Mark Thompson tells us that NO services will be cut. Since the BBC management is structured around these services, that translates to no management will need to go since they still have their service to "manage". We'll just lose content instead which after all in not that important as it employs fewer of Mark's friends and their children. Isn't John Sergeant's son doing well.
"More than a fifth of the population never watches BBC One"
That's a fairly hard to believe number, what is the source?
Also, regarding BBC 3, you don't like it, I don't like it (with the exception of Family Guy and American Dad) Paxo and many other BBCers don't like it. The thing is that it's not targeted at us, it's targeted at youth and we shouldn't like it. The BBC want a TV channel equivalent of Radio 1 and not Radio 1 in the early 90s when it was mainly listened to by 30 somethings. The day that 30+ middle-class men start watching and enjoying BBC3 is the day that it's failed.
"The day that 30+ middle-class men start watching and enjoying BBC3 is the day that it's failed"
Actually, the target audience for BBC does include 30-somethings. Or, as the Beeb puts it: "its centre of gravity will be 16-34 year-olds: people who are young in spirit and mindset."
IIRC, when the station launched, the targeted demographic was 18-36, so there has been a change.
When I was in my teens, which is a little longer ago than I would like, I enjoyed all manner of programming, some of it was obviously targeting a much more adult audience, but I still managed to get something out of it. A channel like BBC 3 can underestimate what the target audience will like (there’s some original programming that I think is smashing, so I’m not saying it’s all crap), but that’s very BBC. A little while ago, I was at a media agency that was asked by the Beeb to pitch an idea for an online project that would appeal to the ‘yoof’ – it fears that it’s losing the hearts and minds of young ‘uns, doesn’t have a clue what to do about it and it
Although we have all these channels today, I’m always reminded by a Fry and Laurie sketch where a government minister who’s deregulated TV goes to a posh restaurant. The maitre d’ praises him for his speech that said choice is all-important, before apologising about the cutlery set at the table and removed it. Bringing back a sack of plastic tea stirrers, the maitre d’ poured them onto the table and when the MP protested that he couldn’t eat with the stirrers, the maite d’ agreed: “Oh, they’re all absolutely crap… but at least you have *choice*.” I remember when BBC 2 would have one foreign film once a week, had seasons that focussed on film like the Czech New Wave, and Alex Cox opened my eyes wider about cinemas. Does the BBC do anything equivalent today? Does it heck. The fact that Alex Cox stopped doing Moviedrome because he was told ‘no more films with subtitles will be shown’ on BBC 2 speaks volumes.
"More than a fifth of the population never watches BBC One"
That's a fairly hard to believe number, what is the source?
_____________
Why's it hard to believe? Because you watch it a lot and therefore everyone must also be doing the same? I never watch it, so theres one for you.
It amazes me the way that avid BBC fans say what great value it is, whilst never considering that its only due to the fact that everyone is forced to pay for it. £5 Billion for what the BBC produces isn't particularly good value anyway.
If the BBC is so confident in its output, then why not use viewing cards (which would cost no more to set up than the £100's millions spent on TV tax collection)
The fact that there is a tax on owning a TV, which then funnels all the money to one company is outrageous!
Thanks, I'll look that up. I was genuinely interested becuase it does seem on the low side, I'm not a particular TV watcher myself, mainly radio (and 4 at that) but I do percieve that lots of people watch BBC1, so was intrigued.
I have managed to find the BARB (www.barb.co.uk) figures for current TV watching and they put BBC1 way out in front with 48409000 viewers last week, against a total for all channels of 54702000. To put that in perspective, the next most popular is ITV1 with 43752000, Sky comes well down the list with 12445000.
Effectively you are (going to be) paying less .... one of the main reasons for these cuts is that the BBC have been told that the license fee will be frozen for the next few years ... thus they have to freeze spending which means cutting back when inflation is taken into account.
> BBC2 will be all repeats now during the day
A swift perusal of their schedule shows BBC2 is only planning on showing 6 new programmes today. There were 2 this morning (seemed to be for children) and 4 later on today, starting at 17:15. As it is, that's only a little worse than BBC1 which has 10 (count em! TEN) new programmes on today. Two in peak time (20:00 and 21:00) and the rest scattered about throughout the day.
There is one, called "Pointless" that seems to sum up their programming policy quite nicely.
"More than a fifth of the population never watches BBC One, a rising proportion, yet the channel swallows an astronomical £1.4bn".
What are they doing with that 1.4bn? BBC1 has become very low brow - endless quiz shows, soaps, cookery, reality and and low budget features. Quality stuff like Question Time and This Week are the exception. BBC1 rarely troubles my PVR these days. Guess I am no longer yoof.
"Can I be terribly London and have a cappuccino?" would have been more appropriately "Oi! Can I be terribly London and have jellied eals?".
I admit to no longer watching question time. It just feels lower budget than of yore. They once had Robin Day and a big heavy wooden table surrounded by ministers and political heavyweights, and a big audience. It was a great tub thumping rhoobarb. Now they tend to have comedians and media "personalities" huddling round a polystyrene question mark. The audience seems smaller and the discussion seems too avoid difficult areas.
"[H]istorically the BBC is skilled at extracting settlements from government." Changed days indeed when the Director General wants to impose more cuts on staff and budgets than even the government want.
It's the death of the BBC by a thousand cuts, which will mean more repeats and lower quality programmes:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15198923
The BBC having to slash spending means that the vultures of the TV world (Sky, Virgin etc) are in an even more powerful position and things that we currently get for "free" via the BBC will move to pay tv.
They should simply say, if you don't want to watch BBC, you don't have to. We're technically capable of implementing such a service. I have Sky, why should I have to pay for BBC channels I don't watch, radio I don't listen to, and websites that are so far out of date it's faster to buy a newspaper. I'd even accept a reduced licence fee without TV. Sky have been asking for this for a long time but are no longer friends with the government so it seems unlikely to be any time soon.
There's enough pain in the world without being reminded of it.
The BBC spouts far too much news, hourly updates? Who actually needs them?
We live in a non-linear consumption reality now, so cut the feeds to the head ends during the day, and improve the EPG.
Why am I funding programming that ITV does so much better, let Murdoch and the minority channels chase the daytime viewers. There's enough ambulance chasers for them all to survive.
Just as one example when they have the F1 coverage as well as the Brundle/Jordan/Coultard/Humphries quartet, there are also commentators for Radio 5 and as far as I can tell some random woman from Breakfast TV who does a few five minute interviews from the pit lane. Oh and Lee McKenzie who seems to be massively under utilised. Now much as I like it, I think we can all see some options for cost saving there without really reducing the quality of the coverage.
In a similar vein their seems to be an obsession with every channel having its own news reporter live at any event, e.g. Radio 1, 2, 4, BBC1, BBC 24 Hour Rolling Pigfuck etc. backed up by a channel specific news team. Now I'm no expert but I think a little consolidation in this area could be achieved without any drop in the quality of service. Actually in the case of Radio 1's Newsbeat I can only really see an improvement in the output...
Aout six years ago our old telly died and we decided to see what life would be like without the goggle box. Initially it went well as we got more done with me doing FLOSS project work in the evening and Paul working in his toolsheds "making stuff".
Then we started getting the BBC nastygrams. Did some research into how best to handle them and was shocked by some of the tactics this part of the BBC uses to get money out of people who do not need to pay it. We even had a couple of incidents ourselves. One muppet tried to force his way into the house and another tried to climb over the back fence. We have always had german shepherd dogs and the current two while well trained are rescues and very protective of the property. Lets just say the Crapita contractor went back over the fence a lot faster on the way out :-)
We planned a "year off" but because of my "not giving in" attitude we stuck with it for five or more years and only relented when a 50UKP freesatHD box was just too much of a temptation. :-)
Yes be bought the licence the day *before* we installed the freesat box.
Also we still do not have a a "telly". The freesat box is wired directly to a puter monitor that has a hdmi port so this june we have to decide if freesatHD is worth the money once more.
As I telework during the day the TV is only on in the evenings.
Given the number of repeats recently and the complete guff (including the recent DrWhat) it does not look too promising. Paul is saving up for a trike kit and putting it bluntly the ~50 or so channels on freesatHD dont make fee worth it, never mind the BBC output.
Sorry BBC but your threats and pseudo legal demands just dont cut it anymore.
If we had kids it may be different but folks like us are tightening our belts and TV is no longer "worth it".
The licence fee is not collected by the BBC: "'TV Licensing' is a trade mark of the BBC and is used under licence by companies contracted by the BBC to administer the collection of the television licence fees and enforcement of the television licensing system." <http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/about/who-we-are-AB4> The BBC is compelled to pay private companies to deliver poor services such as this.
The licence fees collected are not the same as the licence fees due.
A half of licence fee income goes to the BBC; a quarter must go to buying programmes from the independent sector; and a quarter is up for competition between BBC productions and the independent sector. So the BBC does (have to) compete with independent production companies, many of which are extremely large; the BBC has already lost a quarter of its licence fee income, which must be paid out to the same non-BBC production companies; and the income that's left is, in real terms, being reduced by inflation, since it is at a fixed level following the latest government imposition. The Director General has added to this by volunteering additional cuts, although, admittedly, some of the income will be slightly restored by downgrading BBC staff's pension rights (but not for the DG or other executives) and terms and conditions of service.
Staff training, which was once the pride of the BBC, has all but disappeared, being replaced by sitting at a computer answering quizzes, but the checks on programmes at every level have multiplied following Alasdair Campbell's (untrue) claim that reporting was false on one occasion. Efficiency savings, which have been going on year after year, are now being added to by cuts in service - effectively, the diet has been replaced by starvation. Oh, and redundancy payments are going to be withdrawn too, as well as proper pensions. None of these apply to senior management, of course.
The previous 7-day schedules will be replaced by a new 3-day schedule running like this:
Tuesday
Tuesday
Tuesday
Tuesday
Tuesday
Saturday
Sunday
BBC program schedulers and planners commissioned research at great expense that suggested a 3-day schedule covering a 7-day period should never start on a Monday as it may aggravate a sizable portion of viewing public.
Repeats of Tuesday programs are likely to be broadcast of Saturday and Sunday.
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