The BBC's Bias as Exemplified by The One Show

I've just sent this complaint to the BBC....probably a lot of good it will do...

Is it really the BBC's job to make party political broadcasts for the Labour Party? The piece on yesterday’s One Show was incredibly one sided and its whole tone was anti-David Cameron – just because he went to public school and had a privileged background. The people that were interviewed were a lop-sided group, including Kevin McGuire of the Daily Mirror who is lock stock and barrel Labour. What would happen if it was a package asking the question, do we really want a Scot as our Prime Minister. That of course would be unthinkable for the BBC because it would be racist. Even the presenter's follow-up was biased.

Yet again we see the institutional bias of the BBC come to the fore. Perhaps your millionaire DG who went to public school has something to say about it?

Be Careful What we Wish For at the BBC

There's a right old rant in the Scotsman today about the BBC by Gerald Warner. There's also an interesting comment from Corrigan Reid, a blogger on the comments section of the Warner article.

Two thoughts on the rants. It's a lot to do with a detached management of the BBC who don't actually know what the license fee payers want and are attempting to be all things to all men (and women). The argument right now tends to revolve around very little of the BBC's output and it's a shame the whole thing is being dragged down (but they've only themselves to blame) into the mud. We should be careful what we wish for in all of this. The chances are that we're in danger of seeing a lot of what is great about the BBC being sacrificed for what is bad.

Things need to be got back under control and there is probably a good aspect to all that has happened over Ross and Brand. No, we can't turn the clock back and pay JR less but there needs to be some more mature management and business thinking at the Beeb. They are not a charity who can decide with seeing abandon to do what they like with the money we give them. It needs to be sorted and sorted quickly before we all have a lot to regret.

Auntie Out, Edgy Adolescent in, at the BBC

Throughout the whole debate surrounding Brand and Ross the one thing that keeps being said is, how important it is to have edgy humour on the BBC, how this somehow justifies the whole business of paying the huge salaries that are bandied about with abandon at the Beeb. The mantra goes something like this. If we didn't pay them the huge salaries then they would go to a competitor and that would be a disaster. Well let's look at what it is the BBC see as their remit and what we as punters see as their role in providing a raft of services on TV and radio.

Number one I'm not sure that ratings are what are the most important criteria for judging what the BBC do. Sure if nobody listened or watched then clearly they are not providing a service that is being demanded. However, with the plethora of channels and radio stations the whole business of broadcasting has been turned on its head. Much of the time it seems like the BBC behave like the Auntie of old and the rest of the time they think they are operating in a free market. That's the essential problem here. The Director General of the BBC gets £816,000 to do his job. Is it any wonder he is confused about what the going rate for any job is? That's £15,692 pounds per week! Over thirty times the average male weekly wage in Britain. Where in broadcasting is he going to get a salary like that elsewhere?

Last year the BBC’s Director-General, and his nine most senior colleagues had their salaries rise by 17 per cent; this was despite the phone in scandals. Their income of the BBC’s top executives totalled £4.96 million, which was a rise of up £708,000. During the same period the BBC licence fee increased by 3 per cent to £131.50 and most BBC employees got a 4 per cent pay rise. Hello? Is there anyone at home?

Back to edgy humour for a minute. Who is it that wants edgy humour? The thirty somethings according to Lesley Douglas the Controller who has just resigned. Well what about the rest of us? The idea that as a radio station you can be all things to all people is absurd. But the schizophrenic nature of Radio 2 is a weird one. They have driven the station younger and younger in profile, all the while leaving behind many people for much of the time. Why is this? Simple, so they can boast of being the biggest, most listened to Radio station in Britain. They equate this to best. Well there is a difference. They are, in part, the biggest because there is a lack of national competition.

Tonight on Radio 2 we have the Judy Garland Trail, followed by Friday Night is Music Night (light music from an orchestra), followed by James Bond stories and then Listen to the band, which is about brass bands. Is this the same station as gives us Saturday night with Russell Brand? What do the BBC think happens? People of a certain age tune in to listen to the light music of a Friday night but then are asked to clear off on Saturday evenings? Now I'm not saying that its possible to create a station that people of the target market age want to listen to 24/7 but they could do a great deal better than is being done. If Radio 1 caters for the under 25s what about the rest of us? Do they really think that past 55 people just drift off into a musical coma?

Like much of what is done in the name of broadcasting it is done from a media village in London that is out of step and out of tune with much of the rest of Britain. Only when and if they ever get to grips with this issue will things improve. Of course when people earn so much and operate in the rarefied air that many BBC Executives operate within it's unlikely to happen.

Smart Alecs?

I responded to the various comments on the subject of the BBC and comedy and used the term 'smart Alecs' to describe Messrs Ross and Brand.  It struck me as being very much at the heart of what all this is about. People are generally getting a tad fed up with smart Alecs speaking at them from their radio or TV studios. It's an interesting line which people in all walks of life can often cross over and usually it's only after they do that they realise that they have. But where did the term come from.

According to that indispensable reference work, Brewer's Dictionary of Phase and Fable (every home should have one) a smart Alec is. An American term for a bumptious, conceited know-all. The name goes back to at least the 1860s, but no one is quite sure who Alec is. The allusion may be to Aleck Hoag, a notorious pimp, thief and confidence man in New York in the 1840s.

Two things. . .bumptious is an under used word these days and how spot on Brewers are in their description of the two smart Alecs.

Bring Back Comedy to the BBC

According to the BBC, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross was due to have been filmed at BBC Television Centre, west London, later on Wednesday. But his shows have been taken off the air until the investigation into his and Brand's prank call is concluded. A decision has yet to be taken on what should be shown in its place on Friday night.

How about something genuinely funny. . .Fawlty Towers?

Is John Prescott value for money?

Just to return to the Prescott TV license fee money laundering scam for a moment. Is it any wonder we're in such a mess with our television and the BBC in particular. Here's Prescott being paid half of what he gets a year as an MP for a two part TV show. Value for money? I don't think so. . .on either count.

BBC News Vignette

There's a fascinating news vignette on the BBC News web site that has unfolded as the morning has gone on. It gives an insight into the minds of those that serve us up our news. At around 7 a.m. this morning the headline on the BBC's front page said.

Dozens die in Russian plane crash

Now at 11 a.m. it says

Scores die in Russian plane crash

In both cases the opening paragraph said

A passenger plane that crashed on the outskirts of a Russian city, killing all 88 people on board

So why not just say, 'Eighty eight die in Russian plane crash'. It couldn't by any chance be because it sounds more sensational to say scores could it?

BBC Scottish News Are At It Again

BBC Scotland News continues to show some pretty shoddy journalistic standards. Yesterday in their story about the BAA they constantly referred to the BAA  being "ordered to sell off airports". It wasn't until the very end of the report where their own reporter, rather than the news reader, mentioned that this was still in the consultation phase. In all the coverage of the piece there was little mention of the fact that organizations in Edinburgh, for example, were opposed to the move; yet they had a Ryanair spokesperson on camera saying how good it was for passengers and competition. Of course the airlines say that because any lowering of landing fees goes straight to their bottom line; without necessarily giving the consummer any more routes or any lower fares.

Or another tack, but equally daft, is their continual adding of the word 'Scottish' in front of almost everything they say; it's got to the point where it's intrusive. This morning there was a piece about what school children in Scotland are eating for their lunch. The newsreader continually referred to Scottish schoolchildren. They are of course not necessarily Scottish; they might be English, Polish or a whole host of other nationalities that just live and go to school in Scotland. If BBC really want to be the national news they should conduct themselves with a bit more self confidence and accuracy.

The Power of The BBC

Amidst all the hype this morning on BBC TV about the Royal Bank of Scotland probably going to lose over a billion pounds in the first six months of the year (in the event it was a mere £691M) one thing may have been overlooked. On the BBC News website they say.

"Chief executive Mr Goodwin said the losses had been a "chastening experience", and that reporting a shortfall of £691m was something he and his colleagues "regret very much".
Mr Goodwin warned that difficult conditions in financial markets "look set to be compounded by a deteriorating economic outlook".

The BBC apparently have the power to strip the bank's Chief executive of his knighthood. Sir Frederick Goodwin was knighted in the 2004 Queen's birthday honours list.

BBC Out Of Control

It's amazing isn't it? BBC bosses have had some huge bonus payments in recent months and today we hear that the BBC is being slapped with a fine of £400,000 by OfCom because of the serious lapses in editorial policy that have taken place. According to Ofcom "The BBC deceived its audience by faking winners of competitions and deliberately conducting competitions unfairly." Now the grossly overpaid Mark Thompson, the BBC Controller justified the bonus payments by saying that senior executives had had their payments cut by up to 40% because of the scandal. Now call me simple, call me anything you like, but why did they get any bonus at all? Surely they get paid a salary for doing the job, a bonus is for doing things way above and beyond what the basic salary is paid for. Let's not forget that these people are paid huge salaries in the first place. Of course Mr. Thompson defends them by saying they could earn vastly more in the private sector. Well I suppose that some people might earn more in the private sector but would all of these people earn that kind of money elsewhere? It's all part of the syndrome that pays some presenters obscene salaries, which confuses these BBC executives into thinking that they live in the real world....they don't.

Something is very wrong with an organization that constantly cuts costs at the sharp end - in programme making - only to continue to reward the out of touch top management with more money. I would love to have a chat with these people who are in charge of one our most precious national assets, who seem to live in a world that has little to do with the real one. The BBC is a great British institution, one that is great because of the rank and file employees, not the people sat at the top that are out of touch and out of control.

BBC Scottish News Nonsense

The BBC TV Scottish News at 6.30 managed to sink to new depths of journalistic worthlessness this evening. Tonight we had a story about school kids learning ballroom dancing, a story about first world war nurses and the usual endless rash of football stories. The fact that Enterprise Minister Jim Mather was in the Scottish Borders for a summit meeting about the textile industry was roundly ignored; amazingly even ITV's Lookaround managed to feature it. Someone involved with news reporting at the BBC in Scotland needs to get a grip of what is happening on the TV news. It is just not good enough to report all this 'soft news nonsense' when so much more of greater significance and importance is going on.

Broadcasting Commission's Carping.

So the Scottish Broadcasting Commission has issued their interim report, somewhat anticlimactic, but then again what did we expect? According to Blair Jenkins its chairman "The main themes to emerge are a demand for more Scottish content. People are expressing a desire and appetite to see more programming of documentaries, history and heritage programmes." It goes on to say that Scottish broadcasting "suffers a lack of ambition" and is "missing out on Scottish talent and creativity" It also says. "People didn't feel the full diversity of life in Scotland was being reflected in their programmes."

There's a sense of inevitability about what the report is saying and a sense of they need to get out more. It's as though living in Scotland is some kind of vacuum in which we gaze endlessly at our historical navel and hanker after a diet of programming that is inward looking. We recently had the Top 10 of Scottish history from the BBC and they've announced another series about Scottish history There comes a point when there is such a degree of repetition of historical subjects that there's little point in continuing. I'm all for historical programmes but the level of audience that these programmes can attract must be limited, once you step outside of mainstream subjects. Now some might say, so be it the BBC is not about ratings, and I would agree. However, it's clear from the viewing figures that most people in Scotland share a love for the mainstream type programmes whether it's Coronation Street, Strictly Come Dancing, The X Factor or whatever else the rest of the UK is watching. Striking a balance seems to be the answer and reading what's been said about Scottish broadcasting has predictability about it. It's as though the Scottish Government has decreed that we must be more Scottish.

Much of what's made by broadcasters now has to compete on a world stage and there's an economic argument in all this that it's difficult to see how the Scottish Broadcasters can compete with if there's a greater amount of Scotland only programming. The Gaelic channel is already running into difficulties about the level of funding. The millions spent on programmes for around 50,000 potential viewers seems out of whack. I wonder if the commission would dare to suggest knocking it on the head and have the money redirected into mainstream Scottish programmes?

To say, as the report does, that Scottish broadcasters lack imagination feels like carping. It's a matter of opinion and that is what the interim report feels like. Politics and culture are usually unhappy bedfellows and we may all come to regret messing with things too much.

Marr & Livingstone - a Leftie Love-in

I've just watched Andrew Marr interview Ken Livingstone in what was probably the softest interview of a politician in living memory. Marr asked rhetorical questions, gave Livingstone his out before he even had to answer and behaved like he was having a chat with a good friend he had no intention of upsetting. At one point the former (?) red was asked if he would tax 4x4's, Porsche's and other cars of their ilk off the road and he replied, "absolutely". He then went onto contradict himself, realising that this was a completely stupid answer saying people should buy the greenest model of their preferred car. Once a Leftie always a Leftie and Marr's no better. It really has got to the point that AM's Sunday programme has become a joke.

Media Messing

BBC Newsnight on Tuesday ran a piece about whether there's anti Scottish feeling in England and vice versa. At the top of the piece the presenter introduced it and said. "In a TV poll most people in Berwick expressed a desire to return the town to Scottish control." This is classic misrepresentation of the facts. It wasn't most people, it was a majority of people who voted in the unregulated, un scientific poll; 60.3% to be precise. Given that the population of Berwick-upon-Tweed is roughly 26,000 it also was a minority of people who voted in this TV poll - less than 2,000.

We live in a parallel universe, one in which the media set the agenda and the one in which the rest of us try to live.

"Hello Children, Everywhere" - Uncle Mac's Children's Favourites

Back in 1954 the BBC's idea of pop music was a reflection of mainstream taste with ladies and gentlemen singers who annunciated their words and delivered good wholesome material. They also recognised the fact that children were interested in music, although in those far off days it was of course not pop music. The BBC Light Programme's solution for catering to younger people's musical interests was to start a show called 'Children’s Favourites' presented by Uncle Mac (Real name Derek McCulloch). Every show began with the immortal words “hello children, everywhere” over the theme song of Puffing Billy.

The show was built around the genuine requests from the show's audience, as often as not children and their parents who would sit around the radio at home enjoying the music - there was of course no Breakfast TV - heady days indeed. Thousands of requests were received each week on a postcard (50’s email) for songs like Max Bygraves 'You’re a Pink Toothbrush, I’m A Blue Toothbrush', or 'Sparky’s Magic Piano'. Every now and then there was something unusual requested and one particular week someone wrote in to ask for a song that helped shape the rock era. Listening from his childhood home in Surrey was future guitar legend Eric Clapton. “The first blues I ever heard was on that programme. It was a song by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, with Sonny Terry howling and playing the harmonica. It blew me away. I was ten or eleven.”

With the advent of Radio 1 in 1967 Leslie Crowther replaced Derek McCulloch and the show renamed Junior Choice. Increasingly pop music was taking the place of little white bulls, laughing policemen and tubby tubas….thank goodness that it didn’t change any earlier!

Ralph Vaughan Williams & The BBC

There is no composer, pop or classical, that I revere more than Ralph Vaughan Williams. His, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, is probably my favourite piece of music . I saw it performed in Texas by the Houston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Alexander Gibson in 1985 and it moved me to tears. All RVW's symphonies are brilliant, but his Sea Symphony (No.1) and A London Symphony (No.2) are my most played. Next year is the 50th anniversary of this quintessentially English composer's death. To celebrate it Channel 5 are showing a two and a half hour film at midday on New Year's Day. The film, made by the brilliant Tony Palmer, is, you might think, an unusual thing to find on the fifth channel, surely BBC2 or BBC 4 would be the natural place for such a programme.

Apparently Tony Palmer offered the programme to the BBC but they rejected it with this letter.

Dear Mr Palmer, Thank you for your enquiry about the composer Mr V Williams. Having looked at our own activity via the lens of find, play & share, we came to the conclusion that a film about Mr Williams would not be appropriate at this time. This is essentially because we are... reconstructing the architecture of bbc.co.uk, and to do that, we need to maximise the routes to content. 'We must establish the tools that allow shared behaviours, and so harness the power of the audience and our network to make our content more findable. We have decided to take a radically new approach... and therefore free resources for projects of real ambition... So, given that this is the new vision for Vision, you will understand why a film about Mr V Williams such as you have proposed does not fit our remit. But good luck with the project, and do let me know if Mr V Williams has an important premiere in the future as this findability might allow us to reconsider.'

The BBC claim to have no knowledge of the letter having been sent and say they are planning their own programme about Vaughan Williams. There is a great article in the Observer today with more on the story of why the BBC seems to have an alterative cultural agenda to the rest of the country. It appears in the same week that the BBC we hear are BBC are making a new version of the Nativity, with Joseph and Mary as asylum seekers turned away by Britain - read more in the Spectator. You really couldn't make it up.

Scottish Broadcasting Commisssion - And There's More

There's a letter in the Scotsman this morning from Blair Jenkins repudiating the Scotsman's article on Saturday about the Broadcasting Commission. He says.

"I was surprised and disappointed at how misleading and inaccurate your editorial, "Lack of transparency in TV debate" (Opinion, 17 November) was.

Your "outrage" is misplaced and illogical. There is nothing secret about the work of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission. Evidence-taking sessions are on-the-record and taped and transcripts will be made public. All parties giving evidence know this and their comments will be there for all to see.

I would have expected better of your newspaper than to cast aspersions without a basis in fact. You attribute to me the view that this way of working "will allow broadcasters to talk about rivals" with the benefit of secrecy. I have never said this and it is patently untrue."

The first thing to say is that the Scotsman did not attribute the remarks on secrecy to Mr Jenkins it said. 'A spokeswoman for the commission said transcripts of the meeting would be made available at a later date.' She went on: "Oral evidence-taking sessions will not be held in public in order to ensure that those taking part do not feel inhibited in discussing or offering evidence or information which might be a commercial confidence and/or speaking frankly."

As for the matter of transcripts they said nothing different from Mr Jenkins, that they will be available at a later date. So why not let the press and public into the sessions when they are happening? Do they want to massage the results?

Scottish Broadcasting Commission Using the Wrong Camera

According to the Scotsman this morning the Commission set up by the SNP looking into broadcasting will cost £500,000 – a Quango by another name? How, you might think, can it? Well apparently Blair Jenkins the man that is heading it is getting £387 per day - still that's a lot of days, even if the other members of the commission, which includes the former First Minister Henry McLeish, get slightly less. The other breaking news concerning the commission is that it will be held in camera - the one that means in secret - although they've said transcripts of what was said will be published. The justification for this secrecy is the fact that commercial sensitive information may be brought up by the broadcasters they speak to, it was Channel 4 yesterday. They also say that people may be "speaking frankly"

Well you kind of hope they would be speaking frankly and if they are to publish transcripts later then why not now? I cannot help thinking that this whole thing is going to tell us exactly want the people setting up the commission want to hear. That is, Scotland should be producing more programmes, the ones that they already do should be better and there should be a greater emphasis on the regions, and in particular, Scotland. I also suspect, given the make up of the committee, that a Scottish Six will be recommended. Blair Jenkins as already said there should be more drama made in Scotland.

Alex Salmond has previously said the major channels should be spending at least 9 per cent of their budget north of the Border. However in recent years the BBC's budget has been cut from 6 per cent to 3 per cent in Scotland. There's little doubt that there should be ore sent in Scotland but the equation being touted is a touch simplistic. It implies that Scots viewers would have to only watch programmes made in Scotland by the BBC. Many of the most popular programmes are made in other parts of the country, notably London, and the whole country watches them. I dread to think what kind of TV we'd have if the BBC becomes the SBC. It's not that I fear the type of programming per se it's just impossible for an SBC to do the all round job for the money, especially given the potential size of the audience. The fact is an equation based on population is just stupid. The way TV viewing is done these days is that people are watching a plethora of channels. The SNPs approach to this is one based upon the old telly order when there was just a BBC1 & 2 and a couple of TV channels. The world's moved on and so should they. It's tinkering politics, based on the concept of independence above all else.

The BBC As Auntie

On 8 April 1943 there was a debate in Parliament in which the BBC came in for some criticism – not an unusual occurrence particularly early in the conflict. But this was not the normal kind of condemnation of the broadcaster’s output. It was from some Independent Labour Party (ILP) members that seemed to be motivated along doctrinaire lines.

John McGovern had been a member of the Anti Parliamentary Communist Federation before becoming the Independent Labour Party MP from Glasgow, Shettleston; he had been expelled from the Labour Party proper. He like his colleagues in the ILP consistently opposed the war, they refused to recognize the coalition of all parties that were fighting the Axis powers and generally made a nuisance of themselves. McGovern put forward the motion. "That this House is gravely concerned at the partiality of the propaganda and choice of propagandists by the BBC, and the way in which it is being directed on totalitarian lines; and is of the opinion that the Government should take the necessary steps to secure that more opportunity should be given for the propagation of the different shades of opinion on political, social, religious and medical questions, so that the Corporation should be used as an instrument of democracy, instead of one for the creation of an authoritarian regime in this country.” War clearly was not going to get in the way of this man’s fight for justice in broadcasting. When the debate opened McGovern accused Churchill of “dictatorship" and “complete authority over the BBC and the Press.”

John McGovern went on to say, "We get a one-sided hash all the time. It shows a complete lack of faith in democratic institutions." He pleaded that the BBC should provide expression for even extreme points of view. He had no objection to a Fascist speaking over the radio, if he was answered by a representative speaker in reply. “I do claim that this is a totalitarian instrument wielded for the benefit of the Government and particularly at the dictation of the Prime Minister. Everybody seems to be afraid to face up to this individual and he appoints in every phase of public life those who can be depended on to carry out his own wishes.” One of McGovern’s colleagues in the ILP, Campbell Stephen the MP for Camlachie, who seconded the motion spoke about an outrage against the Glasgow Orpheus Choir. According to him his fellow Scots were still suffering a certain amount of victimization because of the anti-war views of its conductor, The Reverend Dr. Macleod of Glasgow. “A man of great influence in the Church of Scotland, (who) was very often at the microphone, but evidently the BBC decided that he was unsafe when he became a disciple of Dick Sheppard, who took an anti-war point of view. “ It meant that Dr MacLeod was “no longer a welcome visitor to the microphone.” In finishing his speech he accused the BBC of using propaganda to “ create a nation of robots, instead of a nation of thinking people.”

A Liberal member for the University of Wales seat, Professor Gruffydd (he had formerly been in Plaid Cymru) making his maiden speech in the House said. “The B.B.C. was becoming the great cock-shy or Ye Old Aunt Sally…it gives the nation a service such as no other broadcasting corporation gives in the world.” Lord Hinchinbrooke for the Conservatives suggested, “that proceedings in the House should be broadcast. After the war the BBC should be further divorced from Government control and associated more intimately with the people, or an alternative network should be set up.”

In both these comments there is perhaps the first talk of what have become old chestnuts. Was this the first time the BBC was called “Auntie”? I can find no earler reference to the BBC being called Auntie. The idea of broadcasting parliament would be hotly debated for the next thirty of so years. It was not until 1975 that Parliament was first broadcast live. The first commercial radio stations in the UK, and the first legal alternative to the BBC beat the broadcasting of Parliament by just two years.

Big Money in Broadcasting

There's an article in this morning's Scotsman about pay for bosses of public sector businesses; the fifth highest paid is Mark Thompson - the BBC director-general who gets £788,000. Obviously this is an enormous amount of money and one assumes he's paid so much for the responsibility of running one of Britain's biggest companies and also because it's a very competitive market place for the top people in the entertainment industry. Two things come to mind. If you accept the perks you accept the responsibility and Mr. Thompson does not seem to think he has to answer for the BBC being found guilty of rigging phone in voting on a number of their programmes. The fact is though that no one ever seems to be responsible for anything these days.

Added to which is it any wonder that so many BBC presenters get salaries that are eye-wateringly large as it has become a cultural thing within the Corporation to 'need to pay this type of money' in order to attract the best. Interestingly eleven of the top 100 earners in the public sector are with Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator who were also involved in overseeing an industry riddled with fake phone-in scandals.

UPDATE

According to the Daily Telegraph ten people responsible for organising the 2012 London Olympics are each earning more than £175,000 a year, putting them in the top 100 aid public sector workers. The budget has almost quadrupled since London won the bid and now stands at £9.35 billion. Again is it any wonder?

Further UPDATE

In 2004/5 Mark Thompson earned £459,000, that's over a 70% increase in salary in two years or so. Is he really that good? In 2006 he earned £619,000, so that's 27% in just one year.

I started out thinking I was being a bit churlish in drawing attention to Mr Thompson's salary, it is after all a very subjective thing. However, raising his salary by so much during a period when the Corporation has had such a difficult time does seem excessive. Bizarrely given the tax he's paying, and bearing in mind he's effectively paid by us the tax payer and therefore the government then much of the increase ends up back in their (our) coffers.