[tv] A couple of reports on the current position of the BBC …

• Gentle giant? ‘…the corporation is a many-tentacled monster that would be unrecognisable to wireless entrepreneurs of the early 1920s. It has staff numbers that would dwarf many a small city and an annual income of £3.16bn that, if it was a country, would make it a rival of the GDP of Iceland or Mongolia. Plainly the BBC has more global clout than either country. There is no 24-hour rolling news network pumped out from Rekyavik or Ulan Bator. The BBC has more world-class orchestras than either Iceland or Mongolia, and possibly both. Neither has a publicly funded news website that can draw on the journalistic talents of one of the biggest multimedia news-gathering teams in the world. Neither has a film industry that would bear comparison with BBC Films. Neither has Nicky Campbell enjoining people to “join the nation’s conversation” on Radio 5 Live or Anne Robinson debasing that conversation by means of scripted insults on a vile, though extremely popular, game show.’
• Boxing clever: Greg’s debt to John … ‘The air of despair that descended during the dark days of John Birt has been lifted; where once there was discord, Saint Dyke of White City sows harmony. “I remember going to my first meeting of the executive committee and hearing laughter coming out of the door,” cooed the corporation’s new director of television, Jana Bennett, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph last week. “I assumed I was in the wrong place. But when I peeked in, there they all were – and they were actually enjoying themselves.” Over at doom-laden ITV, the only sounds are the scraping of chins dragging along the floor and the occasional splash as another executive jumps ship. At Channel 4 it’s worse: hundreds are waiting to pick up their P45s as Mark Thompson claws back the excesses of recent years.’

A Couple of Links on the BBC

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 17th, 2002 at 10:52 am and is filed under BBC.

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