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When Are The Bbc Goign To Realize It Is Not Their Money?

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youngmafbog | 08:35 Wed 16th Oct 2013 | News
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http://news.sky.com/story/1155105/bbc-criticised-for-24m-staff-relocation-costs

There were 11 cases where the cost exceeded £100,000 per person, with one costing £150,000.

I'm sure many hard pressed license payers will be pleased to here this.

The BBC seem to live in a different world (A right-on liberal do as I say not as I do one).
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US tv bar is on the floor.

As for a better broadcaster I guess it depends on what floats your boat. The BBC do come up with some good programs, but with that amount of brass they should. Commercial broadcasters are catching up and although it's a pain with the ad's on live tv, if recorded or using catch-up they are becoming a real contender in some areas such as drama.

The BBC has always been left of center and it should not be. It is funded by all and it needs to make efforts to be 100% impartial. Then it may not get so much flak.

But the question here is not about the quality of broadcasting or that how left it is, it is about how they spend public money.
Sky TV provides a much better quality of sports coverage.

Most drama productions the BBC airs are made by independent production companies. Their news coverage consists of one compilation a day which is essentially repeated from 7am to 11pm with a little bit of mix and matching.

Their local “news” consists almost entirely of “magazine” type articles - usually involving the entertainment world - which could be prepared at any time. Much of the “local” news is national news with a local slant (e.g. “one of the four men recently convicted of the terrorist bombings had a brother whose friend’s second cousin went to a local school”).

Their principle outputs of soaps and so-called reality TV (including such nonsense as “Strictly Come Dancing” is unadulterated pap.

They rarely show a recent good quality film.

The number of hours filled by repeats is at an all time high.

They pay “stars” enormous salaries and then look round for something for them to do (e.g. Jonathon Woss).

With the possible exception of Natural History productions - at which I agree they excel - they produce little of interest.

In addition the reason they moved their operations to Salford was precisely because they believed they were too “London Centric”. The move made no business sense whatsoever.

“BBC declared profits of over £300m….”

Is that before or after the £3bn it takes in the form of a compulsory tax on all TV users (whether they view BBC productions or not) has been taken into account?

As for their impartiality - I’ve got to pop down to A&E as I've just split my sides laughing. And BTW, the Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail are permitted to be partisan because they are not bound by a constitution to remain impartial. The BBC is.
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When was the last time "Jonathon Woss" appeared on the BBC?

The fact that they get pilloried by both ends of the political spectrum on pretty much every important political news item says they are getting the political neutrality just about right.

And one can hardly describe people like Nick Robinson, Andrew Neil, Robert Peston, Jeremy Paxman and the like as Left wing.

They have also produced a fair bit of high quality original drama too, although admitttedly rather more period drama than I personally would like. And comedy. And Entertainment - might not be to your taste, but hey, we live in a diverse world.And documentaries, especially the science and nature documentaries and series.

I do not begrudge the TV Licence, although I do think they should exercise greater control over salaries and expenses etc.
New Judge - are you against the licence fee ?

I get the sense that the BBC has a lot of duplication and overlap in the various jobs .
For instance , the other day there was this guy referred to as News editor , North .
Does that mean that there is a news editor , south / west / east ? .
If so , why ? .

No doubt there are other examples of this , within the corporation
I always used to support the BBC and I still believe that it’s a national treasure. However to spend a reported, £952 million, to move to Manchester for PC reasons is beyond a joke.

The leadership has wasted more millions on technology that doesn’t work, TV channels no-one watches and Radio stations no one listens to. While they cut budgets to their regional Radio stations.

People are so reluctant to travel to Manchester; they have to have certain shows in London. In short if this was a private company the whole thing would be called a disaster.

While I think that it should remain a national treasure, I think it needs to be reined in, especially if they try to come back to London. They wanted to be a regional broadcaster.
think of all the decent jobs it will bring to salford,

23 Jan 2012
> 15,500 jobs they were repeatedly promised. <
> Last week, it was revealed that just 16 people in Salford, a city of 229,000 people immediately to the west of Manchester, have secured full-time roles at BBC North <

16 May 2013
> that the venture would create 15,000 new jobs for local people. In fact, unemployment in the area has risen.
Scandalously, it was revealed last month that only 34 of the 2,300 people working there have been recruited from the Salford area. <

they were bribes. They could perhaps have been replaced by P45s. Most people at the BBC will tell you the same.
Bazile, yes, quite possibly. If you look at the BBC website, there are vast numbers of stories from all over the country, too much for one person to reasonably handle, particularly as they have to be dealt with separately for radio, TV and the website too. It makes sense for the jobs to be broken up on a regional basis.
DrFith - are you surprised?

This is the BBC - they don't want the place cluttered up with northern oiks!
I used to support the BBC and accepted that the licence was the best form of funding it. However my view has now changed. In particular (and relevant to this question) I it is clear that its senior managers have a complete disregard for licence payers’ cash and this is adequately demonstrated by the way they have been shelling out wheelbarrow loads of the stuff to their mates when it comes to “severance” pay. Recent cases have shown that they have paid far in excess of the ludicrous contractual liabilities which senior managers seem able to negotiate for themselves. So much so that there have been calls for criminal investigations to be held into these transactions. The so-called “BBC Trust” has proved completely ineffective in regulating this mis-management and it is clear that the governance of the BBC (and the safe keeping of £3bn pa of public money) is out of control.

I’m sorry, LG, I didn’t make it clear that I was not talking specifically of Jonathon Woss, but of people like him. I’ve no idea when he last appeared on TV as I am most unlikely to watch anything he might appear in. But there is no doubt that the BBC has paid vast retainers to “stars” like him without any proper regard for how, if at all, they might employ them. No other entertainment organisation works like that now. Such practice ended with the studio contracts in the film industry in the 1950s. Productions should be devised and then suitable particpants employed to appear in them. They should not be tailored to employ a star to whom the corporation has pledged (say) £5m pa to work for them regardless of their success.

The management set-up is clearly top heavy and the BBC needs either a major drains-up to alter its approach or it needs to be stripped of its licence fee.
IIRC Ross was on £6M pa when he was suspended by the BBC over "Sachsgate".
like this sort of caper, and wasn't it the case that the top stars like Paxman were told to form their own companies and they get paid via that way, something about saving tax, and making lots of nice money on expenses,

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-clarkson-sells-top-gear-1347649
I do not disagree with your analysis of the senior management, their cosy relationships and padded salaries and expenses, NJ. I do not think the deal arranged with JR was necessarily typical of how the BBC pay their "talent", however,and neither do you, since such information is held confidential,so to extrapolate merely on the basis of JRs deal would be wrong.

I do not agree with your commentary over the type and quality of programmes that the BBC produce either, but that is always going to be a matter of subjective taste. You cannot state with factual certainty that their output is dire, simply because you do not like Strictly Come Dancing. :)

There is at least a partial recognition of that within the BBC, given the contracts that new senior staff are obligated to sign. It will be interesting to see if those costs can be significantly driven down. Otherwise, the threat of losing the TV licence should be waved under their noses again..
Yes, quite agree that programme quality is highly subjective, LG.
However there is no doubt that "super contracts" have been awarded to many "stars". Apart from Wossy, Bruce Forsyth, Noel Edmonds, Philip Schofield, Stephen Fry and Graham Norton have all been been engaged first (on mega bucks) and then a vehicle or vehicles found for their undoubted talents once they started receiving their pay cheques.

The recent acceptance by senior managers that things must change has only come about because their cosy relationships and misappropriation of public funds have been rumbled. Had it not been discovered it would have continued unabated. The BBC Trust has much to answer for when examining how this state of affairs was allowed to develop. This esteemed organisation has hardly covered itself in glory in the six or seven years of its existence. But when one examines the motley collection of quangocrats, time-servers and serial purloiners of public money that has been assembled to form the panel of the trust (under the chairmanship of the Emperor of highly paid non-jobs, My Lord Patten of Barnes) it is scarcely a surprise. Nothing will change whilst BBC managers are in thrall to such a body.
I would like to be associated with the remarks of the last speaker.
it was bloody great for salford!
lots more work for us, instead of london getting everything
At least the move has been educational. How many of us southerners knew that Salford is a city ? I thought it was a suburb of Manchester ! Quite how the figures stack up to show that the move is profitable, because the BBC can realise a profit on selling its fixed assets in London, also eludes me. Have they sold any of it? How much for? And do the figures allow for the expense of moving staff to the new location?

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