New Director-General Matt Brittin has announced the first phase of cuts at the BBC:
About time…
The BBC is cutting hundreds of jobs across its core news division next week. New director general Matt Brittin making his presence known…
According to the FT the BBC is beginning the first phase of a wider downsizing expected to total around 2,000 job losses. All departments have been ordered to cut around a tenth of their costs…
The BBC has also imposed group-wide controls on recruitment, travel, consultancies, conferences and events. BBC News is losing staff first. The downsizing comes as the BBC enters the final months of funding talks with ministers, who are weighing a new form of licence fee, potentially extended to private streaming services like Netflix. You can’t hate these guys enough…
After Reform demanded a public apology from the BBC for Matt Chorley’s misquoting Farage on Newsnight last night the corporation has acquiesced. Matt Chorley said Farage called for “white cold rage” instead of “pure cold rage.” He was forced to apologise this morning – it wasn’t enough…
The BBC itself has apologised to Farage, removed the Newsnight episode from iPlayer and Sounds for now and will also air an apology tonight. Safe to say the BBC wants Robert Kenyon to appear on the Question Time panel tomorrow night…
A new technical document from Ofcom has introduced the ability for the BBC to mark its own homework. All while it can go about hammering GB News…
Buried in its 11 May consultation response on assessing changes to the BBC’s public services, the internet/broadcast regulator has reserved the right to skip a full competition assessment of BBC changes if it judges it lacks the resources to do one:
“There may be times where, in line with our administrative priorities, we will need to consider whether we have the resources needed to conduct a competition assessment.”
Ofcom’s headcount has grown from 1,483 to 1,608 full-time equivalents between 2023-24 and 2024-25. On the very same day as publishing the document, Ofcom found the bandwidth to reopen a GB News investigation it had already cleared over a re-run of a Bev Turner – Trump interview aired twelve hours later on a different show. If Ofcom spent less time bowing to anti-GB News activists maybe it could find the time to scrutinise the BBC…
Lord Michael Grade, recently-departed Ofcom chairman, said anti-GB News critics are “embarrassed by the fact that there is a news organisation that has a different news agenda to them, that speaks to the agenda of the majority – if you look at the polls, a large swathe of the voting population, who have no voice on the BBC. Immigration, Brexit, these are all issues that don’t get the weight on the BBC, or haven’t been able to, that GB News will give, so what’s the problem?” Quite…
The BBC has edited a headline that suggested the Confederation of British Industry backed “green jobs.” Typical…
BBC Scotland published an article headlined: “Green jobs contributing £10.2bn to Scotland’s economy, says CBI.” Only, it doesn’t…
Actually the CBI’s separate consultancy CBI Economics was commissioned by a pro-net zero think tank to talk up the contributions of eco jobs. The report actually states in a disclaimer:
“This report was commissioned by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) and prepared by CBI Economics on an independent basis. The analysis, findings and conclusions presented in this report are those of CBI Economics alone and do not necessarily reflect the views or policy positions of the CBI, its members, or ECIU.
CBI Economics operates separately from the CBI’s member-led policy and advocacy teams. Its consultancy work is conducted independently and is not influenced by the CBI’s policy positions or by CBI membership.”
So, not the CBI itself. The BBC has made edits and a spokesman said: “The story makes it clear that this study was carried out by CBI Economics for the climate think tank the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) and we’ve clarified the headline.” Which now carries ‘report’ at the end. Net zero propaganda comes easy these days…
As Guido has long predicted, the BBC’s declining audience share meant that YouTube overtook the state broadcaster as the most-watched outlet by Brits earlier this year. YouTube is bigger than the BBC…
Now regulators are running to catch up. New ‘prominence’ rules being considered by Starmer after his ill-advised reset with the EU, the BBC could be given special treatment as an organisation hand-picked by ministers. Attempts are being made to ask social media platforms to change their display algorithms to give more ‘prominence’ to this content. In other words, some want to try to force YouTube and other video sites to give ‘prominence’ to the BBC over every other creator…
That’s ironic as the video sites themselves are massive net givers to the creative economy: YouTube alone contributed 7 billion Euros to the EU’s otherwise faltering media market in 2024. In the UK, that platform alone has added more than £2 billion to GBP…
State regulation of poplar platforms never works. Starmer’s internet crackdown is reaching insane new levels…
Tom Baldwin, author of Starmer’s hagiography, spoke to Times Radio:
Tom Baldwin: “I think he’d like to do something. He’s very dutiful and driven by service. That’s why he came into politics. I think that’s characterised his time as prime minister. He hasn’t always sought popularity or been good at being popular. But I think he has some of the necessary qualities that we actually do want in a prime minister. That resilience, that relentlessness, that ability to carry the weight and the job really does weigh very heavily on people and he carries that weight very, very well.”
Jo Coburn: “NATO Secretary-General?”
Tom Baldwin: “I think that’s something that he would be interested in. I think it probably requires Andy Burnham’s government to support him in that and these are some of the questions which Andy Burnham has to resolve quite quickly.”