'Delivering Quality First' (DQF) cuts

[teamsaint]

Does anybody have any idea of the comparative costs of BBC News and Channel 4 News? To my mind, the latter is superior in almost every way, and it doesn't retain permanent correspondents overseas. except in Washington. The work of people like their chief overseas correspondent Lindsay Hillsum offers a model that the BBC can't match.
The Beeb output has always been dominated by news and current affairs, certainly since the days of Alastair Milne, presumably to keep the politicians happy. I can't remember a time when it was ever as bad as it is now.

You are quite right. BBC news, including R4 does exactly that . Keeps the agenda of those at the top firmly at the centre of the nation's consciousness.

THere are huge numbers of kids unemployed. not an issue that gets as much coverage as any amout of petty political wrangling between conflicting elite groups.(or political parties as they are known).
The same could be said on any number of important issues. World poverty. The arms trade. Western over use of resources. Nuclear pollution. Lack of housing in the UK. I won't go on.

[Stunsworth]

I bet very little of that £40.7m goes to the Performing Rights. It goes to the DJs who pull in more for blathering than your average maestro on the rostrum.

The BBC have to pay over £50 for every 3 minute song they play on Radio 1. Details here...

http://www.prsformusic.com/creators/membership/PRSforMusicroyalties/prsroyaltysources/radionational/Pages/radionational.aspx

[EnemyoftheStoat]

Far canal!!! I had little enough sympathy for those ageing crooners and their copyright whinges already, but that takes the biscuit.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Cut Radio 1, Radio 1 Xtra, BBC4 Xtra, News 24, BBC3, CBBC, CBeebies, BBC 6 Music, BBC Alba, BBC Asian Network, BBC Parliament. Have a new light music channel called the Light Programme, taking the best from Radios 1, 2 & 6. Keep Radios 3 & 4, but give them more interesting names. Children's programmes could move back on to BBC1 from 4.00 until 6.00 p.m. Children generally watch too much television anyway, but there is plenty of room on BBC in the morning for programmes for square-eyed babies.

My point is that when the BBC has been foolish enough to chase constant expansion, it shouldn't be the rubbish they preserve.

[Chris Newman]

Thanks for that, Steve. So allowing for talk and plugs about £600 an hour, or being generous £5,500,000 in royalties. I got the £40.7m wrong: that is R3. R1 is £42m. Allow 10 million for the occasional live shows. That still leaves £25million or so on broadcasting costs and DJs. Now R3 has six orchestras and almost the same money. It still seems very expensive to run Radio 1.

[french frank]

I wrote to The Lord Patten (BBC Trust) and received a letter from one of his minders which starts off (1st paragraph) regretting the fact that I have some dissatisfaction with the Trust's recent review of Radio 3. It then drifts into a series of platitudes about how wonderful Radio 3 is and therefore how they want as many people as possible to share the wonderful programmes. And finally, it says that my letter is being forward to Audience Services so that they can respond 'on behalf of the BBC's management' to the issues I raise.

Today I received a letter from Audience Services, thanking me for contacting them regarding BBC Radio 3, and continuing (this paragraph is correct, I assure you):

"I understand you're unhappy with the quality of programmes. I note you feel the station is sacrificing quality in order to draw new listeners and it's seriousness."

They also want to ensure that 'all viewers [sic] feel that they are catered for, at least some of the time'. [So which particular bits of Radio 1 or 1Xtra would they say are intended to cater for me?]

Where's that ruddy d'oh emoticon!!! I've looked back at my original letter to The Lord Patten and can't see anything about 'the quality of programmes' or about 'sacrificing quality in order to draw new listeners and it's seriousness' - whatever that is supposed to mean.

So, where do we go from here?

[Lateralthinking1]

Surely it should be "its". As for "viewers"..........!

I get things wrong. I don't have to be right.

What gets me - I am completely relaxed about general correspondence being incomprehensible - is that this is supposed to be from the glowing example of high standards.

Don't tell me. It was from someone with 500 A stars and 9 degrees from Oxford.

The establishment is now completely outside the establishment. God....have you thought it could now be us?

I never expected it to be this way. I'm rather frightened.

[EnemyoftheStoat]

Lord Patten... Roger Wright... are they by any chance related? Has anyone ever seen them both in the same place at the same time?

[french frank]

Surely it should be "its".

Yes, it should. Judging from the first name of my correspondent, I would say she is quite young ... But it was it's (hohoho) grammar I was more concerned about. She would have done better to turn the sentence round and said: "I note you feel the station is sacrificing its seriousness and quality in order to draw new listeners."

Not that this was in any way relevant to my original letter, of course.

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes. I thought that too. What was it........Kylie, Chelsea or Jade?

PS - I have spent the entire afternoon writing down the programmes scheduled for the coming week that I would prefer not to miss. There aren't many but they are scattered across 2, 3, 4, 4E, 6, BBC London and BBC Scotland though not in that order.

I'm fed up with it. It is such b----y hard work.

If you don't do it, you end up hearing the news every other minute or else tripe while missing what you do want to hear. How can this be attractive radio?

At least television is easier. It took me ten minutes to jot down the half a dozen programmes on the box that I could put up with and even then I'm not overly bothered.

[aeolium]

The Complaints process is useless, isn't it, ff? So much for having an external body to complain to.

I heard a report on the proposed cuts on R4 today which suggested that there are to be cuts to lunchtime concerts and drama on R3. These are now the only programmes I consistently listen to on R3 (I also listen to some Po3 and opera broadcasts) so I can't say I'm too thrilled.

I've mentioned this many times over the years on these boards but why is it not possible to use some of the BBC archive as a way of making savings? If you are going to cut back on new drama productions then why not bring out some of the wonderful productions in the archive? Technically these are of course repeats but many people will not have heard them. And arguably there is far more repetition going on week in, week out in the music schedules of the magazine programmes, with endless Slavonic Dances and Romeo and Juliet extracts, etc.

[teamsaint]

The Complaints process is useless, isn't it, ff? So much for having an external body to complain to.

I heard a report on the proposed cuts on R4 today which suggested that there are to be cuts to lunchtime concerts and drama on R3. These are now the only programmes I consistently listen to on R3 (I also listen to some Po3 and opera broadcasts) so I can't say I'm too thrilled.

I've mentioned this many times over the years on these boards but why is it not possible to use some of the BBC archive as a way of making savings? If you are going to cut back on new drama productions then why not bring out some of the wonderful productions in the archive? Technically these are of course repeats but many people will not have heard them. And arguably there is far more repetition going on week in, week out in the music schedules of the magazine programmes, with endless Slavonic Dances and Romeo and Juliet extracts, etc.

THis is an excellent point. There must be an endless supply of quality material. I happen to have just been looking through some old reviews of some episodes of "Play for Today" Mouthwatering... For this stuff to be lying unloved in the archives while the BBC spend millions on some of the junk that they do is close to criminal. No doubt the same can be said of R3.

[RobertLeDiable]

There must be an endless supply of quality material. I happen to have just been looking through some old reviews of some episodes of "Play for Today" Mouthwatering... For this stuff to be lying unloved in the archives while the BBC spend millions on some of the junk that they do is close to criminal. No doubt the same can be said of R3.

It's a common assumption that archive material must be cheap or free because it's already been recorded and is there simply to be pulled off the shelf and re-broadcast. Often it isn't. When the programme (concert, play, whatever) was originally made, the BBC probably bought the rights to one repeat. Very likely it will already have had that repeat in the past if it's any good. To broadcast it a third time will probably involve paying all the artists again. People tend to forget about these rights issues. There's no such thing as a free lunch!

Someone said that it seemed strange to cut lunchtime chamber concerts when it can't cost much to make the broadcast. The biggest cash cost will be the artists' fees, which will not be negligible. But obviously there will have to be cuts in production staff costs as well, to meet this 20% overall cut. Which presumably means there will be job cuts at Radio 3 that include producers and sound engineers - which in turn means fewer broadcast concerts and more programmes with CDs. It's not rocket science.

[mercia]

To broadcast it a third time will probably involve paying all the artists again.

what about all that stuff on Radio4Extra where all the artists are, not to put too fine a point on it, dead?

[RobertLeDiable]

They may be dead but their work is still copyright and they have estates that have to receive the fees.