BBC job cuts - oh dear

On Wednesday, October 17th, the BBC Trust approved plans to make job cuts which supposedly help the corporation become more financially efficient. The follow points are from this article:

• Closing 2,500 job posts over the next six years.
• Creating about 1,000 new jobs, many of which will be filled internally.
• Making 10% fewer original TV programmes by 2012/13, focusing on fewer, high quality shows.
• Establishing an integrated newsroom - merging TV, radio, and online.
• Reducing the size of the BBC's property portfolio by selling BBC Television Centre by 2012/13.
• Scrapping proposals for new activities, including plans for four new local radio stations.

The second point is cleverly written because it mentions the creation of jobs, but it's only internal reorganisation - there's no net gain there. The point about focusing on fewer high quality shows is worrying. High quality programming is what the BBC is all about. That will mean more repeats. The same article also provides net redundancy stats for each department:

Department	Responsible for	Redundancies
Vision	Factual, childrens, entertainment	640-660
Nations and Regions	Regional programmes	510-550
News	TV, radio & new media news	355-370
Future Media & Tech	Online, mobile, interactive, archives	120-130
Audio and Music	Audio on all platforms	65-75
Professional Services	Marketing, legal, finance	Up to 75
Sport	Sport on all platforms	Up to 20

BBC Northern Ireland will be losing 100 jobs across a range of departments. They only employ 675 people at the moment, so that's a considerable loss. BBC Scotland will have 210 jobs cut, but because of some jobs being created there will be a net loss of 80.

"Among the ideas approved by the trust were an undertaking to commission 10% fewer programmes as part of Mr Thompson's 'fewer, bigger, better' strategy. The move will mean budget cuts, more repeats on BBC2, BBC3 and BBC4 and also more 'repurposing' of content for the web."

The above quote is interesting because it highlights a flaw in Mark Thompson's thinking. In my blog post about the TV licence fee, I highlighted the fact that a number of digital channels have low ratings. If they were cut then there would be a huge finiancial saving and any original content could be moved on the other channels to reduce the number of repeats. Using Mark Thompson's strategy, those uncsuccessful channels will still exist, but they'll have more repeats and therefore fewer quality. There will also be fewer people to maintain what is already there.

The following is reported by Kate Holton (Reuters):

"News and factual departments will be hardest hit in the move, which follows almost 4,000 job cuts announced in 2005. The public service division employs about 18,000 people and most job cuts are likely to happen sooner than the plan's 2012-13 deadline."

It's worrying that news will be one of the biggest casualties. The BBC News is widely regarded as one of the best news services in the world and having fewer people maintaining that standard could potentially meant that there will be an impact on quality and the reputation of the service will be reduced. Fewer journalists means fewer original stories. If you watch the 24hr news service, this will mean that you could see even more of the same.

These job losses will mean a saving of £155m per year for five years according to this Telegraph article. The big figure will have made the BBC Trust members happy.

However, there is another point. Trustees are meant to be separated from the day-to-day management of the BBC. As this is the case, they are more likely to approve decisions of the management as it has already been through their processes once. This does not mean they automatically approve everything though. Major job cuts may be good financially, but as I said it could affect the general quality of programming and could cause viewing figures to go down. Strategically, this is very bad and is a reason for the trustees to reject anything on this scale.

The following quote is from the online version of The Scotsman:

"The BBC has come under fire for paying Jonathan Ross £6 million a year, comic Graham Norton £2.5 million and Jeremy Paxman a reported £1 million."

If those 'stars' were paid much less, surely that would make a significant finiancial saving and/or sustain the jobs of some journalists in the news department. I would have thought that that my suggestion of cutting the digital channels alongside this would be hugely beneficial.

The National Union of Journalists has said there may be a strike. The problem is that because there is so much choice on TV, people will just choose another channel if it affects any of the broadcasts. I can understand why people would want to protest though.

In conclusion, I would say that although financial savings may be needed, Mark Thompson's strategy is the wrong approach. I think the BBC Trust should have rejected the proposals.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: BBC, Employment, Finance

'No pimps allowed'

Wikipedia has been a valuable reference tool for many people since it's creation in 2001. Below is a list of the number of articles submitted in each of Wikipedia's 10 most popular languages:

1. English: 2,025,577
2. German: 644, 514
3. French: 562, 648
4. Polish: 427, 910
5. Japanese: 417, 000+
6. Dutch: 361, 237
7. Italian: 353, 135
8. Portuguese: 287, 645
9. Spanish: 282, 076
10. Swedish: 252, 261

There's also several other languages including Danish, different types of Norweigian, Welsh and Scottish.

There might be the occasional question over the accuracy of some of the articles, but that is because it allows anonymous posting - so there is no way of ensuring that only trustworthy people make the edits. However, you can create a user account (as I did) if you don't mind being identified. It will also allow you to carry the list of contributions you have made from computer to computer (for anonymous posting, Wikipedia takes the IP address of the computer).

Under the name 'Pimp Daddy', I have made 36 contributions to Wikipedia. They have ranged from spelling corrections to the creation of pages (e.g. I created an article about the World Darts Federation).

My username might not be the most serious looking choice, but it contains no swearing, no racism, no anti-semitism, etc. It's just a bit of fun. However, Wikipedia have decided to block me from editing because they felt it was inappropriate. This has happened despite my numerous contributions to the site using that name already. There are many people who include things such as bias in their contributions, cause controversy and don't even bother to create a user account - but most of them do not get blocked.

This was the message that I get when I try to edit an article:

"You have been blocked from editing, or tried to edit a page to which you do not have editing access.

Pimp Daddy (your account, your IP address or a range of addresses) was blocked by DragonflySixtyseven for the following reason (see our blocking policy):

no pimps allowed

Your IP address is 150.237.47.14, and your block has been set to expire: indefinite."

Obviously, I was annoyed by this. I sent an email to one of the Wikipedia administrators (DragonflySixtyseven) expressing my opinions (without swearing) and I received this response via Wikipedia's 'My talk' feature (part of the email I sent is shown at the top):

""I have been blocked from editing pages and the reason given was 'No pimps allowed'. I think this is a totally unjustified reason - it is only a username."

No.

You have three choices:

1. you can start over with a fresh username. This is easiest, but you will lose all your previous edits.
2. you can post a request on WP:CHANGE to have your username changed. If you opt for this, you will have to post on your talkpage first to ask to be unblocked so that you can post your request.
3. you can walk away from the project in disgust.

I suggest option 1 or 2, but some people do opt for 3.

DS 22:04, 24 September 2007 (UTC)"

I still believe that this is not a valid reason given my good conduct and accurate contributions on the site. As a result of this I won't be using Wikipedia again.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Wikipedia, Wiki

The cost of blogging

There has been plenty of news and opinion recently about whether bloggers can be considered journalists and whether they can expect certain rights and privileges. Recently, another story in a similar vein was reported by a number of people across the internet. The following is a quote from an article on the Bit-tech website:

"...Jessica Zenner, a 23 year old contractor for Nintendo who has been formally fired for posting inappropriate comments on her personal blog. Jessica, who posted under the pseudonym of Jessica Carr, was unaware of Nintendo’s scrutiny and thought she was protected by her right to freedom of speech."

Yes - Jessica Zenner has been fired for using her right of free speech.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

You could argue that the release of important company information in her blog would harm the company in some way, but after reading the blog there is nothing like that posted there - it's mostly personal stuff. There is one section where she insults a fellow employee, but there is no name mentioned.

The way she was fired wasn't exactly appropriate either. According to The Stranger, she was told by the Human Resources Director via her BlackBerry. The proper way of doing it would be to arrange an appointment with Ms Zenner so they could talk to each other in person.

Ms Zenner could go for wrongful dismissal, but if she did I think she'd only want compensation. Why would you want to be reinstated to a business where there is so much ill-feeling?

Providing people follow things like Non-Disclosure Agreements, you should not be fired for blogging - especially if it's a blog not hosted on the servers of the company. Jessica Zenner used Live Spaces, the Microsoft blogging platform.

So what do you think?

Technorati tags: Jessica Zenner, Nintendo, Blogging