Thank goodness--the new website has changed and simplified the LOG IN process without the silly questions.

However on checking my details--i noticed that my wife's name was not listed as a nomination--so had to ring Cardiff to check.She was indeed nominated many years ago--but that info was not on line.Not a helpful omission.

I'm staying with paper on this one....I sniff a site "in development" and not quite as robust as intended

"The Guardian" reports on the speech, here, given by James Purnell to the EBU, where he said.." the BBC was for everyone. “Everyone benefits because everyone pays. And everyone pays so everyone must benefit.”

He said he no longer cared about Rajars - the industry measure of radio audience numbers - and said BBC Radio’s objective was to retain its existing listeners while reaching new audiences in different ways. "

The Guardian article goes on to say..."The BBC dominates the British podcast market, with a third of listeners finding their favourite downloads on the corporation’s website, according to the most recent report by Ofcom. This has raised concerns among some independent producers that the corporation’s success is blocking the development of a commercial UK podcast industry."

Here is the full speech, courtesy of "Radio Today".

According to this report in "The Sunday Telegraph", written by Chrisopher Williams  (Deputy Business Editor).....


"The BBC is to give up competing with commercial radio stations for audiences to focus on the threat to its future from music on Spotify and podcasts via Apple.

James Purnell, the BBC’s director of radio, will signal the shift this week by declaring he does not “care” about audience share or beating commercial stations in the battle for listeners....


Mr Purnell will dismiss the shift as irrelevant to the BBC’s mission. He will say: “I don’t care about share. I don’t care about beating Global, Bauer or Wireless in the RAJARs. We care about the future of British audio.”"

The report presently does not say where, or to whom, the speech will be delivered.

I, and I suspect many others, were enrolled in the BBC Pensions AVC fund, & many will have signed up with Equitable Life. I eventually got back about 75% of my subs when they were transferred to Canada Life as an annuity ( the law at the time). However, when I left Auntie and became freelance, I continued to pay into Equitable as a with-profit pension fund. My total on retirement was about £32,000 (AVC + Private) and the whole of what was due less EL losses was transferred to Canada Life as Annuity. Now comes the revelation that EL has transferred all assets to Reliance at a substancial cost, indicating that each old EL member should benefit to the tune of about £6,000.
I'll believe it when I see it, but I hold my breath - or maybe not!
Any comments?

There have been some much needed changes this spring to the R2  schedule. The mid-day slot must also now surely be under serious scrutiny ?

The Reuters Institute and The University Of Oxford have just released their 2018 Digital News Report.

It reflects the changing way that 'consumers' access their news, and the continuing effect of Social Media, and 'Fake' News.

The report covers nearly 40 countries.

It may be found here.

So Jeremy Vine, the £700,000 a year R2 presenter (until he acceded to an undisclosed pay cut) is now to be heading a two hour show on C5 every morning leaving him just 45 minutes to get to BH for his Radio show? That gives him, by my reckoning, all of five minutes to absorb his running order and prepare. Amazing feat, except, of course, there is a large production team behind him, all earning half decent money, doing the job for him on a programme that largely depends on the day's newspaper headlines for ideas. Is Auntie losing the plot?  I would love to know what the total budget for this daily two hours of phone in and music really is. Let's see how long he can keep it up.

Some history is here.

A report in the Buzzfeed website, here,  written by Mark Di Stefano, claims that  

"The BBC has been paying hundreds of thousands of pounds of licence fee payers’ money a year to a TV company that produces often unusable local news content and that insiders say was established solely to obtain subsidies from the public broadcaster.......

At the time, critics warned the policy was ill-thought-through and little more than an attempt to dilute the BBC’s economic power by rerouting its public funding.

The company that has benefited most from Hunt’s initiative is That’s TV. Founded by a businessman called Daniel Cass, it has become by far the biggest player in the field, scooping up 14 of the local broadcast licences with potential total earnings, via the BBC, of over £3 million of public money....

The company successfully applied to Ofcom 14 times in the last few years to relax the amount of local content its stations were required to show. In one instance this involved cutting the 35.5 hours of local programming a week to just 7.5.

In the 1930’s..

How many Radio people described TV as “a passing phase, it’ll never work”?

Are we in danger of regarding "VR" in a similar fashion? Presently associated with 'Games', how long before a BBC News Channel report is broadcast in VR with the reporter out of shot, or (virtually) 'behind us'?

“BBC VR News’?
Perhaps the rapid spread of high-speed internet might alter the perception of 'bandwidth', and 'choice', and result might be greater depth (of understanding).

Quality and Respected Journalism is the bedrock of the BBC and no matter how it is heard, or viewed.