This is taken from The Guardian:

Crisis management

Beleaguered BBC boss Mark Thompson is labouring over cuts and redundancies while his cabinet champion, Tessa Jowell, has trouble of her own.
Maggie Brown reports
Monday March 6, 2006

For two people at the very top of the media tree in Britain, it has been something of a fraught week. The travails of Tessa Jowell have been well-documented. But as she prepares to publish the delayed white paper on the future of the BBC, her counterpart at the corporation has been under pressure too, hit by a critical staff survey.

Half of the BBC's 25,000-plus staff responded, and their complaints made for difficult reading for director general Mark Thompson. The survey paints him as a remote figure; only 13% feel that he and his top team listen to them, while just 19% believe the BBC gets the best from people. This marks a big slump from the era of Greg Dyke, who was regarded as a listening leader by an enthusiastic 54% of his staff.

Inevitably, Thompson's regime is being compared with that of John Birt, whose deep unpopularity with staff was a crucial factor in the selection of Dyke, the people's choice, to succeed him.

The problems of Thompson and Jowell are intertwined. Jowell has been the BBC's principal ally in the cabinet, a beacon of dependability, the best sort of critical friend in or out of a crisis. But, with the overdue white paper due next Monday, her ability to deliver the crucial next stage, a handsome ten-year licence fee settlement later this summer, looks ever more uncertain. That beacon seems to be flickering.

The significance of Jowell's support for the BBC can not be overstated. In the past two years she insisted and got her way over the appointment of Michael Grade as chairman, to steady the organisation post-Hutton. She has stood firm against an array of the most powerful forces in the land, led by her own external adviser, who wanted to place the BBC under an external regulator as if it was a FTSE 100 company rather than the country's premier cultural institution.

Now, the cry goes up, given Jowell's failure to concern herself with her husband's handling of domestic mortgages, how shrewd is her judgment on BBC matters? Thompson, meanwhile, was facing similarly tricky questions. His vision for a stripped-down, value-for-money, multi-media BBC is still work in progress. The drawn-out programme of cuts and redundancies - 6,000 posts are being cut - has soured morale and prompted threats of strikes. And while there is no suggestion anyone else could do better, there are even well-informed voices who say that man-of-the-people Grade, witnessing this slow process, has become less enamoured of the cerebral Thompson, who retreats to the Bodleian Library in Oxford to write his speeches.

There was further distressing mood music created by the renewed charge that the BBC governors and Thompson's executive team have grossly exaggerated their costings in an over-inflated bid for the licence fee settlement. It is a view widely held in parliament, and absolutely rampant across all commercial rivals. The Lords select committee report on the BBC, published on Friday, makes the acid observation that the proposed £600m move of some BBC staff and services to Manchester falls apart under scrutiny. "The BBC's costings were rudimentary," it complains.

Another "very grey area", a £300m spectrum charge which may never arise, is also highlighted. The committee concludes that the request for an increase in the licence fee of inflation plus 2.3% should be dismissed as an "opening bid". This came on top of the highly critical public accounts committee report, which points to the "excessive returns" made by the private property company, Land Securities Trilium, on its property contract at the BBC's sprawling west London site at White City. At the same time, overspend and delays dog the redevelopment of Broadcasting House in the centre of the capital. Talk to people, senior and lowly, within the BBC and even those who think the staff survey asks daft questions tend to coalesce around one point. What sticks is the charge that Thompson, while friendly in person, operates as a surprisingly self-contained and remote director general, critically lacking a cadre of managers and communicators to put the positive case for change.

"We need someone trusted to say 'come on now, pull together, you know the BBC is over-staffed, let's make it work'," says one well-placed observer. But a key creative commissioner warns against comparison with a hated previous regime: "I think Thompson is too clever to paint himself into a Birtist corner," he says. "At heart he understands the BBC too well to do that. Birt, who saw the BBC as a challenge to be wrestled into submission, never got it."

There is a belief that Thompson's difficulties stem from the fact he bounced in from Channel 4, championing radical, energetic changes. His executive team were initially alienated by his enthusiasm for upheaval. His vision is designed to deliver a huge creative dividend, but is struggling with the very human problem: few of his staff can yet see it or share it. They just do not "get it". And it is not their fault. Meanwhile redundancies, running at 13% through the content and output areas and 19% across professional support services, are radical and painful and union negotiations have been interminable. "The upper echelon of managers are carrying out cuts to the letter, saying Mark thinks this and that. These are really swingeing changes, and they are insensitive, too doctrinaire, instead of applying common sense," one senior executive says.

The phased 15% cuts to programme budgets rankle with producers. Further, the so-called "window of creative competition", designed to boost significantly the 25% independent quota , is widely resented - especially in factual production areas. "This remains a source of profound anxiety," says an employee at the sharp end. Meanwhile work is coming to a head on Thompson's big content plan, Creative Futures, in which teams of BBC people are deliberating on the future trends for six genres of programmes: journalism, music, drama, knowledge-building, comedy and children/teenagers.

"Creative Futures is fundamentally useless," says one of the committee members. "It could have worked out much better if people in the know had spent a head-banging session together, perhaps with a real expert in the genre from outside the BBC. Putting people from journalism on to a review of entertainment is stupid - they spend months getting up to speed. They're stumbling their way through." Stand back from the discontent and you appreciate Thompson's problems.

When Grade took over nearly two years ago, all candidates for director general knew that cutbacks in budgets and staff were on the agenda. As part of the licence fee pitch, the Grade/Thompson manifesto Building Public Value, a public value test and distinctive service licences were all needed.

Dyke had run up the BBC's borrowing to the £200m limit, and this had to be repaid urgently because it counted against the public sector borrowing requirement. "It is easy to spend money and make yourself popular. Mark has never played the popularity card," says a supporter. Last year's annual report promised borrowings of zero. Also, the headcount had jumped to 27,000 from the 23,000 that Dyke inherited: it is accepted cuts were needed, but the detail, culling reporters on Today, for example, seems wrong.

In an effort to defuse discontent, Thompson told the staff newspaper, Ariel: "I'm incredibly interested to hear what everyone has to say." But what will really boost his position and lighten the mood is a really good licence fee settlement. Back, then, to Tessa Jowell.