Although I am now retired I can empathise with the attitudes expressed by the present staff.

Back in the sixties and seventies there was a a general feeling of belonging to an organisation that had a clearly defined role set out in the charter and easily understood by all.

However with the eighties came the revolution that changed all that.

Hurd's white paper fundamentally altered the whole concept of public broadcasting and the values the BBC was founded on.

It is no secret that the then Tory Government had no time for the BBC and made that position very clear in introducing the 25% independent production quota which was of course the thin end of the wedge.

The seeds of what the BBC is suffering from now were sown in those days. Total costing was the lever used to seperate management from the work force, the pious phrase "We must remember we are dealing with public money" was used over and over again to justify the destruction of the craft's departments and the closing of all research and development.

Departments that were World famous for their skills were destroyed along with staff training.

The main change however was the cultural one. At the very top no more Huw Wheldons or their like the objectives had changed no more the need to Inform, Educate and Entertain. The new mission was to supply "value for money" by whatever means and mostly by the use of that other awful phrase "downsizing"

In came the likes of John Burt (now the chairman of Paypal Europe and a crossbencher in the House of Lords) and with him came Excecutive pay packages with bonuses (unconnected to performance) and personal pension pots for the top management and the gap between the management and staff has widened by almost as much as the difference between their earnings.

No point in winding on about greed, esprit de corps and commitment suffice to say if my name sake knew what was going on he would be spinning in his grave because the real loser's are the British People, the real owner's of the BBC.

As have said before I am desperately upset by what the BBC is now compared with what I enjoyed for most of my working life.
I can even remember in my Newsnight days chatting with Mark Thompson over a pint as we talked of the demise under the then management. But then the BBC has always been full of POACHERS turned GAMEKEEPERS!!!
John Birt started the pulling of the plug on the BBC and now it is no more than on a LIFE SUPPORT machine waiting for it to be switched off while management feather their nests. Once the pot is empty they will leave and the last one out will turn out the lights
The BBC (I hate say) is allready RIP.

Reithian says it all.
I don't think the BBC ever recovered after Burt's antics - who, I think, almost single-handedly destroyed the best of British Broadcasting.
After that, none of the other 'world broadcasters' ever looked up to the craftsmen of the BBC, as being the pinnacle of their trades.

To be honest it feels already as if someone has just bought the BBC logo and is using it for their own 'business'

Lifer wrote on Aug 8^th, 2010, 4:58pm:



With respect I think you have to look further than that .

In my opinion John Burt's appointment was to administer the last rights to the BBC as a truly independent Public Broadcaster.

The original master plan started with the Hurd white paper that opened up Broadcasting to a free market based on profit, nothing wrong with that, provided they had a level playing field were Public Service Broadcasting was protected for the good of the Industry as well as the Country, unfortunately that was not the case and the bill was a complete mess, witnessed by the 24th hour inclusion of "programme quality check" on the bidders for the ITV franchises.

As I have already stated the introduction of the 25% independent production slice of the BBC's output was the thin edge of the wedge.

Programmes commissioned from Independant Producers all too often were on the basis of price and not quality the Independants main priority was to deliver those contracts and also make a profit all too often those profits dwarfed the costs of making the programmes and as the licence fee was held at the same levels the only way that 25% could be funded was by cuts within the BBC.

In my opinion the programmes produced by the Independants by and large were not as good value as those produced in house . Also Independant producers unlike the BBC had no responsibility for training or to promote innovation, which can be very clearly be seen and heard in much of what is being broadcast now especially in  the lower budget slots where the technical quality is usually very poor.

Going back to John Birt and his role in the present state of the BBC. His mission was to over haul all the structures of the BBC and bring it into line with the concept of the free market and he did this by making senior management an elite and seperate group from the rest of the BBC. He used outside consultants to streamline the BBC's production process and dispense with any form of back up services that they deemed unnessescary hence staff training was severely cut, research and development abandoned and skilled staff were dispensed with, this left the BBC reliant on the free market for many of it's core functions and the cost savings are at the very least questionable.

The new management structure of the BBC introduced by Mr sorry Lord Birt  are the same as those of many City Banks and they have imported all the despised practices of Excecutive renumeration packages with large bonuses and seperate pension pots and top ups

Whether the Licence payer receives a good service for their money is a matter of opinion but what is indesputable is the organisation called the BBC that made this Country a World leader in Broadcasting excellence and innovation has been destroyed.

Oh it will go on and it will produce more milestones but we have lost far more than we have gained.

So in my humble when the historians write about all this in fifty years time, I don't think that Mr Burt will be seen as a "saviour" but more like a vandal   ;)

The hearse has been ordered? I can't believe it. My previous post:-
Oh no! It can't be! My favourite Auntie is dead??

"No, she's on a life-support system".
"How can I help?"

"Fire the top management!"

"Is that all? To save one of the UKs greatest (and once, most-loved) institutions? Simply go back to the way 'it used to be'?"

"Yes!"


"So... what do we do next?"......

"Are we too late?".

"Only time will tell."

Is so sad.

Perhaps we should sell "Prospero" on eBay and see what we can get to save our Auntie. Would it be enough?
No. Not enough to pay for a 'fat-cat pension' for a week.

The "fat-cats" who lost the plot, and possibly lost the BBC.

A good idea for "Prospero" the 'news'-paper, however I was thinking of "Prospero" the statue outside BH!