Was the BBC completely mad & wasteful to embark on such a project as Salford?

Raymond Snoddy: In a number of important respects Salford has been mishandled by BBC management but walk into MediaCity, even in its present, uncompleted empty state, and you don’t have to be too imaginative to see a future production hub taking shape that could in time give London a run for its money…

There is only one certainty in the life of anyone running the BBC and that is that they will be criticised remorselessly whatever they do.

Never mind running perennials like the Corporation being accused of being pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli at the same time, ageist treatment of female presenters or the open wound of executive salaries.

As BBC staff begin the migration to Salford the arrows have started to fly again over everything from wasting licence-payers money and managerial bungling to allegations of social engineering and bowing to the dictats of the previous Labour Government.

BBC under fire

You name it and the BBC has been accused of it – and not just by the Daily Mail.

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has been decidedly sniffy about the expenditure of nearly £1 billion on the move as he put it, and even BBC staff have been understandably critical about the decision to load Breakfast on the wagons north with the loss of well-loved presenters such as Sian Williams.

Sian and several hundred other staff affected by the move have opted to stay in London and take redundancy where necessary, mainly because of understandable family commitments, although 55% of those involved have opted for Salford.

Not so long ago BBC director-general Mark Thompson was roundly condemned for insensitivity when he portrayed the row over the move as something of a storm in a tea-cup, which would soon pass and be forgotten in the larger scale of things.

He was insensitive but he was also right. Walk into MediaCity in Salford and you can see a communications vision taking shape before your eyes.

MediaCityUK

The conversation so far has been has been rather too parochial and in a curious way provincial. It has all been about the attitudes of staff of the London-based BBC and whether they could possibly consider moving up North and being cut off from the heart of things.

Most of the press criticism has come from London-based reporters echoing London-centric anxieties.

Walk into Salford Quays even in its present, uncompleted empty state and you don’t have to be too imaginative to see a future production hub taking shape that could in time give London a run for its money at least in terms of creativity if not volume.

And it’s not just about the BBC, which is merely an anchor tenant – the equivalent of Marks & Spencer in a new shopping centre.

Across from the Lowry Centre and next to the Imperial War Museum North, ITV will create a new production centre for Coronation Street and independents will follow the commissions and the work. Around 1,500 students from Salford University will also add to the life of the place.

The first BBC migrants – the BBC Philharmonic orchestra – has already moved into a splendid rehearsal and recording studio and there will be new arrivals from London every weekend for the next 36 weeks until the grand total reaches 2,300. There has even been more than 2,000 London based applications for jobs going in Salford

Costs

Was the BBC completely mad and wasteful to embark on such a project?

The biggest myths have surrounded costs aided and abetted by the National Audit Office – costing the project at around £850 million. The NAO was perfectly clear what it meant. This was an overall figure for the 20-year cost of Salford, including running and production costs. Politicians and hostile commentators have not been so precise.

The BBC says the actual cost of implementing the project totals £189.3 million and that includes £86.5 million for such things as relocation, training and redundancy. Salford, the BBC insists, is coming in on time and on budget. Around £44 million has however been taken off the cost of the venture to allow for costs that the departments moving in – BBC North, Sport, Children’s Radio Five Live – would have had to spend anyway in London for such things as technology upgrades.

Overall the BBC believes that Salford will save the Corporation money and that the payback period will be less than 15 years and a further 500 -1000 jobs could migrate north.

The argument that the entire UK pays the compulsory licence fee and that the money should not all be spent in London is a strong one. Indeed at the moment the further north you go the faster satisfaction levels with the BBC fall. Once more and more programmes are produced and made in the Salford MediaCity that should change.

Indeed old BBC hands who come originally from the North of England are rubbing their eyes in disbelief that the BBC is mounting such a large scale invasion of what was once the sovereign territory of Granadaland.

Salford v W1

In a number of important respects Salford has been mishandled by BBC management. Many are angry that they were sold the Salford dream by leaders who are not themselves committed to a permanent move or who are already on the train south.

Buying a home in Salford and a commitment to stay for a defined period should have been a necessary qualification for those leading such a move. Questions can also be asked about whether it is wise to move a national, daily, news-based programme such as Breakfast to Salford. It was done primarily to put the required number of bums on seats. It is obvious that Breakfast will not attract the same number of top-line guests to the sofa and that it will become, increasingly, a down-the-line sort of a programme.

Meanwhile, the first migrants are starting to move to W1 – the new Broadcasting House – an edifice that is costing more than three times that of Salford and will in the end house all of BBC news.
There will probably be even more rows about the cost of W1.

Thompson argues that the cost of bringing the increasingly tired Television Centre up to modern standards would have been more than that of building Salford and W1.

Very soon the BBC can start to forget about buildings and get on with the much greater challenge – making the sort of programmes that will captivate audiences and justify the BBC’s future – North and South.

(Raymond Snoddy presents Newswatch , BBC TV’s accountability programme)