Salami has got a bad name in the BBC, particularly when it is being sliced
Raymond Snoddy says the BBC has been clever to produce a series of cuts where nothing that is easily noticeable or even definable has been closed down. And though there will be complaints about the increase in the number of repeats, unless you have a double strength PVR and 24 hours a day to devote to the exercise, you still won’t be able to watch half the good stuff put out by the BBC…
Hurry. There’s not much time to waste. You’ve only got until 21 December to get your comments into Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, about the Delivering Quality First cuts.
Somehow I don’t think anyone will be knocked over in the rush, although it would never be too late to complain about the BBC’s propensity to give silly portentous, euphemistic names to things.
Even now you can hear BBC people fulminating about Delivering Quality First – or DQF to the initiated.
Wasn’t that what we have all been doing for the last 50 years or so and why pretend that you can deliver as much quality first, or even second, when what you are actually doing is cutting budgets by around £700 million?
That is the stark truth of the matter and it is also true that you cannot make such savings without it being noticed on screen. If would be better if BBC executives were rather more open about that. If it were not so then almost by definition the BBC would have been wasting hundreds of millions over the years.
There is another logical problem over salami and we are not talking cooking programmes here. Over the years salami has got a particularly bad name in the BBC particularly when it is being sliced.
Whatever you do you must not be caught out salami slicing budgets even though taking the thinnest possible slither from everyone when serious cuts have to be made doesn’t seem such a bad overreaching metaphor.
Once again there are problems with the strange world of language inhabited by BBC executives. This is not a case of salami slicing insists everyone from director-general Mark Thompson down. And yet not one major service has been terminated.
So this has to be a case of salami slicing after all and it remains salami slicing even when some of the slices are markedly thicker than other.
You would have to concede that sending only one football commentator rather than two to cover football matches for Radio 5 Live represents a large bite out of the salami rather than a mere slice. But it’s unlikely that we will see a march on Broadcasting House by football fans demanding the restoration of the second commentator.
BBC executives could also have been slightly more sensitive in their use of language as in Thompson’s reported remark at BBC Northern Ireland that: “If you are really that unhappy, if you think that you can’t do your best work here then leave – no one is forcing you to stay.”
Of course Thompson is absolutely right but not such a clever thing for a supposedly clever person to say to a group of people who are collectively facing the loss of 2000 jobs across the BBC.
Where the BBC has been undoubtedly clever is to produce a series of cuts that it will be actually quite difficult for the general viewing and listening public to actually notice. You won’t miss the loss of an entertainment show you have never heard about in the first place.
And though there will be complaints about the increase in the number of repeats, unless you have a double strength PVR and 24 hours a day to devote to the exercise, you still won’t be able to watch half the good stuff put out by the BBC.
The really clever bit is that nothing that is easily noticeable or even definable has been closed down. The lesson from the 6 Music saga was clearly taken on board.
There might be a complaint or two about the loss of BBC 2 daytime programmes such as Bargain Hunters but you could just start broadcasting the series from the beginning again. A bargain is still a bargain.
The complaint by BBC foreign correspondents about the £7 million savings coming off the overseas news-gathering budget is potentially rather more serious. As part of the savings, many posts are being closed and being replaced by locally recruited reporters.
There will be some benefits from hiring bi-lingual journalists with detailed knowledge of a particular culture. But it is surely also true that such local citizen journalists and their families in countries such as Iraq and Pakistan could be seriously exposed to authoritarian regimes in a way that journalists dispatched for a tour of duty from London could not.
Overall 700 posts are going from the news division, although the creation of 150 new jobs are promised further down the line.
The problem is no viewer is going to complain to Lord Patten about the impact of closing foreign correspondent posts and replacing them with locals or say 700 job losses overall in BBC News is simply too many.
It is up to Lord Patten, who argues that providing a first class news service is one of the most important things the BBC does, to ensure that News is not disproportionately targeted under the cuts.
He could also have a look, as others have already done, at the jobs still being advertised in the BBC in-house magazine Aerial – jobs that are not just in production but also not very productive, many would argue.
As a final check before the Trust signs off Delivering Quality First, Lord Patten should make sure that those who actually make the programmes are the ones who receive most protection. There is always the fear with the BBC that it is the bureaucracy which demonstrates the most refined skills in protecting its own interests.
On the whole it’s better that the Trust does not have to adjudicate on a real hot potato such as the closure of BBC 4. Then we would have found out the limits of public consultation.
As Lord Patten pointed out in the summer, consultation is about listening to opinions, it doesn’t actually mean the licence payers get to decide anything.