BBC Faces Pressure For Transparency Over Top 40 Sponsorship

GWR’s group programme director Steve Orchard took the opportunity at the Music Radio 2000 conference yesterday to challenge the BBC’s decision to accept sponsorship from music website Worldpop for the Top 40 chart (see BBC’s Top 40 Gets Commercial Sponsor). Confronting Radio 1 controller Andy Parfitt, Orchard said that if financial benefits from the £4m three year deal aren’t passed on to the licence payer, then “the BBC is receiving commercial funding via the back door.”

Details of how the sponsorship deal will work have still not been made clear by the BBC, and Orchard called for greater transparency. The BBC has said that the arrangement falls within guidelines, yet statements on the corporation’s website like “Not having adverts enables the BBC’s public services to be quite independent of shareholders, advertisers or other commercial interests” could be called into question when funding comes from a commercial source.

Orchard went on to say that “The BBC has given away enormous commercial advantage to Worldpop to the detriment of those radio operators who rely on commercial income for their continued existence.” GWR owns 38 commercial pop and rock stations and Classic FM.

Last week the host of the Top 40 show, Mark Goodier, proved that some corporation guidelines have to be adhered to. In order to keep his job he had to give up his shares in Worldpop.com, which if the company floats as planned this year could be worth £7m, as employees are not allowed to have financial interest in programmes they are involved with.

GWR: 020 7284 3000