Your BBC Needs You – interviewing a BBC veteran on Ross, Brand, and management mess

To contrast with the fledgling students I interviewed at City University, I had a chat with ex-BBC World Service board member Barry Langridge, a management expert and enthusiast for BBC ethics.

You can download the podcast below:

Public Surface Podcast, with Barry Langridge MBE

He says the BBC management is to blame for many of the crises discussed in this blog – all the more reason for City University alumni to get involved.

Who’s Your Auntie? Don’t get Foxed into dumbing down, BBC

Excellent comment piece by Marina Hyde in today’s Guardian, discussing the hypocrisy of Mail readers on the lookout for BBC slip-ups.

She says those very audiences are the people who would relish the ethically abominable programmes they show in the US, such as Fox’s Who’s Your Daddy, which invited an adopted woman to guess her real father from a panel:

 

It’s the kind of low-budget, sentimental, voyeuristic TV that brings in audiences. Perhaps we shouldn’t expect anything this hideous from Auntie quite yet.

But it seems the BBC is still shunning responsibility where it matters. Private Eye just reported that 150 radio and TV hacks are for the chop. Meanwhile the BBC is having to pay £150,000  for the stupidity of two overpaid entertainers.

The fallout from Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand’s phonecall may have been hopelessly disproportionate,  but the Beeb has it coming if it keeps hiring and firing the wrong people.

Dramatic fall in City University students joining BBC

EXCLUSIVE: The number of City post-graduates entering the BBC has slumped over recent years, according to data research by current student Charlotte Middlehurst.

Sharp Drop: far fewer City University students were heading to the BBC in 2005 than five years earlier

With around 10 per cent of post-grad journalism alumni joining the Beeb between 2000 and 2005, the organisation is a top employer of former City students. But over the same period, the number of graduates going to the BBC straight after leaving City sank from one in six alumni to one in 20.

The university has trained such familiar journalists as Ten O’Clock newsreader Sophie Raworth, presenter Ellie Crisell, and Radio 4 presenter Kirsty Lang. One hundred and eighteen alumni joined the organisation between 2000 and 2005.

Why the drop?