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.