Paywalls are medieval while social media is gunpowder

That's the view of Heidi Nordby Lunde, a columnist with the Norwegian media website Kampanje.com as published in The Guardian today by Roy Greenslade. Heidi writes, according to the translation courtesy of FollowTheMedia:

"Paywalls are reminiscent of the classic city walls, which were common from ancient times and into the Middle Ages. They are also about as innovative.

City walls were erected to protect the population against attacks from outside. Although the wall was effective against enemies for a while, it also proved to be an effective end to growth.

"In the end, there was a lack of opportunity for growth within the walls, combined with the military innovation that tore at them. When gunpowder came, high walls did not help.

"Today, one can see in many medieval towns the remnants of the old city gates or parts of walls, the old defences, overgrown by urban structures. New military strategies, opportunities for growth and alternative organisational forms won out."

 It is an interesting premise and so I commented on the story...

However paywall or not, there needs to be a sustainable business model. The Guardian has no walls but your online business model isn't sustainable yet and you have fantastic content and are completely committed to the platform. Pay Walls do generate income, however I accept they may not always be sustainable too. In my opinion we are still developing business models like the Freemium model to produce a viable business model for the online world where people have come to expect everything for free or at least free at the point of use. I do find it interesting that folk will sign away all kinds of rights to get a free service.

 What do you think?

5 Live Children In Need special well received

The 5 Live special I blogged about last week has been well received in The Guardian by Elisabeth Mahoney.

Pudsey was everywhere on Friday. Away from the fundraising japes and fun, 5 Live once again ran a documentary (as part of Shelagh Fogarty's show) about a project helped by the charity and the work it did. Last year, it was work to prevent young women being lured into sex trafficking and abuse in Derby; this year, an organisation called Positive Futures (posfutures.org.uk) in Liverpool. If you need any further convincing to donate to Children in Need, do listen to the programme.
Even if you think you know about the sort of lives that lead children into gang culture, there were some gobsmacking details in Helen Skelton's report. Children as young as eight spoke casually about endemic violence in their areas. "I've actually seen someone getting battered," said one girl. "I was 10 or 11."
Ben, who left a gang with the charity's help, said: "You hear about stabbings and shootings every day". A youth worker recalled talking to a boy dealing drugs on the street to feed his younger siblings, when a man came up and begged. "That was my dad," the boy said, as the man walked away. The staff didn't gloss over the challenges or odds against them. But, as one said, in the next 20 years, if he changes just one child's life, "it'll be worth it".

As I said it is well worth a listen as it explores the youth culture in Liverpool and how two organisations are helping young people break the gang culture cycle. It includes some very powerful interviews with young people of Liverpool and the youth workers who are helping them change their way of life.

Review of What Has Religion Done For Women in The Guardian

This was a one hour documentary fro BBC Radio 2, I fine edited and mixed  for the producer Mark O'Brien recently.  It is an interesting and revealing insight into women and religion and goes beyond the stereotypical viewpoints and voices. The Guardian picked it up as one of its featured programmes in its Rewind Radio series. This is what they had to say...

I was brought up short by the use of music in What Has Religion Done for Women?. Presented by the very great Shelagh Fogarty, as part of Radio 2's Faith in the World Week, this was an intelligent, open-minded investigation into how women of different faiths integrate some of their religion's trickier aspects into their lives. Fogarty spoke to Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Christians, and there were some lovely moments: a Sikh woman talking about how she managed to overcome her embarrassment at having hairy legs (Sikh women aren't meant to cut their hair); Fogarty herself donning a niqab and entering, then leaving, a shop packed with women and children, because, she said: "We're alarming people."
But. This being Radio 2, the producer clearly thought that we couldn't absorb Fogarty's points without relevant music to help. Though it's debatable whether helpful is the right word for the Scissor Sisters' "Mary"; that is, when it's dropped immediately after a discussion on the artistic representations of Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary. "Mary!" warbled Jake Shears, meaningfully, "You shouldn't let 'em make you mad." There was a debate about Muslim women's modesty of dress. Followed by Dolly Parton singing: "I can see you're disappointed, by the way you look at me". Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" popped up after the Sikh lady's "hurray for hairy" section; Aretha singing "Respect" after a subtle point about the niqab ensuring that men have to deal with women as an intellect, rather than a body. The cumulative effect was the same as if Shelagh had been followed around by Dave Lee Travis, with his trigger finger twitching on the "Quack Quack Oops" button. I'm not sure that was what was intended.

I have to say as someone who helped the producer place the music, I have disagree with some of the reviewer's points. The music for me added another layer to the story, yes a little tongue in cheek at times, and some of the choices weren't the stereotypical choices for that point in the documentary, but I stand by them.

Belief on Radio 3 - another great listen this week.

Radio 3 are running another series of Belief this week which I had the pleasure of working on a couple of weeks ago and the first in the series received a very complementary review in The Guardian. Belief is a programme presented by Joan Bakewell that talks to artists, scientists and thinkers and asks them about what they believe and why.

Monday
Omid Djalili is a British Iranian and a member of the Baha'i faith, a religion which, although it only has seven million adherents, is geographically the second most widespread in the world. Omid's forbears were among its first adherents in 19th century Iran, a country in which those practising the faith are now persecuted. The core principles of Bahá'í doctrine are the unity of God, the unity of religion, and the unity of humankind. Omid's central belief is summed up in a quote from Teilhard de Chardin, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

Tuesday
Tonight Joan Bakewell's guest is the physician, poet and philosopher, Raymond Tallis. He is Professor Emeritus of Geriatric medicine at Manchester University but has made his name as much outside the field of medicine as within it. A humanist, he writes about the transcendence of human beings and is a vigorous critic of the kind of scientific thinking which reduces them to animals. According to Tallis, only humans can point, and in that action they transcend their biology.

Wednesday
Tonight Joan Bakewell's guest is the novelist Salley Vickers. Salley Vickers wrote her first novel at the age of fifty after careers in university education and psychoanalysis. Miss Garnet's Angel, the story of an atheistic, uptight woman who flourishes during a winter spent among the churches and art of Venice, became an instant bestseller. Her succeeding novels, including Mr Golightly's holiday and The Other Side Of you, also have a spiritual dimension, featuring angels, Old Testament prophets - and God. Even so religion's arch-critic Philip Pullman describes her as "a presence to be cherished." Listen to "Belief" and you 'll understand why.

Thursday
Tonight Joan Bakewell's guest is the composer Tarik O'Regan. O'Regan, a rising star among composers, says his best composition lessons were the hours spent as an idle percussionist at the back of an orchestra waiting for his moment to play. He spent most of his childhood summers in North African with his family before studying at Oxford, and brings both the influences of the muezzin and the chorister to bear on his music. His first opera, based on Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness" will be premiered in the autumn.

Friday
Joan Bakewell's guest on Belief this Good Friday is the Texan-born theologian Stanley Hauerwas. Born into a bricklaying family, Stanley Hauerwas says the skills he learned there are the same skills which he now applies to his academic work - and which has led Time Magazine to call him "America's best Theologian." A pacifist and a provacateur he criticises an American identity he says is built on waging war, and a church often more concerned to make good Americans than good Christians.

Monday nights programme with Omid has been reviewd by Elisabeth Mahoney in The Guardian on Tuesday...

Omid Djalili tells Joan Bakewell his fascinating life story and explains why his comedy routine can be offensive. What a fine fellow Omid Djalili sounded on Belief (Radio 3). Articulate and engaging as he spoke about being a member of the Bahá'i faith, he also seemed delighted to encounter host Joan Bakewell. "I just wanted to meet you," he told her. "I think you're wonderful." Explaining a central tenet of his faith, he used her as an example: "The Joan Bakewell we see here is going to continue in some form, just in a different essence." This is excellent news. His life story was fascinating. While growing up in London, his parents opened their house to many Iranian visitors, which meant Djalili kipping on the sofa. "I never had a bedroom until I was 14," he explained. There was a funny frankness about his memories of this time, living in a house full of fleeting strangers, "some of them charming, some of them absolutely awful". On the issue of comedy, and his standup routine, which Bakewell noted can be "riskily offensive", Djalili explained that it's deeply connected to his belief. "It's all about making people conscious, starting with myself," he told her. Life, and religion, is one long process of improving yourself, he insisted, and improving your core self. Bakewell asked him to describe his core. "I'm a fat, needy man, pleading for attention," he quipped.

Talking of offensive jokes there was a joke that was very funny that we had to take out.

RAJAR figures good news for talk radio and BBC stations

John Plunkett in The Guardian has written....

Talk radio has never had it so good after an unlikely combination of government cuts, England's cricket tour of Australia, snow and the ever-enduring popularity of Premier League football propelled BBC Radio 5 Live and TalkSport to record audiences in the final three months of 2010. The two stations had a combined weekly audience of more than 10 million listeners in the fourth quarter of last year, according to official Rajar figures published today.

So sport is clearly a catalyst for talk radio but actually all the BBC national stations have improved their figures in this quarter....

Every one of the BBC's 12 national radio stations, including the BBC World Service, added listeners year on year. BBC Radio 3 was the biggest riser, up 18.2% to 2.216 million. BBC Radio 2 remained the nation's favourite station by some distance, up 3.5% to 13.943 million listeners, a 16.2% share of the audience, while BBC Radio 4 was up 4.9% on the year to 10.319 million, a 12.1% share. Radio 5 Live had its biggest-ever audience of 7.093 million listeners, up 16.2% on the same quarter in 2009. Not quite such good news at BBC Radio 1, which added listeners, up 6.1% year on year to 11.421 million, but saw its share of the audience fall to 8.8% – down from 9.8% a year ago – as people tuned in for less time.

However the digital stations haven't done so well....

BBC 6 Music, saved from the axe by the BBC Trust last year, was up 63.6% the final three months of 2009 to 1.137 million listeners, but its audience fell back from the previous quarter's record of 1.196 million. Digital sister station BBC Radio 7, which is due to be rebranded as BBC Radio 4 Extra, also saw its audience fall back on the previous quarter, down 10% to 941,000.

The BBC's total share of the audience was 55.3%, stretching its lead over commercial radio to 12.8%, up from 10.8% the previous quarter.

Who will be the new chair of the BBC Trust?

Maggie Brown and  Tara Conlan have written an interesting article in The Guardian today looking at the poltics between the appointment of the new chair of the BBC Trust as the final interviews take place.

On the evidence of the last four years, becoming the public guardian of the BBC may seem tantamount to volunteering for a life lived on a bed of nails. From dealing with own goals including lewd voicemail messages, to public spats with politicians over executive pay and the corporation's funding, and a barrage of negative coverage from the rightwing press, the BBC Trust chairman is rarely out of the firing line.
However, as the final interviews to find a successor to Sir Michael Lyons take place today, it is clear there are at least five keen candidates for what is still viewed as one of the country's most prestigious establishment jobs. After each interview the selection panel is scoring the candidates, and none of them seem fazed by the annual reward of £110,000 – 16% less than the outgoing chairman Lyons earned, for a three to four day week. Lord Smith, the former Labour culture secretary, reckons it is "a very strong field".

However this reminds me of a session at the recent Nations and Regions Conference held earlier this month at The Lowry in Salford just over the water from Media City. The session was entitled "I’m not the Chair of the BBC Trust, Get Me In There!" and was billed as follows...

As Sir Michael Lyons steps down, we invite 3 leading figures to enter the jungle and pitch to be the Chair of the BBC Trust. 

The three 'candidates' were Tom Gutteridge (Standing Stone), Cat Lewis (Nine Lives Media), David Elstein (Broadcasting Policy Group). Although it was to be a bit of fun, the 3 'candidates' did explore not only what they would do if they were 'appointed' as the new chair, but also worked through some of the issues of what the BBC Trust is for and what it should do and I found the session very illuminating. However I was also very frustrated at all their 'pitches', as they all concentrated on broadcast television so at the end of the question session I asked -

"I have held some very interesting presentations today but all I have heard is television, television, and television.  In this age of digital culture of 'many to many', what about Radio and On Line, hello?"

and handed the mic back. They all were clearly a little embarrassed and quickly affirmed the need for public service radio in their summing up of several other questions from the floor  but still none of them mentioned on line and digital. So I do hope who ever is appointed to be the new chair of the BBC Trust for real doesn't just concentrate on broadcast televeison but connects with the 21st century and the various forms of communication models that are becoming rather popular now.

Update - The Guardian review on Story of King James Bible series

Elisabeth Mahoney has written a very nice review in The Guardian of The Story of King James Bible series I worked on and blogged about.

The Story of the King James Bible (Radio 4) is a luxurious thing: three programmes, over three days, tracing the history of what presenter James Naughtie described as "a literary masterpiece" for "people of many faiths, and none". Yesterday's opening instalment, recorded at Hampton Court, revelled in detail and evocative soundscapes as Naughtie and gathered experts moved through the palace: footsteps on stone stairs, the sudden whoosh of boomy sound as they move into a particularly high-ceilinged space; classy readings from the Bible. Naughtie probed his guests with questions that got beneath the surface of a historical event – a conference held at Hampton Court in 1604 – to draw a picture of the meeting in all its religious and political complexity. There was a strong sense of everything in flux as James I ascended the throne, and also the monarch grabbing his chance to re-emphasise the relationship between king and church as a divine, rather than earthly, institution. He had disliked the earlier Geneva Bible, we heard, because of annotations in the margin, especially one that appeared to question the king's authority. In his Bible, "there were no marginal notes that were interpretative". The conference was rumbustious, with those gathered shocked by James's coarse language. "I give a turd for your argument," he told one Puritan speaker.

Thanks Elisabeth for the kind words. Here are another couple of pictures I took in Oxford.

We was there!

Another bible to study

AudioBoo's Mark Rock on 2010 and predictions for 2011

Jemima Kiss has written an article in The Guardian on what Mark Rock head of AudioBoo has to say on 2010 and what will happen in 2011....

What do we have to look forward to in 2011? The past twelve months have been a defining period for the digital industries, says Audioboo chief executive Mark Rock, but there's plenty to come next year as, he predicts, Mark Thompson will stand down and Flickr will be sold.

Here are what appealed to me from what Mark had to say....

What will 2010 be remembered for?
Overall, 2010 was a defining year for so many things - digital, politics, data, mobile. Wikileaks cracked open what hopes to be a better discussion around open data next year and the role of digital in that.
Mobile is (finally) huge thanks to Apple and Google and not the telcos. The BBC was forced to face up to the fact that it can no longer operate like an extension of the civil service and expect us to pay for its inefficiencies.
The government seems to think the digerati in Shoreditch will happily move to Stratford (no). DAB radio is still the floppy disk equivalent of the internet."

What was your best and worst moment?
The best was the surprise at personally ranking so highly in the top 100 tech people in the UK. At least my dad was impressed. The worst?
Worst work moment? The BBC taking 14 months to finally state officially they were too busy to work constructively with us on a professional basis because they were too busy. We're used loads by individual reporters and departments there but their audio is not allowed onto the BBC site. Bizarre."

What's your hot tip for 2011?
Mobile, mobile, mobile. Apps, apple, android, advertising, tablets and the mobile internet.
Traditional TV set top box manufacturers will move to Android as an OS for increased user interaction and lower development costs.
Mark Thompson will gracefully stand down from the BBC. Microsoft will release a poor cousin to the iPad.
Audioboo raising some more cash to go truly global.
Android Marketplace getting less techy and more consumer friendly.
Flickr being sold to a company that actually cares about it. 

You can read the full article at The Guardian.

Merry Christmas Morris Minor update

Just to let you know that if enjoyed or missed Merry Christmas Morris Minor then it is Radio 4's Podcast of the week so you have 7 days to download it to enjoy both the programme and my Jingle Bells creation for ever.

In addition The Guardian have selected it as one of their Radio Highlights for Christmas Eve....

If the festive spirit is still proving elusive, tune into Merry Christmas Morris Minor! (Radio 4, 11am), one of the sweetest radio offerings over the holiday. The Guardian's Martin Wainwright celebrates the car's 50th birthday in this affectionate tribute, which includes a rendition of Jingle Bells played on a chorus of Morris Minor Horns. That moment really is enough to melt even Scrooge's heart.

TalkSport wants Radio 5 Live budget review

Following on from the story that BBC enlists commercial sector help to shake up radio where the BBC has asked former GMG Radio boss, John Myers, to carry out a wide-ranging efficiency review. He has been tasked with reviewing the operations at core BBC stations including Radio 1, Radio 2, 6 Music and 1Xtra. The review could lead to a major shake-up of the way BBC Radio operates and is one attempt at ending constant accusations of a "bloated" BBC. In recent years, the commercial sector has heavily criticised the BBC for spending more than is necessary to operate a radio business.

John Plunkett has written a piece in The Guardian which reports that Talksport want this review extended to the speech stations including Radio 5 Live.

However, TalkSport parent company UTV said the review should be extended to include the BBC's national speech stations including news and sport service BBC Radio 5 Live, where "cost per user hour" is four times higher than either Radio 1 or Radio 2. Scott Taunton, the managing director of UTV Media (GB), said the scope of the review was "much too narrow" and "suggests a reluctance by BBC management to bring the overall radio budget under control".  Taunton welcomed the appointment of Myers, but said the efficiency review's remit was too narrow and contradicted the NAO's recommendations. He added that it "suggests a reluctance by BBC management to bring the overall radio budget under control. Rather than focusing on their cheaper pop stations, the BBC should seek efficiency opportunities right across their portfolio." 

So surprise surprise, John Myers' appointment to hopefully pacify the commercial sector doesn't seem to work. However especially for the speech stations and also to a lesser degree the music stations their is a public service remit. Speech radio isn't cheap, it is very labour intensive to produce an hour of programming. The commercial sector by enlarge doesn't commission documentaries, dramas etc because they can't get a commercial return on them. So that is why we have public service broadcasting, to provide content the commercial sector can't do. Now I have no problem with making sure that there isn't money wasted in the BBC but I believe the radio sector provides a very cost effective range of stations to the public.

We need to disconnect to make sense of all this

In my regular scanning of my RSS feed from The media section of The Guardian, I came across this heading and it immediately grabbed my attention as it resonated with thoughts I am currently processing. Jemima Kiss has written a blog entry on the Week Notes section of The Guardian's web site. She starts....

I gave an internal presentation this week on distraction, overload and how we need a better balance of wired and unwired time. Because very little at the Guardian is internal any more (we are all mutualised, after all) I'm going to share it. Less a presentation and more a collection of thoughts and observations, this is about a kind of digital crisis I find myself in. That's partly down to the pressures of the job, commuting and being mother to a little fellow, which puts more pressure on my time and my (already admittedly unrealistic) personal expectations of how much work I could and should be producing.
I've written before about trying to shift away from that world of frenetic, short-form blogging to more in-depth, feature-style posts. Breaking off from our playground of distracting techness is part of that. My posts about email are part of that too - it is a medium designed by accident which was never intended to be used this way. Can't we do something better, something bespoke?

To read the rest of this and to see the Prezi she produced go to Week Notes Blog.

One of the statistics she quotes is that it can take 15 minutes to recover from a one minute interruption. I would certainly agree with that from my own experience. It takes me much less time per day if I 'do' my email in a few intensive blocks rather than keep breaking off to see what emails have come in recently. But as Jemima says there is an expectation with email that you are considered rude if you don't reply instantly.

Your comments would be most welcome...

Is Cameron showing his true colours about the BBC?

In an editorial in today's Observer they say....

David Cameron enjoys joshing with journalists. He also, in a previous, non-political life, worked as a media public relations expert, lobbying against, among others, the BBC. So when he tells a Brussels press conference that we're all in the cuts and freeze business together, "including – deliciously – the BBC", it's probably best to leave high horses in the stable. You can make too much of a deliciously duff joke. But you also see why our prime minister needs to be very, very careful. Is he in hock to Rupert Murdoch? Labour MPs, anxious to see more of his Number 10 visiting book, want fuller disclosure here. The two main Murdochs, father and son, have been heavy-footed and loose-tongued in their lobbying against the corporation...... more

The cuts rushed through in 48 hours are not inconsequential and will have an impact on what the BBC can do. However the integration of the newsroom in 2012 will make the world wide new gathering much more effective and will certainly help the 'One BBC' including the World Service but in this digital age where less and less people will consume public service broadcasting using a TV receiver in the corner of the front room, we really do need to find a new funding model to guarantee a viable public service broadcaster for the long time. Please do not let folk chip and slice away at the BBC so that all we are left with is the Murdoch empire.

Who is going beyond the Murdoch paywall 3 months in

I posted about this at the start back in July here and here. Now Peter Preston has written in today's Observer an article about numbers and types of people venturing behind The Times paywall in the first 3 months.

Fleet Street is gagging to discover whether Mr M has shot himself in the foot. Interim answer, from the heavyweight Nielsen company: foot still attached to leg. They reckon that total unique monthly UK visitors to the Times site went down from 3,096,000 to 1,782,000 when the wall went up, and that only 362,000 – about 20% – ventured on to pages beyond the wall. You can weave webs of relative triumph or disaster from all this. The good news for News International is that those who vaulted the wall were a bit older, richer and more dedicated to scanning the site carefully. They are the "engaged readers" advertisers admire – as opposed to the click-by-night trade who never stop to buy anything. The bad news is that a few hundred thousand unique visitors sounds pretty puny compared with the 20 million or so the Times was claiming before the wall went up. If you want a guess in the fog, 362,000 "engaged" UK readers was broadly what the Mail (a believer in a web without walls) found a year or so ago when it took a 30m unique visitor monthly total and whittled away overseas callers and click-by-nighters. By those lights, the Times's great wall isn't a flop, nor yet a necessarily a glowing path to future riches. But there's something worthwhile left to work with, so start counting the ads.

Back in July I compared the two models, the paywall from The Times and the traffic driven site from The Mail. Well 3 months on into the Murdoch paywall and it seems that both models are producing about the same number of engaged users.

Labour calls for inquiry into BBC licence fee deal

James Robinson writes in The Guardian...

The shadow culture secretary, Ivan Lewis, has demanded an urgent parliamentary inquiry into the BBC licence fee settlement following the hastily negotiated deal agreed with the government last week. Lewis has written to John Whittingdale, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, asking him to hold an investigation into the six-year deal.

Lewis said the agreement "rode roughshod over the independence of the BBC, crushed any serious prospect of reform and involved no consultation with licence fee payers or parliamentarians". "The BBC is one of this country's great institutions and its future a matter of public interest," Lewis added.

Although Ivan Lewis is my own MP and a good local MP I have to say I am not confident he will get very far.

BBC cuts in licence fee deal 'brutal but realistic', say corporation executives

John Plunkett and Maggie Brown have covered the BBC response in an article in The Guardian.

Senior BBC executives admitted today that staff would be stunned and baffled by the scale of the cuts in the licence fee settlement, which they described as "clearly very challenging". Peter Salmon, the director of BBC North, said it was "tough, but it is tough all round". "These are pretty difficult times. This is an exceptional settlement and it's going to be difficult for the BBC but it's difficult for everyone in the whole UK economy," he added.  "On the positive side the stuff that we are taking on board are a collection of related responsibilities, a lot of which make sense given what the BBC does and what the BBC cares about – programme-making, content-making, news," said Salmon. "The most important thing for the BBC is the fact that it maintains the BBC's independence. We are very keen on multi-year settlements, on having the kind of financial security we need over a period of time so that we can plan, and also stay at arm's length from the government and government politics. It's really important to us, it's important to licence payers, it's what's kept the BBC brave and independent all these years. It's a tough day. The staff are going to be stunned and probably quite baffled by the news. You get a sense on lots of fronts you are not immune from all the big and difficult things happening in the world. The pension gap was another difficult part of the story. These are tough times."

The BBC Radio 5 Live controller, Adrian van Klaveren, also speaking in Salford today, said the corporation had been surprised at the speed of the licence fee settlement and described the cuts as "clearly very challenging". But Van Klaveren added that there was a positive side to the deal, which guarantees the future of the licence fee for the next six years. "Clearly these numbers are very challenging and will need a lot of work," There's a process that is going to take time. It's complicated and there are a lot of options. Changes need to be made over a period of years. I think all of us have been surprised at the pace of things over the last week. Numbers have moved around and each number clearly has different consequences. It will be felt more and more as years go by. We are not talking about something that has to be achieved by April 2011. There is time to work it through sensibly."

 Go to the Guardian web site to read the rest of the story.

BBC Licence fee funding announced for the next 6 years

Wow! Earlier I blogged about the BBC offering to fund the World Service. Well they have really rolled over now agreeing to have the licence fee frozen at £145.50, pay £272m for the World Service , S4C's £102m for S4C, and pay £25m for BBC Monitoring. They really didn't want to take on the £556m a year funding of free TV licences for the over-75s. Mark Sweney and Tara Conlan have written about the deal at the Media Guardian site...

The BBC licence fee is to be frozen at the current level of £145.50 for the next six years, a 16% cut in real terms, after the corporation today concluded a bruising round of funding negotiations with the coalition government.  In addition it will provide £150m a year for the rollout of superfast broadband to rural areas from 2013 and £25m a year for local TV and online content. A further one-off capital investment in local TV and online services of £25m will also come from the licence fee and the BBC will also underwrite the rollout of the digital radio network nationally.

Well another 16% cuts in the BBC budget is going to mean even less quality public service programming. This is really scary. What will the government do next.....

BBC offers to pay for World Service to avoid licence fee raid

How this is a real turn up for the books and clearly shows if nothing else that the BBC is running scared that the government will start to eat away at its funding.

Dan Sabbagh has written about this in The Guardian.....

The BBC director general, Mark Thompson, is prepared to meet some or all of the £300m annual costs of running the World Service, in a last-ditch attempt to prevent a £556m raid on its finances to fund the cost of free TV licences for the over-75s, MediaGuardian.co.uk can reveal. Embroiled in crisis talks over BBC financing in the hours before the government's comprehensive spending review is agreed, the corporation's negotiators have been told that ministers are also considering whether to force the BBC to meet the costs of the World Service, which is currently paid for by the Foreign Office. That would be an alternative to making the BBC pay out £556m to fund the costs of free television licences for anywhere home to an elderly person – a bill that may force existing television and radio budgets to be slashed.

To read the rest of this article go to the Media Guardian web site.

BBC reveals Salford timetable according to The Guardian

Tara Conlan has written an article outlining the timetable for BBC departments to move to Media City.

Three relocation "waves" have been devised as part of the BBC's "migration plan", details of which have been seen by MediaGuardian.co.uk, to move around 2,300 jobs to Salford, starting in May next year.

"Wave 1" runs between May and July 2011 and those due to move then include BBC2 hit Dragons' Den, Question of Sport, many CBeebies and CBBC staff, marketing and finance employees in children's and sport, Learning production management and staff in comedy and drama who are already based in Manchester.


Those who will relocate from London to Salford in "wave 2" between August and October 2011 including Newsgathering London and Leeds, some Radio 5 Live management and commissioning staff, most of the BBC Academy, children's show Newsround, CBBC drama and acquisitions, and the Mobile Apps team.

Among the "wave 3" departments set to move in November and December 2011 or in 2012 are the remainder of Radio 5 Live management and commissioning, future, media and technology homepage staff, digital distribution operation North and BBC Breakfast, which the migration plans says is "likely Easter 2012".

For the details then you can find the article here at The Guardian web site.

Integrated household survey reveals how religious your area is

Simon Rogers in The Guardian has just published a report from the Office for National Statistics

With typical timing, the report has come out the week after the Pope's visit to the UK. But nevertheless, it's an enormous survey: some 450,000 respondents asked questions about their beliefs, sexual identity and health. Besides the findings which show that 1.5% of the population is gay, it includes lots of other details:

• 71% their religion is Christianity
• 4% say their religion is Muslim
• 21% have no religious affiliation
• Slough has the highest level of religious belief in England - 93% - whilst Brighton and Hove has the lowest at 58%
• Inverclyde has the highest level of religious affiliation in Scotland at 92%
• Flintshire has the highest level of religious affiliation in Wales at 81%

It also provides an interesting breakdown of ethnicity and health. Are there any links between any of the datasets - between good health and religious belief, or high ethnicity and high religious belief? Here are some completely unscientific findings:

• 33% of Blaenau Gwent is in poor health, the highest percentage of people in the UK. Only 67% have a religious affiliation, one of the lowest rates in the country
• Slough, besides having the highest religious percentage in the country also has a very high number of people in good health - 81%

Do those two figures tell us anything meaningful?
Although the report is published as a PDF (of course), the ONS has given us the spreadsheet of results and you can download them below. What can you do with the data?

DATA: download the full spreadsheet

It was interesting that one of the early comments on The Guardian page says...

Given that the question asked by the ONS was "What is your religion, even if you are not currently practising?", it's not really possible to work out how religious an area is - just that loads of people still lazily tick the 'Christian' box without thinking about it. It's a shame that the ONS couldn't have chosen a question that actually asked about religious belief.

I look forward to seeing what people can do with this data and whether it can be used to identify needs in a community.

BBC Trust plan to open up 10% of BBC radio output on top of independent quota mirrors TV 'window of creative competition'

John Plunkett in The Guardian has published details of the review that the BBC Trust has undertaken into the relationship between radio based independent producers and the BBC.

[The Trust] has announced plans that a further 10% of BBC radio programming will be opened up to independent programme-makers on top of the 10% quota that is already guaranteed to the sector.

 But the 10% isn't currently guaranteed, it is a voluntary quota!

The extra 10% – which can be competed for by both in-house and independent producers – will mirror the window of creative competition, or WoCC, which already exists in BBC TV.

As someone who took part in that review it is a step forward but I wouldn't call it a victory. The BBC by restricting the amount of commissions to 10% and a 10% of  WoCC isn't going to make a huge difference. The best would be a doubling of commissions available to the independent sector, the worst case scenario is no change as the BBC decides to commission all the 10% WoCC from in house. The Guardian report continues...

The trust called for a "step change in the way in which the BBC operates" in commissioning programmes from the independent radio sector. It said the relationship had become "strained" and called for the BBC to be "more open and transparent" in its dealings with outside producers. "Urgent improvement" was required, it said. The BBC has exceeded its 10% voluntary indie quota in all but one of the last 10 years. 

I am not sure I agree with that statement.

But the trust said competition for the best ideas "has not been consistently embraced by the BBC in radio". It said it was "concerned" by the BBC's current approach commissioning, with tightly defined supplier lists that "may restrict the range and diversity of those who supply content to the BBC". Independent radio producers had called for a minimum 25% quota and a further 25% WoCC, as operates in BBC TV. But the trust stopped well short of such an increase, saying a reduction in the BBC's in-house operations to a guaranteed minimum of 50% of output "would cause great instability".

But if the independent sector doesn't get a larger quota it can't expand and develop. To put it simply there isn't a viable living to be made.

The trust also criticised BBC management after it "encountered difficulties in conducting this review due to the lack of detailed information being collected". "We are therefore looking to the executive to better develop the way in which it monitors its obligations, particularly with regards to how range and diversity might be assessed in the trust's next review."

David Liddiment, chair of the trust's audiences and performance committee, said the BBC's radio services were "both popular and distinctive [and] make a vital contribution to the public purposes".
"However, this review has shown that the BBC's approach to commissioning from the sector does not always work as well as it should. "Putting more of the programmes up for grabs will help promote competition for the best ideas, wherever they come from. That will be good for licence-fee payers, whose interests the trust is here to serve. And we are particularly keen to see a much more open and fair approach to commissioning from the independent sector."

Well I am not impressed with this outcome. I was really hoping the radio sector would get parity with the TV sector, but I am pleased to see the Trust reporting their dissatisfaction with the way the BBC deals with radio indies. But again I wait to see what effect this will have on the way BBC Radio works with the indie sector.