This week's news on BBC cuts.
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Blue Peter among kids' shows to be axed from BBC1
16 MayITN
Children's television programmes including Blue Peter and Newsround are to be dropped from the BBC's mainstream channels to cut costs.
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Blue Peter cut from BBC1 as Children's television programmes move to digital channels
16 MayThe Independent - Media
Children's television programmes including Blue Peter and Newsround will be moved off BBC1 and BBC2 as part of the corporation's cost-cutting measures.
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Children's TV to leave BBC1, BBC2
16 MayBelfasttelegraph.co.uk
Children's television programmes including Blue Peter and Newsround will be moved off BBC1 and BBC2 as part of the corporation's cost-cutting measures.
Related Stories
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BBC savings given green light as local radio cuts halved
16 MayJournalism.co.uk
The BBC Trust asked the broadcaster to scale back proposed cuts to local radio, but has approved others, including a 'new all-England programme' for stations on weekday evenings
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Blue Peter to be ditched from BBC1
16 MayGuardian.co.uk - Media News
Kids' programming to move to CBBC and CBeebies as shows struggle against TV aimed at adults
Blue Peter is to be dropped from BBC1 as part of wide-ranging shakeup that will see all the BBC's children's programmes moved from its flagship channel after more than 60 years.
The corporation will move all children's programming to digital channels CBBC and CBeebies, as part of wide-ranging plans to cut hundreds of millions of pounds from its budget by 2017 and rejig its output for the post-analogue broadcasting era.
Blue Peter is currently presented by Helen Skelton and Barney Harwood, and airs on BBC1 on Friday afternoons, as well as CBBC. Last Friday Blue Peter attracted 300,000 viewers and a 3% audience share, and struggles to win viewers who tune into programming aimed at adults.
On Wednesday the BBC Trust gave the green light to director general Mark Thompson's Delivering Quality First proposals, including the children's programming switch. The DQF cuts will also see fewer entertainment shows, more repeats and reduced programming budgets for BBC3 and BBC4.
The BBC Trust said that viewing of children's programming on BBC1 and BBC2 "is low and has fallen significantly over recent years".
As a result following the completion of digital switchover later this year all children's shows will transfer to CBBC and CBeebies, which the BBC Trust said will affect a "very low" number of children viewers. Following switchover CBBC and CBeebies will be available to all UK households.
The BBC Trust said that the level of investment in children's programming would be maintained, meaning that the proportion of the licence fee spent on children's output will actually increase.
"Children's output remains a cornerstone of the BBC's public service offering and one of the BBC's foremost editorial priorities," said the BBC Trust.
More details soon...
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BBC scales back local radio cuts to £8m
16 MayPress Gazette Latest News
The BBC has halved its proposed cutbacks across its local radio network from £15m to around £8m.
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BBC halves local radio cuts
16 MayGuardian.co.uk - Media News
Corporation to drop plans for sharing afternoon shows as it reduces target from £15m to £8m
The BBC will drop controversial plans to share afternoon shows between its local radio stations with the total amount of cuts halved to £8m a year from the originally proposed £15m.
This local radio cuts U-turn, which had been much anticipated following comments by BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten earlier this year, follows protests by listeners and MPs over the scale of the proposed savings announced last year.
The savings will now be £8m rather than the originally proposed £15m, with the impact on stations' content reduced from £8.5m to £2.1m.
The majority of the BBC's 40 local radio stations in England will retain their own afternoon programmes with far fewer cuts to journalists and reporting staff.
Sport and other community output, which station managers feared would suffer as a result of the changes, will also be given more protection than originally envisaged.
But the BBC will go ahead with plans to share output on weekday evenings with a new "Radio England" programme between 7pm and 10pm, with opt-outs for live sport and local news.
The BBC Trust confirmed the scaling-back of the cuts on Wednesday, following a public consultation over the proposals and a separate consultation on the future of its local radio services.
Spending on local radio was reviewed along with the rest of the corporation's output as part of BBC director general Mark Thompson's Delivering Quality First initiative following the 2010 funding deal with the government, which saw the licence fee frozen at £145.50 until 2017 – a 16% cut in real terms.
More details soon...
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The value of the NHS and the BBC is immeasurable
16 MayNew Statesman
Attempts to denigrate these public institutions must be resistedIt has never been easy to justify making people pay for something they don't use. That is often how disgruntled Britons now see the NHS and BBC, despite the fact that often those who complain about their high taxes or the licence fee conveniently forget their recent trip to their GP, the maternity ward or the hours they spend enjoying commercial-free TV and radio. But the greatest value of these last major publicly owned institutions is not even quantifiable and it is the consistent failure to make this most difficult of cases for the defence that leaves them so vulnerable.
There is a lot to moan about at the moment. We can gripe about crime and bad schools or the Olympics bringing London to standstill or corrupt and elitist politicians – a dog even won Britain's Got Talent. But there are still a few things that make me relatively pleased to live here. Two things, in fact. The poor raggedy old NHS and the bloated, sometimes crappy but often wonderful BBC. The reasons for lumping these two behemoths together is simple: they both contribute to something well beyond their material value and they are both under dire threat.
Sometimes it seems as if the forces of free-market conservatism are out to get the NHS and BBC precisely because their true worth cannot be expressed on a balance sheet. They are the unfinished business of Thatcherite reform. It's as if it is not just that the government wants to dismantle the NHS for the benefit of profiteering healthcare firms and the BBC for their media-mogul friends, but that it simply can't stand the idea of people contributing to a communal pot for the benefit of everyone. It must really get up the noses of Boris Johnson, who called for a Tory director general this week, and Andrew Lansley, who has fewer friends in public health than the MRSA superbug, to see people “wasting” their money on obscure radio stations and someone else's heart op.
What the NHS and BBC embody and promote is that most slippery and seemingly useless political trope - the public good. This makes it even easier for their opponents. That the mayor of London, not exactly unencumbered by friends in the media, thinks he has the right to meddle in the affairs of the BBC shows the danger it is in. That, after labelling nurses and doctors as communists, the health secretary can this week effectively accuse the Royal College of Nursing of lying over job cuts again demonstrates the way opposition to NHS privitisation is portrayed as wrong economically and ideologically. So in both cases, the fight to save the head and heart of the nation should not only employ facts and figures, but the abstract. Sharing, redistribution, pluralism, protecting the less able and serving the less resourced - these are not worthless because they cannot be rendered statistically. The issue goes far beyond ratings for Eastenders and Radio 3 or cancer recovery rates and waiting times for hip replacements.
It is logical for me to pay for a local radio station that I don't listen to because it serves a community in a way a commercial one never could - or a national network I don't like because it enriches our culture in a way a profit-seeking company would never have the freedom to. I don't need to benefit directly or even “see” the benefit in others, because I am already benefiting by living in a society where such things exist. In the health service the advantages are even more blatant. By contributing to the cost of healthcare for the poorest in society, the wealthiest are helping to reduce suffering in others and by extension for everyone. The social benefits of better universal health, more workers and less crime for example, are obvious, but an explanation involves the kind of conceptual thinking politicians do not trust themselves to present to the public.
The enormous cost of the NHS and the BBC and the way the funds are collected from the public are being used as a hammer to provoke the basest reflexes of self-interest and insularity, Preying on the short-termism and anxiety of recession, the enemies of public ownership are seeking to create an environment in which such ideals are seen as redundant and archaic. It doesn't help that the BBC is guilty of grandiloquent and budget busting projects, yet turns to cutting local and specialist radio – perhaps the greatest expression of its public service – to save money. Despite the faults and weaknesses of both institutions, the forces against them should be resisted. The NHS and BBC, flawed as they are, are not merely worth protecting, they are just about the only two things left that preserve any sense of national community and cohesion.
The mere act of public funding has value. It is not selfless charity or waste; providing our hard-earned wages for something not solely for our own good contributes to our own good because the world we live is a kinder, better, less dumb, less rapacious place for it. In other words, if you think Britain is a divided, violent, parochial and unenlightened country to live in now, without the NHS and the BBC it would be immeasurably worse. There's the rub: the NHS and the BBC make Britain a better place to live - immeasurably.George Chesterton blogs on politics and culture for the Huffington Post UK
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The value of the NHS and the BBC is immeasurable
16 MayNew Statesman
Attempts toIt has never been easy to justify making people pay for something they don't use. That is often how disgruntled Britons now see the NHS and BBC, despite the fact that often those who complain about their high taxes or the licence fee conveniently forget their recent trip to their GP, the maternity ward or the hours they spend enjoying commercial-free TV and radio. But the greatest value of these last major publicly owned institutions is not even quantifiable and it is the consistent failure to make this most difficult of cases for the defence that leaves them so vulnerable.
There is a lot to moan about at the moment. We can gripe about crime and bad schools or the Olympics bringing London to standstill or corrupt and elitist politicians – a dog even won Britain's Got Talent. But there are still a few things that make me relatively pleased to live here. Two things, in fact. The poor raggedy old NHS and the bloated, sometimes crappy but often wonderful BBC. The reasons for lumping these two behemoths together is simple: they both contribute to something well beyond their material value and they are both under dire threat.
Sometimes it seems as if the forces of free-market conservatism are out to get the NHS and BBC precisely because their true worth cannot be expressed on a balance sheet. They are the unfinished business of Thatcherite reform. It's as if it is not just that the government wants to dismantle the NHS for the benefit of profiteering healthcare firms and the BBC for their media-mogul friends, but that it simply can't stand the idea of people contributing to a communal pot for the benefit of everyone. It must really get up the noses of Boris Johnson, who called for a Tory director general this week, and Andrew Lansley, who has fewer friends in public health than the MRSA superbug, to see people “wasting” their money on obscure radio stations and someone else's heart op.
What the NHS and BBC embody and promote is that most slippery and seemingly useless political trope - the public good. This makes it even easier for their opponents. That the mayor of London, not exactly unencumbered by friends in the media, thinks he has the right to meddle in the affairs of the BBC shows the danger it is in. That, after labelling nurses and doctors as communists, the health secretary can this week effectively accuse the Royal College of Nursing of lying over job cuts again demonstrates the way opposition to NHS privitisation is portrayed as wrong economically and ideologically. So in both cases, the fight to save the head and heart of the nation should not only employ facts and figures, but the abstract. Sharing, redistribution, pluralism, protecting the less able and serving the less resourced - these are not worthless because they cannot be rendered statistically. The issue goes far beyond ratings for Eastenders and Radio 3 or cancer recovery rates and waiting times for hip replacements.
It is logical for me to pay for a local radio station that I don't listen to because it serves a community in a way a commercial one never could - or a national network I don't like because it enriches our culture in a way a profit-seeking company would never have the freedom to. I don't need to benefit directly or even “see” the benefit in others, because I am already benefiting by living in a society where such things exist. In the health service the advantages are even more blatant. By contributing to the cost of healthcare for the poorest in society, the wealthiest are helping to reduce suffering in others and by extension for everyone. The social benefits of better universal health, more workers and less crime for example, are obvious, but an explanation involves the kind of conceptual thinking politicians do not trust themselves to present to the public.
The enormous cost of the NHS and the BBC and the way the funds are collected from the public are being used as a hammer to provoke the basest reflexes of self-interest and insularity, Preying on the short-termism and anxiety of recession, the enemies of public ownership are seeking to create an environment in which such ideals are seen as redundant and archaic. It doesn't help that the BBC is guilty of grandiloquent and budget busting projects, yet turns to cutting local and specialist radio – perhaps the greatest expression of its public service – to save money. Despite the faults and weaknesses of both institutions, the forces against them should be resisted. The NHS and BBC, flawed as they are, are not merely worth protecting, they are just about the only two things left that preserve any sense of national community and cohesion.
The mere act of public funding has value. It is not selfless charity or waste; providing our hard-earned wages for something not solely for our own good contributes to our own good because the world we live is a kinder, better, less dumb, less rapacious place for it. In other words, if you think Britain is a divided, violent, parochial and unenlightened country to live in now, without the NHS and the BBC it would be immeasurably worse. There's the rub: the NHS and the BBC make Britain a better place to live - immeasurably.George Chesterton blogs on politics and culture for the Huffington Post UK
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BBC to air allegations of UK firms avoiding tax
11 MayThe Independent - Media
Several major UK firms cut secret tax deals with Luxembourg authorities to avoid paying corporation tax in Britain, it will be alleged next week.
