Archives for October 2009

Many of my BBC jobs have been in News, where we were obviously very interested in what was happening there and then because news is all about the present - and we might have had a flicker of interest, but no more than that, in planning something for the next day if we were really pushed. But we'd have laughed at the idea of a deadline that's 1000 days away.

So now I'm the BBC's director of London 2012 - and there's a deadline that's 1000 days away because today it's precisely that distance to the Opening Ceremony of the London Olympics on July 27th, 2012. But there's no sense at all of this being remote. It's starting to feel remarkably close, and it's setting a lot of earlier decision-points if we want to be in the right shape for one of the biggest challenges this country and the BBC are facing.

Have no doubt: this is the largest event that will ever have taken place in the UK, and it will be the BBC's most extensive set of outside broadcasts, ever. Having the Olympics in our own country - effectively the most important championships in 26 different sports - is like having multiple Cup Finals played all over London and the rest of the UK for a period of 17 days. It will attract hundreds of world leaders, thousands of athletes and millions of spectators.

But 2012 is even more than that. It's also a year in which we hope to be celebrating the first Diamond Jubilee since Queen Victoria's at the end of the 19th century. Both the Royal and the Olympic story will start when Big Ben chimes in the New Year, and we'll then cover the landmarks like the lighting of London's Olympic flame in Greece; its journey round the UK; and all the arts and performance events that are designed to deliver a Cultural Olympiad alongside the sport.

So here in the BBC our planning is already well underway - and we want to deliver something that brings the UK together to celebrate all the extraordinary moments. We'll have failed if people in Aberdeen and Truro don't feel they can share the experience of the people crowding the streets of London for the spectacles or visiting the Olympic Park to see Usain Bolt in action. We're also acutely aware that this is the year when almost all analogue television will be switched off, so it will be a fully-fledged digital world in which audiences expect top-quality services and the widest range of choice on tv, radio, online and mobile.

Therefore we need to start building the infrastructure now if we're to make the most of digital technology. We have to choose our studios around the Olympic Park in the coming weeks because if we don't agree our base then it will be too late to construct one. We're slotting in some of the proposed concerts and performance events to our 2012 broadcasting schedules, because commissioning deadlines are looming for the most ambitious pieces. And we're meeting with a vast range of partners - from the organising committee at LOCOG to government departments, the Mayor's office, commercial companies, sports governing bodies and national arts institutions.



I'm sharing what we're up to in my own regular blog - so you can read there about our hope to capture some of the content in 3D and Super HD, along with issues like what the Cultural Olympiad should be like. Perhaps because of that news background, I love debate and the more conversations we can have with audiences the happier I am. It doesn't mean we'll always agree - I have to say I'm not sure about some of the ideas coming in about the 2012 ceremonies in one of my recent posts - but even if we differ about Chas, Dave and cockney singalongs, we want this to be a story in which everyone can take part.

(Roger Mosey is the BBC's director of London 2012 and posts regularly on the Olympics on his own blog here.)

Thanks to all who posted comments on my last post, I will attempt to answer some of your questions.

First of all, it's timely that there is a question here that relates to rugby union coverage, specifically because just this week we announced a significant autumn season of rugby on the BBC spanning BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, Radio 5 Live, BBC Sport Online and BBC Red Button.

All of the Wales and Scotland matches will be broadcast live, while there will be highlights of England's matches against Australia, Argentina and New Zealand.

This weekend I'm also delighted that we've got international rugby league back on the BBC when the England and Australia game is broadcast live - this being the first rugby league international on our network for nine years.

I really do believe that our rights portfolio is currently very strong and that the sports we've got on the BBC right now are extremely wide-ranging and do reflect a very healthy mix of fixtures and events. These include sports across the spectrum. For example: American football, athletics, badminton, basketball, bowls, cricket, darts, equestrianism, football, golf, gymnastics, horse racing, motor racing, motorcycling, road and track cycling, rowing, rugby league, rugby union, sailing, skiing, snooker, Summer Olympics, Paralympics, tennis, triathlon and, of course, the Winter Olympics.

In relation to the NFL query: we show and are showing the Superbowl final live and in the past we have indeed shown the Wembley NFL game as a simulcast broadcast with Sky. This year, though, we felt it was better value for licence fee payers if we showed this clash as a highlights package.

Sport on the BBC has a number of roles and it is not always to chase ratings but to provide coverage of mass popular sports as well as those that would not get the same exposure elsewhere. So while not every sport is to everyone's liking, we're attempting to attract a cross section of licence fee payers.

The Government's listed events review is currently ongoing and the results should be known by the end of the year, but you can look at our submission in full here, which should answer some of your questions.

As for the question about more details on specific events - a lot of these are still in the planning stages, but you will hear more about them as they start to be confirmed.

Early next week, there will be a change to how you leave comments on this blog - we're upgrading our current registration system to a new and improved one.

When you log in to the new system, you will be prompted to upgrade your existing account, and you should be able to do that with a minimum of fuss.

More details on this can be found on the BBC Internet Blog.

On Tuesday night I was at the London School of Economics (LSE) - my old stomping ground when I was a student in the late '70s. It brought back some fond memories - nipping over the road to the Bush House to watch my tutor broadcast on the World Service; enjoying a great curry in the basement restaurant.

I was there to give a speech in which I argued for the continued relevance of public service broadcasting in the digital age and suggested that the UK was faced with a watershed opportunity to decide the shape of broadcasting for the coming decades.

It was a fitting location. Both the LSE and the BBC are owned by the public and are there not to turn a profit, but to be of cultural value to their shareholders.

Questions ranged from how the BBC learns from other broadcasters to how we ensure that pronunciation is correct on our news bulletins. They came from new students through to LSE alumni now in their 80s.

The BBC is also an octogenarian and, if you believe some of our critics, ripe for retirement. But, as I pointed out last night, because the BBC has a great tradition in leading technological revolutions in broadcasting, from colour TV to the iPlayer, we have remained as relevant and valuable to the public today as we ever have been.

One of the many ways in which we can build on this value is by making our programme archive available to the public, finding ways to make full use of the new models - both commercial and non-commercial - that are being driven by advances in online technology.

The archive is a fabulously rich resource, tracing changes in Britain's class system, accents, landscape, architecture, social mores, race and gender politics.

During my speech I announced that we are moving ahead with the creation of an online catalogue which will be the first step in allowing people access to the archive, listing every programme we have broadcast to date and cross-referencing that schedule information with our internal programme database.

We aim to make this available by Christmas 2010 and then we will really go to work, collaborating with organisations and individuals to put flesh on the bones.

I hope that unlocking the BBC's archives will serve as a catalyst to increasing the size and richness of this country's cultural and creative commons. If it does, it could herald a new epoch in public service broadcasting.

I have been in my role as the BBC's Director of Sport for six months now, so I'm pleased to have this opportunity to give an insight into what's been going on behind the scenes in our division during that time.

It has been an exhilarating few months for BBC Sport but also a challenging one with the planning of significant outputs such as the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the 2012 London Olympic Games and the move to Salford all in the pipeline.

These challenges are being met in a sports broadcasting climate that is significantly evolving, with a number of major issues taking centre stage.

Today, in Westminster, I addressed a group of MPs and experts on one of the most emotive issues currently facing the industry - the government's review of listed events legislation.



For the BBC, the debate on the review is very simple.

Free-to-air listed events benefit audiences in a way that few other television events can manage. The arguments for protecting these events of major national resonance, such as the Olympics and Wimbledon, are as relevant today as they were when the system was first put in place.



In a diverse society and fragmenting media landscape, a big sporting moment is one of the few places where people can come together and unite. Major sporting events available on a universal, free-to-air basis must continue to be a cornerstone of our public service broadcasting system and are arguably more important than ever.

And we know that audiences agree.



Research has also told us that there are a core group of fans who are willing to pay to watch sport on television, but that leaves millions who only watch sport on free-to-air-channels. A significant majority of viewers would be lost to sport if they had to pay for it and in that context I believe that making major changes to the current listing structure would irreparably damage the cultural fabric of the UK.

We want to maintain access to sport for people who don't want to pay subscriptions; and, even more crucially, we see it as a public service commitment to help bring different and less mainstream sports to our mass-audience channels.

So with that, I'd like to move on to talking about all of the other things BBC Sport has on its plate at the moment.

In 2008 the BBC broadcast 1,077 hours of sport on terrestrial TV and 3,500 on our interactive services. On radio we broadcast 4,300 hours of output on 5 Live and 5 Live Sports Extra. We currently show a total of around 57 varieties of sport a year. We are also in the throes of a revolution in the way in which audiences expect their content delivered. Alongside television, that means online, mobile and red button services playing an important role in delivering our content as the national broadcaster.

As we are currently focused on events such as the Vancouver Winter Olympics in February 2010, next year's Football World Cup in South Africa and of course London 2012 - the most important planned event in the UK in our lifetimes and the biggest challenge ever to face BBC Sport - cross-platform services are crucial for all broadcasters in order to fully serve audience demands.

But there is another serious issue which I feel the BBC can play a role in and it is one that is affecting the future of this nation's health.

The British Heart Foundation has recently released research which shows that just one in eight children benefits from the recommended amount of daily exercise.

Their study concluded that more than two-thirds of all British children will suffer from obesity by 2050.

This is a pressing and serious issue and both individuals and organisations can play an important role. Families, of course, are crucial in this, but government, schools and councils have an important part to play too.

Ipsos MORI research indicates that watching live sport on TV can genuinely promote interest in sport, with 43% of UK adults saying that they have become more interested in sport as a result of watching it on TV, and for those who never participate in sport the result is 29%.

But the BBC as the national broadcaster can also have an important role here.

The power of high-quality sports broadcasting can be a powerful tool in inspiring young people to take up sport and increase participation across the country.

Hello, I'm Keith Jones, and I am Head of Communications and Complaints in BBC Audience Services, which doesn't describe very clearly what I, or my team, do. I'm responsible for managing a large chunk of the services we provide for our audiences.

We have felt for some time that we should explain more about what we do, so I plan to use this blog to do that and also explain some of the issues generating reaction from audiences.

One of our most popular services is providing tickets to our radio and TV shows or events, and for the award-winning tours of our studios and buildings. I'd urge you to come and visit: we promise you'll have a really good time visiting or coming to a BBC show.

But there's another important side to our work. It's through my teams that most people send in their comments, appreciations or complaints about BBC programmes, either online at the Contact Us site or by telephone (look up BBC in your phone directory). As a result of all this feedback we know a lot about how people react to our programmes.



The strongest demand is always for more information or help using our services. We provide this mostly online on the Help site and although we can't answer everything, we do our best to find answers and publish them online. And for some of the issues covered in programmes we provide access to further information and sources of advice on our Action Line site.



Every morning one of our services is to collate the reaction we've received and report it to programme makers and managers across the BBC. If you read the press you'd think the BBC only receives complaints but although newspapers are always more interested in complaints, they are a relatively small proportion of all the reactions we receive.



For example, many viewers were recently moved by the quality of our documentary Wounded and contacted us to say so. We've also had appreciations for Life, The Choice, The Choir and Strictly Come Dancing. We did have many complaints about the replacement of Arlene Philips by Alesha Dixon, but we've also had appreciations for Alesha now the series is up and running.



We had lots of reaction to a recent interview with Gordon Brown, and you'll be only too aware of the response to the inclusion of the British National Party in Question Time. We have editorial obligations and standards which we must keep to across all our coverage, so in such cases we try to explain why when we believe criticism is misplaced (a good example can be seen on Ric Bailey's blog or in Mark Thompson's response on this blog).



How do we react to all this reaction? The short answer is that it depends on what it is about. Sometimes we can change things, sometimes we can't. For example when thousands of viewers complained that they were unable to watch the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics because it was screened during working hours, we changed our schedules and were able to repeat it. We read every comment (yes, every comment) and make them available to producers and managers in our reports. But we are mindful to listen to what other audience research findings tell us as well as those who contact us.



If we get something wrong we should apologise and say so. But often we are unable to agree with those who complained and try to give our reasoning. So we provide a rigorous complaints service, and we publish regular summaries of the main issues we have considered and which people have raised.



We can't please everyone, and must often balance competing pressures. During Wimbledon this year, for example, many people were pleased that we kept some key matches on BBC One when they overran. But others were extremely unhappy about the disruption which inevitably followed to the rest of the schedule, especially to our news bulletins at 6.30pm. So, obviously, we must take this into account in planning our coverage next year.



The importance for us is to carry on listening to your reaction. We're grateful that our programmes matter so much to so many. We take everyone's reaction seriously and can sometimes act on it, but I hope this helps to explain why the BBC cannot always respond in the many ways different people would like us to.

The decision to invite Nick Griffin, the British National party leader onto tonight's edition of Question Time is obviously an editorial judgement - and one for which the BBC and I will certainly be called to account. But it is not a decision like the running order for this morning's Today programme or the line-up of stars on this season's Strictly Come Dancing.

Those who argue that the BBC is right to feature BNP politicians occasionally on the air but is nonetheless wrong to have invited them onto Question Time fail to understand not just the programme itself but the reality of what the BBC's central principle of political impartiality means in practice.

Question Time is an opportunity for the British public to put questions to politicians of every ideological hue. Politicians from the UK's biggest parties appear most frequently, but from time to time, representatives from parties with many fewer supporters, from the Scottish Socialists, and Respect to the Green party, also take their seats on the stage. Question Time is the most prominent programme of its kind on British TV and we carefully study the support gained in elections by each of the parties, large and small, before deciding who to invite and how frequently they should appear.

It is a straightforward matter of fact that, with some 6% of the vote and the election of two MEPs in this spring's European elections and with some success in local elections as well, the BNP has demonstrated a level of support which would normally lead to an occasional invitation to join the panel on Question Time. It is for that reason, not for some misguided desire to be controversial, but for that reason alone  that the invitation has been extended.

For the BBC to say to the BNP (or indeed to any political party), 'yes, you've met the objective criteria for appearing on Question Time, but we have decided that in your case it would be more appropriate if you didn't, but instead appeared on Newsnight or Panorama,' would be for us to deny them parity with other parties, presumably on the basis of our own, or somebody else's qualitative political judgement about the BNP.

That isn't impartiality, it is its opposite. It would be contrary to our obligations under the BBC's Charter and contrary, I believe, to the British public's expectations of us. It would be wrong.

Does that mean that we believe the BNP should not be challenged? Of course not. They should be challenged as tenaciously and as searchingly as any other political party  and I believe they are when they appear on the BBC. From news coverage to hard-hitting, and indeed award-winning, investigative journalism, we have probed both the BNP's stated policies and some of the views of the party's leaders and supporters which are expressed only behind closed doors.

But Question Time is the public's chance to challenge the politicians - that is why it is so important that they should sometimes be able to hear and interrogate politicians from the relative fringes as well as from the mainstream.

Political parties of course have the right to be treated fairly and evenhandedly by the BBC. But the central right we are upholding in this decision is the public's right to hear the full range of political perspectives, to hear other members of the public putting those perspectives to the test, and then to form their own conclusions. Excluding any party with demonstrable popular support from taking part in the programme would be to curtail this public right.

The case against inviting the BNP to appear on Question Time is a case for censorship  the case, in other words, that (in the opinion of those who make it) the BNP's policies are so abhorrent and so liable to sow hatred and division that they should be excluded from this form of public discourse altogether.

Democratic societies sometimes do decide that some parties and organisations are beyond the pale. As a result, they proscribe them and/or ban them from the airwaves. The UK government took exactly this step with specific parties and organisations in Northern Ireland in the 1980s.

Many of course would argue that proscription and censorship can be counter-productive and that it is usually better to engage and challenge extreme views than to try to eliminate them through suppression. My point is simply that the drastic steps of proscription and censorship can only be taken by government and parliament. Though we argued against it, the BBC abided by the Northern Ireland broadcasting ban in the 1980s and, if the BNP were proscribed, the BBC would abide by that decision too and the BNP would not appear on Question Time.

But that hasn't happened and, until such time as it does, it is unreasonable and inconsistent to take the position that a party like the BNP is acceptable enough for the public to vote for, but not acceptable enough to appear on democratic platforms like Question Time. If there is a case for censorship, it should be debated and decided in Parliament. Political censorship cannot be outsourced to the BBC or anyone else.

At the heart of public service broadcasting is the idea of public space  of programmes and services which are available to all and within which people can encounter not just ideas and attitudes which accord with their own, but ones which are utterly different from theirs and with which they may profoundly disagree. As the present debate about Question Time demonstrates, maintaining this space is sometimes difficult and controversial. It is also essential, if we really want the public to engage in the democratic debate about the great issues of the day.

(This article appeared in today's Guardian)

Hello, and welcome to the About the BBC blog. We'll be using this blog as a place where decision makers and experts can talk about things going on inside the BBC. This could include anything; from major announcements to how parts of the corporation operate. We'll also be highlighting and linking to the fascinating debates happening on the many other blogs, message boards and other social media, inside and outside the BBC website.



Above all, this blog is about openness and accountability to you, the licence fee payer, so we really hope that you'll tell us what you think by adding your comments. You'll need to sign in to contribute if you're new to BBC Blogs, but creating your membership is quick and easy.

We pre-moderate comments which means we read all your comments before we publish them. We won't publish comments that break the house rules and may also remove comments that stray off the topic. You can read our full terms and conditions here.

And while we hope that we can occasionally respond to your comments, please remember that adding a comment is not the same as contacting us. If you want to make a point that is not related to the blog, or you would like your views to be recorded and passed on please contact us.

I really hope you enjoy the writing and insights that will unfold here in the next few months, and that you, in turn, feel inspired to contribute to those stories that make the BBC such an exciting place today.

Chris Jones - Editor