Did the BBC devote too much time in its news programmes to the meltdown of Murdoch's media empire? One of the topics in this week's Feedback.
The BBC's annual report came out this week, though you may hardly have noticed given the dominance of the coverage of the Murdoch meltdown, (something we discussed in this week's Feedback.)
What caught my eye was not the sums paid to star presenters (I couldn't bear to look) but what the BBC spent on radio in the year 2010/11.
Not allowing for inflation, spending on Radio 1 went up 9.8%, on Radio 2 by 11.3%. Radio 4 received an increase of 6.3%.
So these three stations had increase above inflation.
Radio 5 live by contrast had an increase of only 0.3% before inflation and Radio 3 was the hardest hit of all. It had a cut of 7.3% which, when you add inflation comes in real terms to a reduction of at least 10%.
Now doubtless there are detailed reasons for this but it does give a very rough insight into the BBC's priorities.
In Feedback this week we also look not at the past year but to the future of radio and it appears to be in vision, or at least visualised.
In other words if you listen online there is an increasing amount of visual accompaniment to be enjoyed or endured, be it live streaming of concert performance or the opportunity to see Chris Moyles standing up.
Victoria Derbyshire's show on 5 Live is also visualised, and as I am a Derbyshire fan, I seized the opportunity to go and talk to her and her editor about it.
We met last Tuesday at 8am in Television Centre as Victoria prepared her morning show.
Here are some of those links as discussed in that piece.
- Victoria Derbyshire hosts a debate on immigration in Luton
- Benjamin Chesterton's photo film Lebanon's Missing
And at the risk of being accused of bandwagon jumping - we've done our own bit of visualisation - (taken from an original idea by Bob Dylan...)
Next week - "Feedback - The Movie"... Perhaps.
By the way, in two weeks time I will be talking to the Controller of Radio 4 about the schedule changes she has just announced, which include getting rid of Americana, On the Ropes, The Choice and Taking a Stand, extending the World at One to 45 minutes and moving programmes like Feedback to later in the afternoon.
I will have lots to ask her, not least about that, but do tell me what else you'd like me to raise. Ways to contact us are below.
Roger Bolton is the presenter of Feedback
- Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
- Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
- Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.
- Picture caption: "22/01/2006 BBC Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch before being interviewed by Jeff Randall on BBC Radio Five Lives Weekend Business programme, Sunday January 22, 2006."
