How Sharper Than The Bosses Axe It Is

Michael Hedges June 12, 2014 Follow on Twitter

Stability was once the hallmark of public broadcasting. Day after day, year after year, little changed and very solid brands were formed. New management practice has arrived, not simply cutting budgets and staff but shuffling the organizational plan. Tension, so goes the theory, is superior to complacency. Or maybe horizontal motion is confused with progress.

Expected reorganization at UK public broadcaster BBC’s radio operations were announced this week. All national BBC radio channels are effected by the consolidation of functions into two “hubs” – one centered around pop music, the other classical music and speech. The new organigram will make BBC radio “as small as we can be,” said radio director Helen Boaden in the official statement, “to meet our savings challenges and increase our agility in the digital world without losing our distinctiveness or damaging relationships with our many audiences.”

“BBC Radio is the envy of the world and our creativity is second to none,” she said in her message. Those charged with envy and creativity, managers and show hosts, will largely be spared in this round of the Delivering Quality First (DGF) cost reduction program; 65 support staff, largely from the radio and music production department, will not.  “Reducing the division’s headcount by 15% is challenging, but shows just how hard we are working to drive efficiency in everything we do.”

Last week several weekend and specialty program show hosts on BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra were dismissed. “These cuts to our budget are hurting,” said channels controller Ben Cooper, quoted by the Guardian (June 5). “It means I have had to make some tough choices and say goodbye to some friends and respected colleagues.”

Some channels will share administrative and commissioning functions around the new hubs. The pop music hub will include Radio 1, 1Xtra, Radio 2, 6Music and BBC Asian Network. Radio 3, Radio 4 and 4Xtra will comprise the classical music and speech hub. Two management level positions will be created. Sports-talk channels Five Live and Five Live Sports Extra are part of the BBC North division with different management and locus operandi, therefore not part of this restructuring. BBC local radio stations are not affected in this round. Under DGF BBC radio is to shed a total of 200 positions and 20% of its budget by 2017.

Reorganization, job and budget cuts are part of the BBC landscape. Under Director-General Mark Thompson the DQF plan, announced in 2011 and approved by the BBC Trust thereafter, was “the most far-reaching transformation in its history,” observed BBC media correspondent Torin Douglas, who took voluntary redundancy in 2013. “A lot of BBC staff are unhappy about the pay of their managers, the way the BBC is managed and so on,” he said to the Press Gazette (April 30, 2013). Mr. Thompson left the BBC in 2012 and is currently New York Times Company CEO.

Commercial competitors, including newspaper publishers, and politicians have continuously circled the BBC with long knives. Mark Thompson’s exit coincided with a series of controversial management decisions – or indecisions, as the case may be. His successor, George Entwistle, lasted but 54 days in the DG job. BBC Audio and Music director Tim Davie, on his way to the BBC Worldwide CEO job, was held over as acting DG until current DG Tony Hall arrived.  

The scandal de jour taking out Mr. Entwistle embroiled BBC News, in the bright light of television. Helen Boaden was then director of BBC News. Shortly after Mr. Entwistle’s departure, Ms Boaden was reassigned to BBC Radio, renamed from BBC Audio and Music by Lord Hall.   

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is preparing placards for possible industrial action. “What is expensive is paying the bloated salaries of the senior management who are paid vast sums for, in many cases, doing a bad job,” said NUJ broadcast organizer Sue Harris in a statement (June 11). “If posts are to go, we expect the staff to be redeployed; we will fight every threat of compulsory redundancy.”

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