Search results matching tag 'BBC Trust'

TV Licensing - too much stick, not enough carrot

1704826 — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 10:50:00 GMT

TV Licensing's ads have always been threatening in nature, but in recent years the stick they use to coerce people to cough up seems to have grown out of proportion.

It's easy to understand why - the proliferation of media channels means that the Corporation is aware that the tax is unpopular and difficult to justify when there is so much choice elsewhere. A stick showing the consequences of non-compliance, as well as desperate attempts to engage with audiences who are served elsewhere by employing people such as Russell Brand, has been the BBC's remedy.

Sadly, the Corporation has managed to get both of these tactics wrong as shown by the sacking of Proximity London for sending out inaccurate warning letters to members of the public that over-claimed on the number of evaders that had been caught in their localities.

It's striking how swiftly the BBC has moved following the breaking of the story in the Sunday Telegraph; perhaps the BBC management has learnt from the dithering over the Brand affair. However this is another example of just how the BBC's Board of Governors failed to govern during Gilligan, the BBC Trust has got a lot to do to restore that particular virtue in the Corporation.

Only then can Proximity's replacement adopt a strategy that describes why the licence fee is worth paying rather than threatens the consequences of not.

Shove it up your *** Mark Thompson

1704826 — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:36:00 GMT

Anyone else watch Mark Thompson's and Michael Lyons' performance before the Commons culture, media and sport select committee? There was pitiful little evidence of either wearing a hair shirt - in fact, neither looked that they were particularly bothered to be there.

Thompson said that the BBC had been responsible for a ‘serious editorial lapse'. No Mark, it had been responsible for a complete lapse in taste, judgment and management by allowing personally offensive material to be recorded in the first place in the name of entertainment - the fact that it was broadcast is secondary to this.

As for Lyons, his claim that the BBC Trust had still not decided Ross's fate looked disingenuous given that the BBC had already trumpeted his glorious return.

The BBC Trust was brought in to replace the discredited Board of Governors following the Gilligan affair. The problem is, that like its predecessor it has no power and is too allied to the management of the organisation. Perhaps it's time for the BBC to come under the auspices of Ofcom and receive proper regulatory control like the commercial media operations against which it seems determined to put out of business.

Deborah Meaden exposed

1704826 — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Deborah Meaden is a ‘marketing guru'. We know that because Evan Davies gravely intones it in the opening credits to every episode of Dragon's Den. Except that last night we found out that she wasn't; not really.

In BBC2's Dragon's Den: the Dragon's Story - an otherwise interesting series that I suppose is meant to inspire up and coming entrepreneurs in some way - we found out that the marketing guru who had ‘made her fortune in the hospitality and leisure business' was nothing of the sort. In fact, for ‘hospitality and leisure industry' read chain of ordinary-looking caravan parks in the south-west. Also hers was no heart-warming rags to riches tale (unlike James Caan and Theo Paphitis) - her parents had owned the park before she borrowed some money from the bank to buy them out.

As for her marketing credentials that are so proudly boasted about in every single episode of the show, Davies had to admit that this wasn't really the case although the show did go onto describe how she's been involved in the repackaging of one of her Den investments - some sinister Voodoo dolls that you can stick faces of your enemies on and are therefore ideal stocking fillers.

It all seemed rather patchy to me and I was left concluding that in the scramble to tell a good story, some over-claiming had taken place. As this isn't in the scale of Cookie the Blue Pater cat or the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross farrago, I won't be complaining to the BBC Trust - I'll leave that to Friday when Children In Need is back on, groan...