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Two views on TV news
I had a chance to look over the memo from ITN’s Dave Mannion on the return of News At Ten. Without repeating it in full, it offers important insights into the thinking of one of Britain’s best television journalists. We have been given a prime time slot. Our job is not simply to split the…
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Restoring trust, one performance measure at a time
When it comes to the BBC, putting sense on the radio is a lot easier than putting it into practice. Here is future BBC Director-General, and former Radio 4 controller, Helen Boaden posting at the BBC Editors blog on restoring trust in the Beeb this year. She begins with a little reminder of her radio…
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TV news in 2008…
In 2007, Mark Thompson Peter Horrocks apparently walked into a meeting of top BBC talent and declared – not untruthfully – “There is no market for newsreaders.” Unfortunately “even a dead cat bounces” (as finance types say) and the market promptly leapt back into action and Natasha Kaplinsky and Dermot Murnaghan both left the BBC…
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The BBC: focus groups and phoney accountability
After talking to 96 people for three hours, the BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons writes: Performance in News and Current Affairs is rightly seen to be strong but the BBC is not always serving everyone on the audience as it should, with those who fall within the category of ‘low BBC approvers’ perceiving a…