From: The Sunday Herald, October 21, 2007
Author: Torcuil Crichton

SOME viewers in Whitehaven found their television screens had become a grey snowy blank on Tuesday morning, an experience that might become commonplace in the next few months.

The Cumbrian town was the first in Britain to have its analogue television signal switched off last week. With months of preparation most people coped with installing digital boxes and replugging video recorders, but inevitably there was confusion in some homes and where there should have been 625 lines of images there was nothing.

Today Whitehaven, tomorrow the country could be slogan for Digit Al, the animated character which fronts Digital UK's publicity campaign or for the trade unions who are threatening to take the BBC off the air this Christmas On Friday afternoon, BECTU, the NUJ and Unite stepped back from a ballot for industrial action which would almost certainly have been endorsed by staff, who greeted the news of 1800 redundancies 2500 minus 700 new posts with disbelief and anger.

Although anticipated, director general Mark Thompson's announcement still shook the Corporation.

In its new headquarters on the Clyde, BBC Scotland newsroom staff said there was little left to cut. "We've already had two rounds of voluntary redundancies, " said one staffer. "Those who were going to leave have already gone." There will be over 150 redundancies in BBC Scotland over the next five years, although management have signalled that they intend to complete the process as quickly as possible.

Accused of jumping the gun by the unions, management have now agreed to postpone redundancies until November, telling union leaders that they were prepared to establish a framework to handle the mechanics of the redundancy plan.

While the unions girded themselves for a battle to save jobs, many concluded that the war was already lost when the BBC failed to persuade the government of its case for an increased licence fee.

Many staff think Thompson's tactics backfired when earlier this year he threatened that the BBC would be unable to complete plans to move some operations to Salford without a fee rise.

But blackmail didn't work. Ministers insisted that the Manchester move go ahead and left the corporation with a below-inflation settlement. The deal left the BBC with a GBP2billion projected deficit for its ambitious development plans, and part of the tab for the switchover that began in Whitehaven.

Now it has to make 3-per cent annual efficiency savings, while some areas, particularly news and factual programmes, will have to absorb heavier cuts.

There are likely to be around 520 redundancies in BBC News as it moves to a converged newsroom supplying TV, radio and the web. News24 will merge with main bulletins to save 25-per cent over the next five years. Newsnight, Today, This Week and other discussion programmes will move to a separate division.

Management also plans to cut the programming budget by GBP100million, and sell off BBC TV Centre in west London.

Thompson attempted reassurances, first at a meeting of top executives and then in an address telecast to the 23,000 staff, that short-term pain would be worth securing the BBC's future and that he was determined to press ahead.

He argued that the BBC has to become "smaller" and again stressed his "fewer, bigger, better" policy of less content with more impact across more platforms. The plan will lead to more repeats outside prime time, but services such as BBC3 and BBC4 will be saved.

Rival broadcasters and internet publishers look enviously at the BBC's guaranteed income of GBP3.5bn a year. But once the costs of the digital switchover which it is hamstrung into funding are stripped out, the Corporation is left with around a 1.4-per cent increase per annum, well below current inflation. It has to "squeeze every last pound of value" out of the licence fee according to Sir Michael Lyons, BBC Trust chairman.

Across the board, the BBC plans to commission 10-per cent fewer hours of programming over the next five years. Its crown jewels, quality natural history programming and totemic brands such as Panorama, will be protected although there could be fewer episodes made.

Out will go middling programmes like Comedy Connections and the Wild natural history strand fronted by Bill Oddie.

More repeats but also a distillation of what is best about the BBC is what management say.

Underscoring the current trauma are questions over whether the BBC's Reithian model of informing, educating and entertaining still fits into the multiformat age. The BBC has previously made a successful case for running a clever 20th-century company in a 21stcentury business environment. Now management and staff have to go through a process of slimming and adapting in the full glare of the public, who have a huge stake in the BBC, and rival operators who will pick over and exacerbate difficulties along the way.

Critics like BSkyB owner Rupert Murdoch cannot abide the fact that the BBC remains independent and free from commercial pressure, while its channels and internet platform act as if they were in the market. Meanwhile, the super-salaries paid to the likes of Jonathan Ross do not sit well with the public service ethos of those who would defend the Corporation from being cast into a commercial world.

Balancing these inherent contradictions, and recalibrating the BBC's priorities in light of the licence fee settlement and against the need to reach new audiences on new platforms is the task Thompson has set himself.

But distracted by a summer of scandals from the Queen to the Blue Peter cat, the senior management has so far failed to adequately convince staff that they are up to the job. The unions, convinced they are defending the values of quality that embody the BBC as much as their jobs, are still expected to ballot for strike action before Christmas. Stay tuned for the next instalment.