Repurposing the BBC
Thompson tells BBC staff of cuts plan
It's still difficult to know exactly what to make of Mark Thompson's plans for the future of the BBC, but the overall impression is that the plan is essentially a difficult set of compromises made under less than ideal circumstances. The budget shortfall was caused by a poor licence fee settlement, and for that you can ultimately blame Gordon Brown when he was chancellor.
Although Mark Thompson and the BBC Trust have displayed a united front from a public perspective, the Trust apparently forced Thompson to scale back his initial cutback plans for BBC Scotland. This also illustrates the point that although a more regionally-spread BBC is desirable, the move to Salford ought to have been performed under better financial circumstances.
Much has been made of the requirement to cut back on multiple BBC crews reporting a specific news story, but there is a significant risk that other specialist programmes will end up not having the resources to cover related topical events. There's also the danger of BBC News being under-resourced if more than two major breaking news stories happened simultaneously.
The main criticism of these cutbacks relates to the lack of debate surrounding the nature of the cutbacks, combined with staff management techniques that appear to be more reminiscent of 1977 than 2007. This seems to (rightly or wrongly) give an impression that Mark Thompson for whatever reason still isn't 100% in control of senior BBC management.
However in theory there's nothing to preclude the BBC's resources being reallocated at a later date, but of course the long term future depends on what happens next to the licence fee. And it's this issue that has underpinned the very nature of the cutbacks as well as the cutbacks themselves.
As for the plans to sell off BBC TV Centre, the BBC might as well perform a full and proper reorganisation whilst the move to Salford is taking place. The fact that children's TV was chosen to move North is significant because it is a heavy user of large studio buildings, therefore the intention to scale back the BBC's London presence must have been known for a long time.
And it isn't the first time that the BBC has vacated a building of historical importance, since of course BBC Television started life in Alexandra Palace. Though if future politicians end up scaling the BBC back even further, we ironically might end up with a corporation that's small enough to fit back into Alexandra Palace.
