About the BBC Feed

Changes to some BBC local radio medium wave services

Kieran Clifton — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 09:00:00 +0000

We know how much you love your local radio services, with more and more of you listening in different ways: using FM, DAB or internet-based services such as BBC iPlayer Radio.

We regularly review the value for money of our distribution our services across all platforms to ensure we’re spending the licence fee as efficiently as possible. And back in 2011, as part of the BBC’s Delivering Quality First plans to save around £700m, we announced we would be closing some medium wave transmitters to save millions of pounds.

Since then, we have carefully looked at the range of services we deliver on medium wave, and the range of analogue and digital alternative options for audiences. We have also been investing too - funding local DAB expansion, making all local radio stations available on Digital Terrestrial TV (such as Freeview), and enhancing the sound quality of our online output.

But on changes to medium wave coverage specifically, to identify areas where the impact would be felt the least, we conducted detailed assessments of the coverage of each BBC local radio station on FM, MW and DAB. Following this process, we trialled the switch-off of a number of medium-wave transmitters and asked for audience feedback. Taken together, the audience feedback and the coverage data have informed which medium wave transmitters are unlikely to represent value for money in the longer term.

As a result, we will be closing 13 medium wave transmitters in January 2018.

So what does this mean? Once the changes take effect, BBC Radio Sussex, Surrey, Humberside, Wiltshire, Nottingham, Kent, and Lincolnshire will no longer be accessible on medium wave. And, there will be reduced medium-wave coverage for BBC Devon, Lancashire and Essex.

We know these changes will have an impact on some listeners. For the majority, re-tuning to FM or DAB is likely to be the simplest solution - and any listeners who have trouble receiving FM or DAB signals can find BBC local radio stations on Freeview or the internet.

These changes are still some months away, but we will be talking about them on air, on the stations affected to make sure listeners are ready. We’ll also be making more information available through our usual channels.

Kieran Clifton is Director, BBC Distribution & Business Development

Retransmission fees - to pay or not to pay?

John Tate — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:03:33 +0000

Last week the BBC announced a plan for how it proposes to deliver its services to audiences with the licence fee frozen until 2017. These plans amount to £670m of savings which are a mixture of cuts to scope and productivity. Although we have tried hard to protect programming it was simply not possible to make these savings without having to make cuts to some of our output.

It is worth noting however that there remains one area outside the BBC's control that could deliver us substantial additional annual savings. This is the area of 'retransmission fees'.

Put simply, the BBC currently pays Sky a fee so that it can be broadcast on their platform, this was something that was agreed many years ago in order to help satellite broadcasters justify the investment they needed to build their platform. The annual cost to the BBC is £10m. The question now is whether or not this money is still flowing in the right direction. A new study due to be published shortly argues that the UK is the only country of all those examined (including the US, Canada, France, Germany and Spain) that operates in this way. When you consider that the majority of viewing time remains firmly within these networks it begins to look like the balance here may be the wrong way round.

BBC Director General Mark Thompson summed the argument up in his 2010 MacTaggart speech by quoting someone else who thinks that those who invest in content should get a better deal saying that "Asking cable companies and other distribution partners to pay a small portion of the profits they make by reselling broadcast channels, the most-watched channels on their systems, will help ensure the health of the over-the-air industry in America."

He went on "The point is a simple one [in the US] it's the free-to-air networks who invest the most in broadcast content, they're also the most popular networks in the US cable and satellite environments, so isn't it reasonable that the distributors should pay the networks a charge in return for the right to carry them? The man who made that case is Rupert Murdoch and in America he's winning the argument - Fox is now receiving distribution fees from the cable companies. So why not introduce retransmission fees in the UK as well?"

To be clear, here in the UK the BBC would not seek to be paid by Sky for the re-transmission of its content - the BBC is already funded by a universal licence fee. But if we did not have to pay Sky Â£10m a year we would save Â£50m over the remainder of the licence fee period. And that is Â£50m that could go back into programme making - it would for example cover all the costs that we are currently planning to take out of local radio and BBC Four combined.

John Tate is Director, Policy & Strategy, BBC.

What the BBC spends on television content - a response to today's Ofcom report

John Tate — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 08:34:37 +0000

Ofcom published its 2012 PSB report today and I'm pleased that, once again, it shows audiences continue to rate the BBC very highly for quality - with BBC One and BBC Two by far the highest-rated, and BBC Three and Four comparable with ITV1 and Channel 4.

I'm disappointed though that Ofcom has chosen to lay such emphasis on an apparent downturn in BBC content spend - when the true situation is quite different to the one Ofcom sets out and indeed perfectly explicable. And I apologise in advance should this posting sound like an edition of the number crunching programme More or Less - but I think it's important to lay out the facts. Ofcom's report suggests that BBC spend on new network TV programming fell by 11% in real terms between 2010 and 2011, from Â£1.4bn to Â£1.25bn. However, this figure excludes all of the BBC's programming for audiences in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the English regions. Even on Ofcom's definition, there are a number of structural reasons for the apparent fall. Unlike 2010, 2011 was a year without major biennial sports events so spend on sport was down - by around Â£85m. Much of that money has been held over to 2012 to cover the Diamond Jubilee, Euro 2012, the Cultural Olympiad and the Olympics. I therefore expect the increase in 2012 to make up the fall in 2011. Another reason for the apparent fall is that Ofcom's figures are adjusted by the level of inflation in 2011. This was a year when inflation was at an exceptional level of over 5% (and when the BBC received no inflationary increase in the licence fee). The effect of this is to make spend in previous years effectively higher and the fall from 2010 to 2011 the greater; a difference of around Â£70m. Ofcom's report also says that the BBC spends 56% of its 'TV income' on 'first-run originated content'. However, Ofcom's figure leaves out a number of costs which are essential to the making and broadcasting of programmes and channels, including copyright payments to musicians (e.g. for using background music); programme development costs (such as developing new formats or commissioning pilots and scripts); programme commissioning; channel scheduling; repeat fees; and various other items. It also excludes other new TV content such as programmes from overseas and content made for the Red Button service. To make a crude analogy, it is as if one looked at the cost of a music festival only in terms of the amount paid to the musicians. The total 'TV income' baseline that Ofcom's figure is measured against also contains some costs that the BBC cannot realistically spend on television in any case, such as the BBC orchestras; the costs of generating third-party income; and the cost of collecting the licence fee. It also includes one-offs like restructuring costs which are not recurring spend and as such vary a lot from year to year. When you recalculate taking these factors into account you get a far fairer reflection of the underlying situation, with the percentage of BBC television income spent on television content standing at around 75%. There is undoubtedly strong pressure on the BBC to spend on non-content items. And so it should. An example of this is the Government's 2007 'digital objective' or 'sixth purpose' for the BBC to promote digital communications. In practice this has meant building out the digital terrestrial TV network to the whole country in one of the largest broadcast engineering projects ever undertaken in the UK; investing in digital radio; as well as building digital production centres in Salford, Glasgow, Cardiff and London. To give just one example of the investment needed to make the digital transition: the costs of transmitting the BBC's services have risen from Â£142m in 2002/3 to Â£208m today, a rise of nearly 50%. This rise is not unexpected, given the many new ways we have to make our programmes and services available to audiences nowadays. But it inevitably reduces the amount that the BBC can spend directly on content as a percentage of total income. These transition costs will, however, subside, and a greater percentage of our budget flow back into direct content creation on TV, radio and online. This is not some idle promise - it is the very basis of the BBC's strategy: Delivering Quality First.

John Tate is Group Director, Strategic Operations

Delivering Quality First

Jon Jacob — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 07:33:13 +0000

At the start of the year, I kicked off the BBC's Delivering Quality First consultation process by laying out the challenge the BBC faces between now and January 2017: how to meet the savings target we were set in the licence fee settlement while still delivering the quality and creativity which our audiences rightly expect of us.

The settlement calls for 16% savings by the end of the Charter, but back in January I said that - in addition to hitting that target - I believed we should identify another 4% of current spend which we could release and invest in new quality content as well as in the new digital developments that will keep the BBC strong and relevant in the future.

But in looking for the total of 20% savings we were mindful that we needed to recognise the impact of previous efficiency rounds and beware of damaging quality. In order to do this we would have to look at both scope changes (changes to the programmes and services we produce) and productivity changes (using technology or new ways of working to produce the same output to the same or higher quality for less money).

Today we've released the conclusions of Delivering Quality First, and you can read the proposal and further background information on the About the BBC website.

Delivering Quality First is a plan for a smaller and radically reshaped BBC, lean enough to live within its means yet still able to command the talent, technology and resources it needs to deliver world-class services to everyone. The process will not be easy, it will involve significant job losses and we should not underestimate the challenge ahead.

The BBC Trust will be consulting the public about our plans, and we are more determined than ever to bring the best to everyone. I encourage you to voice your opinion about these findings on the BBC Trust's website.

Mark Thompson is Director General of the BBC

Delivering Quality First: Further background and the proposals that outline the way the BBC will work by the end of the Charter in 2017
BBC Trust Public Consultation: Share your views on the proposals

Balancing the books at the BBC

Helen Boaden — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:37:23 +0000

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/speeches/stories/boaden_vlv.shtml

I gave a speech to the Voice of the Listener & Viewer conference today at The Geological Society in London. The conference was called 'Risking Quality in Times of Change - what future for Public Service Broadcasting?' Among other matters, I talked about the licence fee settlement and the difficult decisions BBC News faces as we seek to live within our means, and about the impact on the BBC World Service from the cut in government funding. You can read the speech in full on the BBC press office web site.

Helen Boaden is Director of BBC News

We'll publish a recording of the speech here on the blog tomorrow.
The picture shows the BBC's motto, from an early coat of arms.
Also speaking at the Voice of the Listener and Viewer's Spring conference are Roger Graef (TV Producer), David Liddiment (BBC Trustee), David Elstein (former Chief Exec of Channel 5) and Stephen Whittle (former head of Editorial Policy at the BBC). Details on the VLV web site.
David Liddiment's speech to the conference is on the BBC Trust's web site.

Delivering Quality First - a more effective and simpler BBC

Caroline Thomson — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 09:02:40 +0000

Yesterday I was in Glasgow giving a progress report to BBC staff about Delivering Quality First (DQF) - our initiative to reshape the BBC for the future. The BBC's mission remains the same - to inform, educate and entertain through programmes and services of high quality, originality and value. We are delivering that mission; 97% of the British public tune in to the BBC every week. That is an incredible privilege that brings with it great responsibility.

Our challenge is how to continue to fulfill our mission between now and 2016 whilst making 20 per cent savings. This is about finding better ways of working which will prepare us for a connected future. Linked to this we need to ensure that the BBC is creating programmes about the whole of Britain - serving our audiences throughout the UK.

Local and national broadcasting is at the heart of what we do. And as we move towards 2016 more of what we do will be done outside of London. Salford is just about to open for business - we are 6 weeks away. Sport, Radio 5 live, Children's are all coming together in one location. This is the model for the BBC of the future, and where many of the ideas from DQF will be piloted.

Pacific Quay is one of the most modern, state of the art, digital broadcasting facilities in the world and has helped BBC Scotland to already achieve a 30 per cent efficiency saving. We will be putting forward the really big decisions to the BBC Trust in July. They will then conduct a public consultation before any final decisions are made.

However in the meantime as we have talked with BBC staff there are some really useful ideas that they have come up to make us a more effective organisation, and which we can address right now. Some of the concerns that staff have raised include a frustration with outdated broadcasting equipment which can become a barrier to their ability to do their job well. There is also a feeling that there are too many layers of management and there is too much complexity in decision making.

We've listened to these concerns and are taking action to create a more effective and simpler BBC with clearer accountability:

To tackle the complexity that so often frustrates people working in and around the BBC and create simpler decision making - we will move to a maximum of 7 organisation layers. That means a maximum of seven layers including the DG and the most junior staff.
We will establish a technology fund to respond to staff concerns. We have already found an extra Â£1M specifically for technology upgrades in English Regions TV, and for BBC Radio Northampton which faced a particular problem.
Thirdly we are currently spread over 400 different properties. We want as much investment in future to be in programmes rather than buildings and so we are aiming to reduce the property space we occupy by 30 per cent by 2015.
Finally - there has been some speculation that we are considering reducing the redundancy terms for BBC staff. There are no immediate plans to change redundancy terms. Clearly we cannot rule it out, but today I have given a pledge that if we do decide to change them in the future, we will give staff eighteen months notice.

These common sense decisions are about getting the basics right before we embark on the bigger transformation ahead.

Caroline Thomson is the BBC's Chief Operating Officer

Read Caroline Thomson's previous post about Delivering Quality First and a summary of the inititiative so far on the About the BBC web site.

Delivering Quality First - exploring ideas

Caroline Thomson — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:25:22 +0000

There have been various stories in the press this week speculating about proposals emerging from 'Delivering Quality First', which is our wide-ranging consultation with all BBC staff on how the BBC should deliver the highest quality programmes and services under our new licence fee settlement.

I understand that some of these stories may sound drastic so I want to explain the process and where we've got to so far.

The Director General has challenged the senior managers overseeing this work to think radically about what the BBC should look like in six years time, what our priorities should be and what we should do less of. And they've done that. But at this stage, the outcomes of these discussions are still just ideas.

I can assure you no decisions have been made yet and none of the ideas currently being explored will definitely happen. Equally, I can't rule anything out and we are still welcoming further suggestions.

We won't be giving a running commentary on every speculative idea - but I want to be clear that our commitment to quality content as well as value for money is running right through this process.

On the subject of local radio, it's important to remember that representing the UK's regions and communities is one of the BBC's six public purposes. With the rest of the local news sector at increasing risk of market failure, the BBC's contribution to local journalism is more important now than ever. However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be looking at the most effective way of delivering it.

As part of last year's strategy review, we looked hard at our local services, making our networks more distinctive, increasing the amount of news and speech programming and investing in local journalism. Reach for our local services has risen recently and the question now is, how can we take this further within a flat licence fee settlement?

And regarding sports rights, we need to remember that delivering great sporting moments to the audience unites the nation. This weekend, viewing of the Six Nation's Calcutta Cup game between England and Scotland peaked at 8 million viewers and the BBC Sport website received 3.9 million visitors on the day of the England v France game.

Looking ahead, the plan is to bring the proposals from all the staff consultations together and test them against out public purposes and priorities. These will then be shared with staff before the final proposals are submitted to the BBC Trust for its approval in July. The BBC Trust will consult the public before any final decisions are made.

I can't pretend there aren't difficult choices and some painful decisions to be made but I'm hopeful that by thinking radically and being transparent about the process the decisions we make will be in the best interests of the BBC and our audiences.

Caroline Thomson is the BBC's Chief Operating Officer