Good value for money?

There has been some criticism of the resources that the BBC put into its Glastonbury coverage over the last weekend.

The Independent's Ian Burrel looks at the issue over at Independent minds and the 407 reported team that the corporation employed

at home not all licence fee payers were impressed. "There is far too much coverage of BBC presenters," came one post on the BBC website. "Does the BBC have to pay extra to show more of the actual festival performers?" There was much consternation that, after putting Bruce Springsteen on the cover of Radio Times, the BBC had failed to live up to that pre-publicity by showing only limited amounts of The Boss’s performance and of the similarly hyped Neil Young.

The BBC will argue that

producing 111 hours of TV coverage, 60 hours of radio and 57 hours of online video, from muddy fields in Somerset, is a huge logistical task that requires 160 technical staff, plus a further 130 short-term contractors, including security guards to watch over the expensive broadcasting kit that produces output for a TV audience of 16m, up 2m on last year.

I watched some of the coverage and believe that on balance the Beeb got it right,that is part of what a public service broadcaster's remit should be.The event is a standard of the cultural landscape is much the same way as for example the coverage of the Proms season.

It is unlikely that Sky would offer the same output after all.