Thompson too dominant says Hunt

More conjecture on what will happen to the BBC if the Tories win the next election comes from this mornings Indy.

Media editor Ian Burrell interviews shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt who tells the paper that Director General

Mr Thompson was too dominant within the corporation and suggested that the director general should face greater internal scrutiny on whether he was worth his annual remuneration package of £834,000.

Dyke turns on Thompson

As the BBC prepares outline its strategic plans for the future which despite rumours of closures and job losses,could see an extra £600m diverted into programme-making,its Director general comes under fire from a former holder of the office.

Greg Dyke accused his successor of being overpaid and out of touch with his staff,

According to the Guardian,he

said the BBC's programming was "in pretty good shape" but the way management was handling the reshaping of the corporation had failed staff.

adding

It is a good job, and Mark earns more than twice what I earned when I was doing it. The staff are whingeing. Mark is doing some great things, but he is not taking them with him."

What a better advert to stop people voting for this party

A vigorous defence on the corporation's decision to give airtime to Nick Griffin by Mark Thompson is on the front page of the Guardian this morning.

In an interview with the paper,he challenges the government to change the law if it wants to censor the far-right group.

Ministers would have to impose a broadcasting ban on the party – as Margaret Thatcher did with Sinn Féin in the 1980s – before the BBC would consider breaching its "central principle of impartiality".

No doubt tonight's question time may well rank as the top current affairs programme of the year.The week has been marked by snipings from both sides,criticism of the BBC for allowing the BNP airtime and some quite extraordinary outbursts from the party itself.

Including this one which makes the front of the Times

Nick Griffin has thanked the BBC and praised the “hysterical” reaction of the political elite for giving his far-right British National Party unprecedented publicity.
In an interview with The Times, he said that the bitter row over the decision to invite him on to this evening’s Question Time had attracted record donations for the party.

My view? I have to agree with Mark Thompson that in a democratic society we have to give all political spectrums a platform,really no matter how much we cant abide their views

From what I have seen of Griffin,he will show himself to be exactly what he is to the question time audience,a politician with few principles and shallow morals.

What a better advert to stop people voting for this party

Beeb to review its size and its resources

So the BBC is going to address the concerns of the James Murdoch's in looking at their size and role.

Sir Michael Lyons has released aa open letter to the license payer saying that

Recent debate has focused on two particular arguments. The first is that the BBC should be much smaller and should scale back its involvement in areas such as providing news for free on the internet. The second, as proposed by the Government, is that the licence fee should be shared and that an element should pass to a range of commercial media companies - initially regional news providers - breaking the historic funding link between the BBC and its audiences. Both arguments are rooted in the problems faced by the broadcasting and wider communications industries as the internet challenges the traditional role of both broadcasters and newspapers and the recession cuts into advertising revenue.

Mark Thompson is now to oversee a review on whether the BBC is indeed the right size what areas it should concentrate its resources on in future.

More regional accents and no drug culture at the Beeb

Following his comments to the Guardian yesterday,Mark Thompson has told Telegraph readers that the BBC requires more regional accents.During a question and answer session on Telegraph.com he said

I agree that we could hear a broader variety of English accents across our output. You may have heard that we’re building a big new broadcast centre in Salford and moving our entire sports and childrens departments there. I hope that will one way of getting more non-metropolitan broadcasters – and accents! – on to the air.

It is worth reading the whole session including the strange question


Do you think there is a drug culture in your organisation ?

We will take the moral high ground if you give us the money says the Beeb

Mark Thompson's interview in the Guardian this morning suggests that the BBC is trying to re enter the moral high ground as a public broadcaster.

Looking to put the corporations annus horibilis behind him,he suggests that the government must be prepared to fund the public broadcasting sector

There' s no point crying crocodile tears about less public service broadcasting, What quantity of public service broadcasting do you want and how is it to be paid for?"

The interview also hints at a promise to move the BBC upmarket with more investment in reporting from Westminster and local politics,as well as themed blocks of programming on immigration,global warming and civil liberties.