Archive for bbc

Julia Goldsworthy calls for BBC to scrap Radio 1 (or not – updated)

4 March 2010 , , ,
The BBC itself reports: Cornwall MP Julia Goldsworthy says the BBC should consider scrapping Radio 1. The Lib Dem communities spokeswoman was responding in a BBC3 debate, First Time Voters’ Question Time, about the BBC’s strategic review… But Ms Goldsworthy said: “They should be looking at other areas where there is already competition in the market, like Radio [...]

BBC website: what the changes will mean for PR

4 March 2010 , ,
The BBC’s website regularly feature in the lists of the ten most popular websites in the UK – and are usually the only ones in the top ten from a British organisation. So the BBC’s plans to refocus and shrink its web presence are likely to be widely felt. The 79 page strategy document ranges over [...]

Any Questions: it’s not just BBC Question Time that’s the problem

We’ve covered before the habit of BBC Question Time of dropping a Liberal Democrat from the panel (three times in four weeks most recently) and also of loading up the panel with a far from politically balanced set of non-Parliamentarians. But it’s not only Question Time where that’s a problem. BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions? has [...]

How will the BBC cover the 2010 general election?

25 January 2010 , ,
The BBC has just published a draft of the internal guidelines for its election coverage. The 14 page document is similar to the guidance at previous elections and includes a set of sensible rules which other media outlets would do well to emulate, including: There will be no online votes or SMS/text votes attempting to quantify [...]

Alex Ferguson forced to unban BBC

18 November 2009 , , , , ,
A follow-up to my post When is it ok to ban a journalist?, about the habit in football of clubs banning journalists who say things they don’t like (can you imagine the uproar if a public sector body tried to do the same?): Sir Alex Ferguson will have to end his six-year ban on giving interviews to [...]

What drives traffic to news websites?

Cross-posted from the Mandate blog: The Newspaper Marketing Agency’s latest (September) figures (PowerPoint slides) for the sources of web traffic to newspaper websites paintsa useful picture of which social media sites really matter – and which don’t. The top ten domains that referred UK traffic to newspapers during the month were: Google Yahoo MSN News.bbc.co.uk [...]

What's the next Twitter?

9 November 2009 , , , ,
That’s the question PR Week posed to a selection of people from across the PR industry, myself included. My answer as to the next Twitter? The BBC: Although there’s been confusion over various media reports, the BBC has confirmed that significant changes are on the way, including allowing people to comment directly on stories and [...]

Party Election Broadcasts: BBC Trust consults on new complaints procedure

5 November 2009 , ,
The BBC Trust is running an online survey asking for views on its plans for a new complaints procedure for Party Election Broadcasts. Although the BBC generally steers clear of the content of PEBs – leaving that to the parties in question – there are often issues around who gets how many and when they [...]

BBC launches new Democracy Live website

2 November 2009 , , ,
Here’s how the BBC describes its new Democracy Live website, which covers the Westminster Parliament, the European Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly: It brings together for the first time in the BBC, live and on demand video coverage of proceedings in our national political institutions and the European Parliament. [...]

Why is the BBC denominating UK politics stories in dollars?

12 October 2009 ,
There’s a rather odd line in today’s BBC story about MPs and expenses. Talking about Gordon Brown’s repayment of expenses he had previously claimed, the BBC reports: In Mr Brown’s case the £12,415 ($19,614) is made up of £10,716 for cleaning claims above Sir Thomas’s £2,000 annual limit, £302 spent on gardening above the annual [...]