Commissioners to be based in Scotland for first time as Beeb answers

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Aug 24, 2008 | by Peter John Meiklem Media Correspondent

THE BBC is to introduce substantial changes to the way it commissions programmes in a bid to wrest the television agenda from the Scottish Nationalists and improve its poor standing with viewers in Scotland and the UK's other nations and regions.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that the BBC - which has been heavily criticised over the past year for failing licence fee payers outside of the corporation's traditional southeast of England heartland - will hire three new commissioning executives to be based in BBC Scotland's Pacific Quay headquarters as part of its promise to increase the amount of money it spends making programmes in Scotland. It also plans to move major network shows north of the Border.

Currently, all but one of the BBC's commissioning executives are based in London, leading to bitter criticism that the scope of the corporation's network programming is limited by a metropolitan "cafe culture".

The BBC's detractors claim that London-based commissioners strike deals with contacts and friends based in the capital to the detriment of equally strong if not better ideas from TV companies from other parts of the UK.

This, BBC critics argue, leads to a narrowing of the voices, cultures and ideas represented by the corporation's programming and makes it difficult for any part of the UK outside London to sustain a substantial broadcasting industry.

With this having contributed to the BBC's share of network commissions in Scotland falling to just 3per cent of the UK total in the past two years, it gave first minister Alex Salmond a golden opportunity to make television one of the key planks of his push for independence.

A year ago, he set up the Scottish Broadcasting Commission (SBC) to investigate the issue, prompting BBC director general Mark Thompson to pledge the following month that he would raise the Scottish share to 9per cent - in line with its proportion of UK licence fee payers.

With the SBC due to report next month, and looking set to be critical of the corporation, this latest announcement can be seen in the same light.

Further ammunition for the sceptics comes from the fact the BBC previously announced it would move one commissioner for entertainment and comedy to Glasgow three years ago and failed to do so.

Recently, the BBC has increased efforts to bring more network shows to Scotland. BBC Two's The Culture Show, presented by Lauren Laverne and Mark Kermode, is now partly presented from Glasgow. Pacific Quay and London broadcast the show on alternate weeks.

But the BBC's chief operating officer Caroline Thomson - the head of all structural change at the corporation and therefore one of its most powerful figures - admitted to the Sunday Herald that previous BBC attempts to make more programmes outside of London had been "half-hearted" and said: "We are determined to make this work in a sustainable way."

Thomson said the appointment of the new commissioners - alongside "moving some existing output" within Scotland - would allow the BBC to make a "big shift" in the amount of money it spends on network programmes in Scotland, "from a current GBP30 million to around GBP75 million by 2016".

News of the changes - the commissioners will be appointed within the next year - has been cautiously welcomed by the Scottish broadcasting industry, which has long complained its business has withered as the amount of network money spent by the BBC north of the Border has fallen.

However, Linda Fabiani, the Scottish government minister for culture, said the changes do not go far enough and heaped further criticism on Thomson for claiming it will take the BBC until 2016 to fully increase its spending to a level proportionate with the number of licence fee payers in Scotland.

Thomson denied that eight years was too long. She said: "We want this to be sustainable. It takes time to build but once it's built you attract the right kind of production talent. We will move some stuff that will give us some quick results but beyond that we want to do this properly." Thomson declined to name the programmes the BBC was planning to move, saying the BBC "needed to talk to the staff first".

She said: "Mark [Thompson] made the commitment last summer and we have been working on the plan since then. It's part of a wider rethinking of how the BBC operates within Britain.

We are moving the BBC from something that essentially has London at the heart with a number of hubs around it into a much more comprehensively networked BBC. Half of the programming will still come from London but half will come from outside of London including a much more significant proportion from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland."

Thomson said that by 2016 half of all network television programming will be made outside London, with about 9per cent in Scotland. By 2016, she added, there would be 40 commissioning executives, including the three new Scottish posts.

There are also rumours that there will be one commissioner each in Wales and Northern Ireland.

Thomson said she also counted in the Scottish total Anne Mensah, BBC Scotland's head of drama, and Cheryl Taylor, executive editor for comedy, currently based in Manchester but who will have a role commissioning Scottish comedy, bringing the Scottish commissioning team to five. There are currently 35 commissioning executives, all but Taylor working from London.