22·09·09 Week 38 explore.gateway.bbc.co.uk/ariel THE BBC NEWSPAPER PHOTOGRAPH:MICHAEL DONNE BBC UNDER FIRE AS BROADCASTERS EYE UNCERTAIN FUTURE a Pages 2 and 10 Brighton rocks COMPETITIVE in the extreme: Vassos Alexander ◆reports for 5 live sports extra from the weekend’s White Air ‘09 festival in Brighton. Off air, the usually grounded broadcaster tried out some extreme sports for himself. Page 4 > NEWS 2-4 WEEK AT WORK 8-9 OPINION 10 MAIL 11 JOBS 14 GREEN ROOM 16 < 162 News aa 00·00·08 22·09·09 a RTS CAMBRIDGE CONVENTION GETS RATHER UNCOMFORTABLE Room 2316, White City 201 Wood Lane, London W12 7TS 020 8008 4228 Managing Editor Stephen James-Yeoman 02-84222 Deputy editors No laughing Sally Hillier 02-26877 matter: Cathy Loughran 02-27360 former Features editor culture Clare Bolt 02-27445 secretary Senior Broadcast Journalist 02-27630 James Stephen Hawkes Purnell Reporters and Mark Laura Scarrott 02-84224 Thompson Peggy Walker 01-43940 share a light- Production editor hearted Claire Barrett 02-27368 moment during an Art editor otherwise Ken Sinyard 02-84229 serious Ariel online discussion Alex Goodey 02-27410 chaired Business co-ordinator by media Silvana Romana 02-84228 consultant Ariel mail Steve Hewlett [email protected] Ariel online explore.gateway.bbc.uk/ariel Guest contributors this week Happy families? Not exactly RIC BAILEY, chief political advisor, gives his tips on how to stay ◆ As a former BBC journalist, Ben Bradshaw knows you is not in keeping with the tradition of political ‘If you start to have a BBC that is contracting, it has impartial – timely advice given how to whip up a good story and his pronounce- independence on which the whole of British public bad consequences in terms of the people you the start of the party political ments at the Royal Television Society’s Cambridge service broadcasting is based.’ attract,’ he believed. And he was ‘always worried’ by conference season, Pages 8-9 convention turned the event on its head almost people who urged it to cease its output for young au- before it had started. ◆ With the issue now at the heart of the discussions diences ‘because they think that’s not public service’. RICHARD PATTINSON, producer, What had been intended as a timely debate in Cambridge, shadow culture secretary Jeremy But then he added: ‘Radio 2 is slightly more argu- on whistlestop world tour, Page 15 about the future of the industry amid the economic Hunt couldn’t resist joining in, although ‘it sticks in able. Sometimes it steps over into areas that could be downturn and the rapid development of new tech- the guts to defend Ben Bradshaw’. considered commercial, and I have sympathy with nologies instead became pretty much a conference There was ‘a problem’, Hunt believed, with the commercial operators who say ‘Radio 2 is killing us’.’ BBC Jobs 0370 333 1330 about BBC governance. current governance arrangements – offering as an Jobs textphone 028 9032 8478 In his curtain-raising address, the culture secre- example the controversy over the scheduling clash ◆ Purnell’s big concern was of the BBC becom- BBC Jobs John Clarke 02-27143 tary said he thought that the corporation had ‘prob- between Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor. ing too dominant. ‘For it to succeed, and for public Room 2120, White City, London W12 7TS ably reached the limits of reasonable expansion’, ‘Thousands of people are angry and they should service obligations to be met, it needs competition.’ Advertise in Ariel that it was time its accounts were opened up to the be able to complain to a body outside the BBC.’ With Channel 4 struggling, he questioned whether Ten Alps Publishing 020 7878 2314 National Audit Offi ce and – most controversially – Former culture secretary James Purnell said he the broadcaster could keep going without help. claimed that the BBC Trust was ‘not sustainable’ in ‘Channel 4 needs money,’ he stated, explaining that www.bbcarielads.com favoured setting up a public service broadcasting the long term. trust, to oversee not just the BBC but the activities of there might be only a short window of opportunity Printing ‘I know of no other area of public life where… the other psb providers. ‘to save public service broadcasting plurality’ and Garnett Dickinson Group same body is both regulator and cheerleader,’ he he was worried about the window being missed. Rotherham 01709 768000 declared. ◆ On a more positive note for the BBC, Purnell said he Subscribe to Ariel did not believe that the corporation was too big. ◆ Outgoing Channel 4 chairman Luke Johnson con- ◆ Six months: £26, £36, £40 At least the title of the convention, Riding Out the sidered it wrong that so much of the government’s Storm, still held good as fi rst Michael Lyons then interest and attention in the future of public service Twelve months: £50, £60, £68 Mark Thompson sailed into battle with Bradshaw. broadcasting was focused on one broadcaster – the (prices for UK, Europe, rest of world Ben Bradshaw Lyons pointed out that the trust, of which he is chair- BBC. ‘Is that diversity? Is that plurality?’ he asked. respectively) man, was set up by Labour’s own Tessa Jowell with punches home Describing the corporation as ‘the most effective Cheques to: Garnett Dickinson Print, a brief to be the ‘eyes, ears, and voice’ of licence fee lobbying organisation in Britain’, Johnson claimed it Brookfi elds Way, Manvers, payers. While he was more than happy for it to be in keynote wielded too much power with politicians , some of Wath Upon Dearne, Rotherham S63 5DL judged on its track record, he was dismayed to learn whom , he claimed, were ‘afraid’ of it. Tel 01709 768199 that it might be dispensed with altogether. address As for who should follow Andy Duncan as Channel INFORMATION IN AN EMERGENCY Thompson found parts of Bradshaw’s 4 chief exec, Johnson said it should be someone with speech ‘frankly puzzling’, and urged him ‘a profound understanding of the digital universe’. Telephone 0800 0688 159 to direct his criticism at his colleagues in Ceefax Page 159 www.bbc.co.uk/159 the present cabinet who ‘invented the ◆ There was of course a lot of talk about digital – Ariel is produced by Internal trust, approved it and enshrined it in a largely revolving around what should happen to the Communications for people at the BBC charter which still has well over seven so-called digital surplus – the money expected to be years to run’. left over from the digital switchover help scheme. Furthermore, the charter devised by The money was agreed on top of the current the Labour government ‘tells the BBC licence fee and Bradshaw was scathing about the trust to be independent, to consult idea of returning the surplus to licence fee pay- with the public, to be guardians of the ers rather than using it to help ITV regional news. PLEASE RECYCLE YOUR COPY OF ARIEL licence fee’, explained Thompson, who ‘Michael Lyons comes up with his £5.50 give away,’ thought the real problem for Labour was he scoffed, to which Lyons quickly retorted: ‘It that its brainchild had done exactly as it had been would not be a give away, but a give back.’ told. ‘The trouble with independent governing As Purnell noted: ‘This all feels a bit like a family bodies is that they can be – well, independent. row.’ It kind of summed up the two-day event. ‘To threaten them with imminent or creeping abolition when they take a different view from In a changing world we must change too, Page 10 > ARIEL ONLINE: BBC NEWS AS IT HAPPENS – EXPLORE.GATEWAY.BBC.CO.UK/ARIEL< a 22·09·09 News 3 ‘With kidnapping an ever present threat A story that the UN refuses to sanction any live has to be told broadcasting’ bouts. ‘It was a case of keep moving… it’s the speed at which things change that sets Somalia apart,’ Thomson ex- plained. Plans to fl y in to Wajid had to be changed at the last minute after gunmen raided its UN compound. There was another narrow escape when their Belet Weyne base was at- tacked shortly after Thomson had left to visit a refugee camp. They re- turned during a lull in the fi ghting to pick up some stranded UN person- nel, but were forced to make a rap- id getaway when news of further mi- litia threat came through. ‘And this was supposed to be a stable place…’ Thomson spoke to many of the country’s refugees who had been driv- en from their homes by bombs and bullets. Like Fatima Esman (pictured), whom he met in the Abudwaq camp near the Ethiopian border. Her home in Mogadishu had been shelled, two of her six children had been killed and she had been robbed on her jour- ney to a camp where drought and food shortages posed new threats. by Claire Barrett from Somalia – a country riven by was just too dangerous to drive more but she wanted to get the message Her story was featured in one of four There was no arrivals lounge, no pass- internal confl ict that has claimed than a few kilometres at a time.’ out from this country that so much Today specials last week. port control, no customs, no tarmac, 18,000 lives in the last two years – on He is one of few international of the world has turned its back on, ‘This was life at its most extreme,’ even. A dirt strip and a coterie of gun- what was, literally, a fl ying visit.