CHARLOTTE MOORE APPOINTED TO BBC BOARD: A BBC announcement (3/9) said that Charlotte Moore had been appointed Chief Content Officer of the BBC – in charge of all content except that originating from BBC News and the nations and regions – and had joined the corporation’s executive board. The release said:
The Chief Content Officer’s responsibilities include:
- Television commissioning for all BBC network TV channels and BBC iPlayer
- Radio commissioning and production for all ten national radio networks and BBC Sounds
- Multi-platform commissioning and production for all children’s and education content
- BBC Proms and Orchestras
As Chief Content Officer, Charlotte Moore will be the creative lead and set the strategy for BBC TV, Network Radio, BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, across all key genres and platforms. She will lead the Channel and Station Controllers and set an editorial strategy which reflects the diversity of all the BBC’s audiences.
The release also confirmed that, as Tim Davie had outlined in his speech to staff on 3/9, the BBC Executive Committee, which previously had 18 senior executive members of the corporation, had been slimmed down to 10 members. Those removed from the committee included David Jordan, the director of editorial standards, James Purnell, the former Labour minister who was director of radio and education, and Sarah Jones, chief general counsel.
BBC ‘WORRIED ABOUT LICENCE FEE’: Guido Fawkes (4/9), noting that new director general Tim Davie had thrown some ‘surface-level red meat’ in terms of u-turning to allow Rule, Britannia to be sung at the last night of the proms and talking about getting rid of left-wing comedy, was at the same time digging hard to protect the corporation’s ‘telly tax’ (the licence fee). The blog said this was evidenced by that the BBC was currently advertising for a new £63,000-a-year ‘communications specialist’ to work specifically on TV licensing.
Emily Ferguson (Express 4/9) reported that figures gathered by her newspaper suggested that the BBC had boosted its licence fee enforcement spending by £38 million to £140 million in the coming year, the extra costs being triggered by the scrapping of free licences for the over-75s from August 1.
BBC ‘SHOULD AXE SPRINGWATCH PRESENTER BECAUSE OF BIAS’: James Gant (Daily Mail 4/9) said that following BBC director general Tim Davie’s speech in which he had said bias had no place on the BBC, Tim Bonner, the head of the Countryside Alliance, had asserted in a tweet that the corporation should drop BBC Springwatch presenter Chris Packham because, he alleged, he frequently expressed strong opinions on matters of public policy. Mr Gant noted that within hours of Mr Bonner’s tweet, Mr Packham had protested in a tweet that a stag hunt group had received a £50,000 coronavirus loan and a £10,000 grant.