Major Events
There were, generally speaking, two schools of thought about the BBC’s Beijing Olympic coverage.
The first is that it was one of the highlights of 2008 and some of the best sports coverage in recent memory. This was the clear finding of our audience research, and also of a lot of the emails, blog responses and letters we received – for which, many thanks.
The second view is that may have been the case but we were extravagant in the number of staff we sent and the amount of money we spent, and this fits into accusations of the BBC not being careful enough in the spending of the licence fee.
Well, now we have a judgement.
The BBC Trust invited the government’s National Audit Office to review the coverage of six major events: Beijing, Euro 2008 and Wimbledon from BBC Sport – and The Proms, Glastonbury and Radio 1′s Big Weekend from our colleagues in Audio and Music.
An NAO investigation is very thorough. It takes months not weeks, and they review all our budgets and documents; they interview key staff at considerable length; and we make all the required information available to them.
The report at the end of the process has now been published along with the BBC Trust’s comments and those from BBC Management – and you can read it all here.
Now, I read in one paper last week that the NAO would condemn us for the numbers of staff sent to Beijing. Other speculation said a culture of profligacy would be identified. But this has turned out to be way off the mark, despite a wackily over-heated account in this morning’s Daily Telegraph (interestingly, The Sun didn’t think it was worth reporting at all).
In reality, there is not a single criticism of our staffing or of our overall expenditure, and after all those months of investigation there is nothing that suggests these major events don’t deliver what our audiences expect and require.
Indeed the NAO confirm the BBC “delivers coverage that is valued by millions of viewers and listeners, largely within the budgets set.” They say that 80% of the UK population watched Beijing – around 47m people. There were 39m watching the Euros and 16.5m viewing the Proms on TV in addition to the daily live output on Radio 3.
Not everything will be everyone’s cup of tea, but again the audience research is clear: these are some of the most-loved events on the BBC, and they’re what people expect us to do.
So unsurprisingly with events of this nature and complexity, there are some things we need to improve in the way we plan and monitor our activity – and this is the main focus of the NAO’s report.
Crucially, they don’t say we fail to deliver value for money. They do say we need to show that more clearly and their conclusion on value for money states: “the BBC is not making the best use of information available to it to test and demonstrate the value for money of its coverage” – and we accept the view that some of our back-room processes could be made sharper.
The BBC Trust says, for instance, that we should increase the rigour of the approvals process and the post-event reviews. But it’s worth emphasising once more: there is no criticism of what we actually delivered at these events or the total amounts of money we spent.
We knew at every stage what our resources were.
The NAO’s observation that budgets weren’t brought together across the BBC is true but a very narrow point without any negative consequences: for Beijing the main budgets were Sport and News, vigorously controlled by their respective directors, and there was detailed co-ordination between those two divisions in delivering the output. Again, there is no suggestion of any waste.
And the publication of this report includes unprecedentedly detailed figures about what we do spend on major events. We have been open with the NAO, and they have published, the fact – for instance – that we spent £250,000 on a studio in Vienna for Euro 2008.
The reason for that was simple: we believe in being at the heart of host cities, and our audiences have come to expect ‘landmark’ shots like the Eiffel Tower in World Cup 1998 and the Brandenburg Gate in 2006.
It was never an option to broadcast from the International Broadcast Centre some miles out of town, and the renting, construction and staffing of a city centre studio costs money – though so, actually, does a studio without a view.
But, just like the much-applauded shot of Beijing’s Olympic Park from our broadcasting tower there, it’s part of the reason people feel they’re at the heart of the action and research says it adds to their enjoyment of these big international events.
For the Taxpayers’ Alliance to say that this was a “whim” is bizarre, given it has been our policy for more than a decade and has been seen in action by most of the population.
So it’s disappointing that some of the political response has been to say this shows we’re “casual” with money. I don’t think any of my former colleagues in BBC Sport or anywhere else in the BBC would think that.
Scrutiny has massively increased, belts have been tightened and people are being asked to deliver more for less.
That isn’t always the most popular thing to ask of our teams, but we all understand the economic climate we’re now in – and the absolutely correct view that the licence fee must deliver value.
We believe 100% that these major events do that, and we look forward to the challenge of proving it beyond any doubt in the coming years.
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