A strange day due at the BBC

Today is going to be one of those strange days at the BBC, as the staff find out officially what the plan is for the next 6 years, and where the cost-cutting axe will fall. All at the same time as the public do, but slightly later than the rest of the media, who will have had all the details explained to them in carefully embargoed press releases already.

Although, that is all a bit moot, since most newspapers have been carrying details of the expected announcements every day for the last few weeks anyway.

BBC staff, though, will find out in a way which I believe is quite unlike how it would happen in many other businesses in the UK.

The BBC makes TV programmes, and so, the obvious way to do it is to, erm, well, to make a TV programme.

At 10 today Newsnight's Gavin Esler will be hosting a TV programme featuring Mark Thompson and Sir Michael Lyons as they explain their view of the BBC's future. If you believe the comments from Lord Fowler, it is one of the few times that you'll see BBC management and the BBC Trust standing 'shoulder to shoulder'.

I remember a couple of these sessions quite vividly from my time as a staffer at the BBC - when Greg Dyke brandished the 'Cut The Crap' yellow card for one, and a later woeful and lacklustre performance from Mark Byford in the wake of Dyke's Hutton fuelled departure.

It will be very different for me this time.

I'm only in the building as a contractor, and so, at 10am, as the majority of staff head off to find out about the fate of their departments and budgets, I'll be stuck at my desk, head down, business as usual.

Which doesn't, of course, stop me from offering my tuppence on the proposed changes.

I've long been an advocate of the BBC doing less things, but doing them better. It annoys me that the audience most often targeted by the BBC with new services and marketing campaigns is 13-to-30 year olds. Whilst they might be 'hard to reach' for the BBC, they are the very same audience that are most over-served by the commercial provision of media.

On the web front, I've got personal form for trying to save money by using open source solutions and reusing software components, rather than having 'writing something from scratch in Perl' being the default technical solution to every problem.

But one aspect of the coverage in the press has gently amused me.

Politicians and commentators have thrown their hands up in despair that the BBC could be contemplating cut-backs in news and factual programming - the very core of their public service provision.

I'd agree with them on that.

Although I'd also want to take the time to point out to them that if you've already sat by or approved the privatisation and sell off of the BBC's technology provision...

..and the studio resource provision...

...and put in place a regime where to make up a quota of up-to-50% of output the majority of drama, comedy, entertainment and educational web provision is out-sourced to independents...

...and seen the BBC slash the number of people working in finance and personnel.

Well, then there aren't actually that many areas left where you can make the required cut-backs instead, are there?