From p.13 of the BBC’s Delivering Quality First plan:
Factual programming for BBC television and Radio 4 would be moved out of Birmingham and consolidated largely to Bristol and Cardiff, though television production investment with independent producers in the Midlands would increase. Substantial network television drama (eg Doctors, Land Girls) and radio drama (The Archers) would continue in Birmingham alongside the BBC’s local and regional services
Someone’s going to need to spell this one out to me:
- What are the local and regional services that will be staying? (presumably Midlands Today, BBC WM… anything else?)
- Who/what will be moving to Bristol and Cardiff? (Asian Network… anything else?)
This list is fairly accurate I think. Countryfile, Gardener’s World and Coast would obviously have decent-sized production teams at the Mailbox (isn’t the Gardener’s World garden in Brum as well – within the grounds of Birmingham Uni?).
We have plenty of ex-students on those programmes and obviously there’ll be even fewer opportunities to get current students into placements once the cuts are implemented. Useful to be keeping Doctors I guess.
Dear Mr Whitby – Raw Data Now : daveharte.com
[…] been a bad day for Birmingham’s creative economy. The BBC is shunting a whole load of jobs (“over 100″) in networked factual programming from here to Bristol and Cardiff. So what […]
The fact is – unless protest stops them the London BBC bosses have decided to close network production in Birmingham – in other words any national programming such as Countryfile, Gardeners World, The Chelsea Flower Show, See Hear, Hairy Bikers, Points of View etc etc
This would be a massive blow to the midlands and is a kick in the teeth to Birmingham as the second city. No representation of the midlands at a national level on or by the BBC. When pressed about the promise of extra funds to the independent sector – in reality none will be forth coming and everyone in the industry agrees it will be a final nail in the independent programme making sector in Birmingham, in essence TV production in brum will vanish.
The is no sense in moving the BBC from Birmingham the mailbox is a new building which is large and could easily accommodate more programmes – the Bristol base they are proposing the move to is falling down – they will need to spend 10’s of millions of pounds to build another – it is total madness.
The should be mass protests to this – the BBC are slipping it under the table as nothing major – for the midlands its massive.
The only thing left in Birmingham will be local radio and local news….
Tell people how wrong this is – it will be a huge hole in the creative industry in Birmingham and an estimated 20 million loss in income for the city.
THIS NEEDS TO BE STOPPED!!!!!!!!!