Media Monkey’s Diary: Benedict Cumberbatch; Danny Cohen v will.i.am
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Version 0 of 1. • It’s redemption time for Adrian van Klaveren, the former BBC Radio 5 Live controller who was caught up in the Newsnight/Savile omnishambles two years ago. He was penalised by being sent off to the trenches, as field marshal of the BBC’s first world war anniversary coverage. In the latest wave of job announcements by James Harding, director of BBC News, the rehabilitated sinner hearteningly gains the nebulous-sounding role of “head of strategic change in news and current affairs”, a position suspiciously like that of Simon Harwood, the ever-beaming “head of strategic governance” in the sitcom W1A. This leaves Van Klaveren’s vast season leader-less, although in anniversary terms the war has only just started – 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918 and the 1919 peace conference are all still to be commemorated. But no doubt Harding and his senior colleagues are counting on another colossal cock-up arriving soon that will allow someone else to be banished to the mud of Flanders. • Promised by Halloween, but announced a week later, the latest Harding reshuffle does promote women such as Jasmin Buttar and Anna Williams. But, overall, recent changes leave the team running the BBC domestic news machine looking even more blokeish: Harding’s deputy Fran Unsworth has been moved away from it as the new director of the World Service, as has Mary Hockaday (formerly head of the newsroom), who joins her there as controller, World Service English; and on Friday it emerged that Camilla Mankabady, assistant editor of BBC News at Ten, is defecting to ITV News. • Did the Times throw away its own world exclusive, when “Mr BT Cumberbatch” announced his engagement there on Wednesday? Although the announcement was highlighted by a box in the paper’s Births, Marriages and Deaths columns – and although such notices must be received “by 3.30pm two days prior to insertion” (presumably tea-time on Monday, in this case) – John Witherow’s paper appeared comically taken by surprise, managing only a two-paragraph downpage news story on page 20 that had the air of a last-minute quickie job. The following day Cumberbatch and his fiancee were sheepishly placed on the front-page masthead, trailing a piece in T2, but by that time everyone else was going big on the story too. • Danny Cohen, Twitter newbie and BBC director of television, has swiftly discovered social media has its drawbacks - and ways to dodge them. So, for example, will.i.am, has been bombarding him with ideas to modernise the BBC’s output. “In the future every newscaster will have a smartwatch that not only tells time, but shows the times we live in,” the musician and digital age prophet tweeted Cohen, who launched The Voice while running BBC1. “My advice is follow @noreenahertz. She’s smarter than me!” Cohen deftly replied, referring to his wife, the economist and academic whose latest book offers tips on decision-making. Cannily, his subsequent tweets have mostly been about football, not television. • BBC network news had a humiliating time at the RTS news awards earlier this year, with a gong for Jeremy Bowen the only bright moment in an evening when ITV News and Channel 4’s Dispatches took three awards apiece. Last week, at the Grierson awards for documentaries, the Beeb performed equally badly, with its four channels only picking up only two prizes between them on a night when Channel 4 (with Educating Yorkshire winning twice) alone collected eight. This repeated the pattern in the factual categories at the TV Baftas in April, when Channel 4 won best documentary series, best single documentary and best constructed factual, Sky took best specialist factual, ITV took best feature series - and BBC execs went home Bafta-less, just as they did in the news and current affairs categories. Looks like the quality crisis in news (which has prompted panicky reorganisations, hirings and firings) is now matched by one in factual output. • Could the annual Sony awards piss-up be a thing of the past? For 32 years, the “radio Oscars” were sponsored by Sony and known for drunk and disorderly DJs, embarrassing things said on the podium, and more or less open hostility between BBC and commercial stations (oh, and for being interminable, which partly explains all the drinking). This year Sony dropped out as sponsor and they transitionally became the Radio Academy awards; but on Friday the academy announced that its awards “will not be held in May next year”, adding rather vaguely that it aimed to “create a new event designed to celebrate the radio industry in a dynamic and modern way”. Ben Cooper, the body’s chair, blah-blahed about modernity too, while saying the revamped ceremony had to “retain the gravitas” (ha!) of the event’s traditions. It does sound as if gathering radio types for a wine-fuelled banquet in a posh London hotel might be off the menu, as not very modern or good for the medium’s image – but what could replace it? A brisker, lower-key ceremony viewable and listenable to on all kinds of devices? X Factor-style live voting by listeners? Much as before, but sponsored by Evian and with booze and the wild men of the wireless banned? • To a service at St Bride’s, Fleet Street, where the archbishop of Canterbury preached the sermon at a service honouring fallen journalists, and a supporting cast of not obviously holy hacks delivered addresses or gave readings. Slightly awkwardly for the archbish, the sacred setting did not prevent Sun on Sunday editor Victoria Newton from letting slip a “bloody” in her contribution as she talked of practising journalism like her heroine Kate Adie requiring a commitment to “bloody hard work”. Though granite-faced as she said this, Welby, in his sermon, recalled his experiences on a trip to Baghdad just after the 2003 invasion, which he said (looking at Newton) “mitigated my shock at your use of a fairly mild expletive”. Phew! • In the Richard Desmond era, Channel 5 publicity was outsourced to Desmond’s entertainment-PR chums in the Outside Organisation. But now Viacom has taken over and taken it back in-house. This means that Matt “Veep” Baker, the former Channel 4 head of PR, is effectively in charge of spin at the upstart broadcaster he once loved to hate, as the vice-president overseeing Viacom comms; and meanwhile, with almost Shakespearean symmetry, Paul Leather, who managed an equally lengthy stint as Channel 5’s head of press pre-Desmond (so long it became known to some as Land of Leather) is now doing some PR work for Channel 4, swatting away pesky hacks sniffing around the second series of Benefits Street. • Monkey’s quote of the week: “At last someone takes me seriously” – Jeremy Paxman, still apparently smarting about his treatment by the BBC, on signing up as a contributing editor for the FT. |