Neil McNicholas: Here is the news..an exasperating waste of BBC resources

WHO on earth is in charge of how the news is reported and broadcast at the BBC these days?

Their practices are so exasperating at times, like the report on the midday news that I watched the other day.

Anita McVey was the studio presenter, but I’ll change the actual subject of the story in order not to appear to be making light of what was actually a very serious incident.

But it went something like this...

Anita: “We’re just getting reports
that a young couple called Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch and pail of water and Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after. Let’s go over now to our reporter, Mary Smith, who is at the hill for us. Mary, what can tell us?”

Mary: “Yes, hello, Anita. It would indeed appear that a young couple, police are naming them as Jack and Jill, went up the hill that you can see just behind me, to fetch a pail of water. It was at that point that Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.”

In other words Mary could tell us absolutely nothing more than Anita already had, but as the BBC had wasted time and money sending a reporter and camera crew to the hill, the producer in the studio thought they might as well make use of her.

Mary: “I’ll hand you over to my colleague, John, who is at the actual top of the hill. John, what’s the latest?”

John: “Thank you, Mary. As you said, it would appear that a young couple Jack and Jill came up this hill to fetch a pail of water and Jack fell down and is believed to have broken his crown and Jill came tumbling after. That’s as much as the police are telling us at the moment. Back to you, Mary.”

Mary: “Thank you, John. So that’s the latest from the hill which Jack and Jill fell down, Jack sustaining serious head injuries. And now back to you, Anita, in the studio.”

Anita: “Thank you, Mary. So just to bring you up to date on that incident: a young couple, Jack and Jill, went up a 
hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after, and just as soon as we 
get more news on that we’ll bring it to you.”

Is trying to fill a 24-hour news cycle to blame for stretching a 30 second news report into five or six minutes of mindless repetition that the BBC wouldn’t get away with if it was up to the panellists on their very own programme Just A Minute?

Is it also entirely necessary to spend licence payers’ money on having not just one, but two, reporters and camera crews on a story that Anita was able to fully report on right there in the studio?

And when we have just heard the details of the story three times, why was it necessary for Anita to repeat it yet again as if viewers only had IQs the same as their shoe size?

While we’re discussing BBC policy and practice, I just returned from a brief visit to Spain where BBC World News was one of the channels available on the television in my hotel room. What surprised me was that there were breaks in the news for adverts!

Even the very suggestion of the Beeb losing its licence fee and having to compete on a commercial basis like any other broadcaster tends to bring the BBC Trust and the director general out in a cold sweat. And yet BBC programming is apparently being financed by advertising in Europe, so the two things are not so diametrically opposed after all.

The question then arises, where does that commercial sponsorship go, given that licence payers in the UK are financing the BBC and its programming in the first place? And if the answer is that any income they receive from outside the UK helps to off-set production costs, and if that is in fact revenue from advertising (as I experienced in Spain), then why can’t the BBC be commercially financed here at home? The concept obviously isn’t quite as anathema to the Beeb as it tries to make out.

Anita: “Let me just bring you that breaking news once again that a young couple, Jack and Jill, went up a hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after. Let’s go over to our reporter Mary Smith who is standing by at the hill with the latest developments. Mary.”

Mary: “As you come to me here, at the hill, it does indeed appear that...”