October 2011
A letter to send out…
Dear [name to be added],
I’m writing to you today to ask you to join in the fight to save the BBC in Birmingham.
As you may have read in the national local press, the BBC in London are planning to end the production of Factual television radio in the UK’s second city by the end of 2012 and move all the programmes that are currently made here to Bristol. If the BBC are allowed to complete this move, the effects for Birmingham and the midlands as a region will be disastrous.
In terms of sheer numbers this plan is frightening: internal documents show that the BBC’s presence in Birmingham benefits the economy to the tune of nearly £30 million, but it’s not only about the money…
BBC Birmingham is one of the oldest regional arms of the BBC. It was the first outside of London to start broadcasting the corporation’s radio and television output (in 1922 and 1949 respectively). Its rich history includes cutting edge drama, with hugely successful series like Boys from the Blackstuff, Dalziel and Pascoe and Doctors AND outstanding factual series including Top Gear, Pebble Mill at One, The Clothes Show, Telly Addicts, Call My Bluff, Coast, Countryfile and Gardeners’ World.
Over the years, BBC Birmingham’s dedicated production teams have created a huge range of groundbreaking television and radio output which has not only allowed them to develop a highly skilled production-base but also contributed enormously to our region’s cultural life and economy.
The Birmingham factual staff have unique expertise in a range of fields; the outdoors and rural affairs are brilliantly covered by the BBC’s highest-rating television factual series Countryfile and the multi-award winning Coast, and on radio with Costing the Earth, Farming Today, Open Country and Ramblings. Specialist horticultural knowledge and training make Birmingham the natural place to produce the enduring classic, Gardeners’ World and other popular horticultural television such as the RHS Flower Show programming (Chelsea Flower Show, Hampton Court, Tatton Park). There is also expertise in fields as diverse as astronomy (The Sky at Night – one of the world’s longest running television series), cookery (The Hairy Bikers Mums Know Best and Bakeation) and music (Soul Music and Radio 2 Big Band Special).
In short, it’s the unique expertise and experience brought by Birmingham Factual staff that enable these programmes to constantly perform and prove popular with our audiences.
If the BBC is allowed to get away with the move from Birmingham unchallenged, all those years of expertise and skill will lost.
So, the big question is why does this matter?
Other than the massive financial impact on Birmingham, the closure of the factual department in Birmingham will have other significant effects:
1) Birmingham and the West Midlands will no longer feature in the BBC’s map of the UK. Currently we have a significant voice within the BBC and can work to ensure that our region is represented in factual television. With the loss of this department will come the loss of our region’s voice.
2) The wider cultural landscape will be impoverished. In every city where the BBC has downscaled its presence, the independent creative sector has suffered. Currently Birmingham is rightly proud of its creative sector (representing up to 16% of the local economy) and in this time of austerity it can Ill afford to put one of its success stories under threat.
3) It will cost millions but damage quality. To move staff and programmes to Bristol and Manchester, the BBC will have to pay out significant relocation or redundancy packages to around 100 members of staff. They will also be abandoning the state of the art technical facilities at the Mailbox that cost £40 million to install. Finally they will have to upgrade the facilities in Bristol to accommodate the people and programmes moved. In all the cost of this move could run to hundreds of millions of pounds of licence fee payers money while actually damaging the quality of the programmes.
None of this needs to happen. Birmingham staff do not want to move, and no case has been made for why the factual department here should close.
In these straightened times, we need to ensure that the BBC spends our licence fee money wisely and the best way for them to do that is to allow the creative teams in the factual department here in Birmingham to continue to deliver brilliant, value for money television and radio, just as they have done for nearly 90 years.
When Mark Thompson (the director general of the BBC) opened the current BBC facilities in the mailbox he said:
“Great cities such as Birmingham are central to our vision of a new BBC — a BBC which is far more representative of the people it serves around the country… but, more than that, [it] is about making sure that the BBC is a truly national broadcaster, bringing the diversity of modern Britain to life for our viewers and listeners everywhere.”
With all that in mind, i would now like to ask you again to join the fight to save BBC Birmingham by asking Mark Thompson what has changed?
Yours sincerely,
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