A nice little bit of investigation by B-BBC contributor Billy Blofeld, who has been busy with the FOI requests. The BBC have now provided him with up-to-date data broken down by how much they spend on recruitment advertisement with external organisations.
30% is quite a shocking slant of payment towards one particular source, but if you isolate only national newspapers this rises to a staggering 70%. From his blog:
The BBC are the biggest fish in the media pond. Whatever they say, they are not subject to the vagaries of the market like a commercial company is. The BBC can influence and change markets, because the licence fee payers give them the financial whip hand. In short the BBC can choose to advertise wherever the hell they like and people wanting a job in television will follow.
Given nearly a third of the BBC total spend is with companies with political affiliations, it is a disgrace that nearly 80% of spend in this major category is with the left wing Guardian.
You know I’m the last person to stick up for al-Beeb, but wouldn’t you expect them to target their advertising?
Most Meeja types read the Grauniad and to be fair, they’ve built up the paper to have a large and well-regarded Media section – in the same way as, say the Times/TES has with education.
We would expect a private company to behave in the same way. I think there’s a rich enough vein of reporting bias and indoctrination to mine without calling them out for fishing where the fish are.
Seems like we’re all trying to be understanding here!
You make some bang-on points, which I have heard used pretty much as is in defence of policy.
But we are in a new age, and as All Seeing Eye has pointed out, the BBC by its influence defines the market.
And it goes to a bigger picture that goes beyond ‘but it has always been that way’. Er… why? Given that this is a uniquely funded entity using public money.
And compounding the left bias of most who pursue media careers hardly seems sensible if one is seeking a more balanced media environment and output.
And few can figure out why it needs to prop up the Gruan when it would be easy, and inevitable, that employees head to the BBC wherever it is, such as a fairly easy to locate website. That to get to the job vacancies one has to go through a politico-social mindset that just happens to conform to that of the BBC (unsurprisingly given the long history) is no surprise.
But not very healthy.
If you breed from within a small pool, the genetic consequences can only slide downhill. As Helen Boaden seems blissfully ignorant about.
http://robertbonnett.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/simpsons-three-eyed-fish.jpg
And as an audience forced to sample their ‘taste’ and their ‘taste’ alone, once the contamination of a hive mind that contemplates no other view compromises every department, then the slippery poison seeps into every narrative like mercury.
Frankly, I am a wee bit fed up with being fed only a load of pollock overseen by market rate flounders, and would seek to dine on fare from the open ocean, as opposed to Aunty’s tainted inbred farms.
Given the choice, of course.
Not true, the BBC could advertise in Job Centres and on-line. Why do they even need to put jobs in papers any more?
But it’s not just the BBC, it’s public sector jobs generally that are in the Guardian, without that subsidy that rag would have gone bust years ago.
I just wonder if the BBC advertised in the Daily Mail how many right on lefties would stoop low enough to buy it? Not many I suspect.
I’ve got to agree with Martin here. The BBC could and would advertise online if it were a commercial organisation. There are already specialist websites for particular skill sets (ie Reed for Accounting). Some websites are set up by agencies with recruitment facilities whilst others are just job boards or aggregators. I would imagine that if there isn’t already a specialist one for the media then one would spring up.
TDK – Agreed. There must be a UK equivalent of Mediabistro.
re Philip.
If a private company spent 70%+ of its budget for a particular service (say, recruitment advertising) with a single company, the first thing that would happen is that the board would look closely to see what sort of kickbacks, if any, are involved. There would be, straightforwardly, a suspicion of corrupt practices.
Now, let me make it clear that we shouldn’t allege that BBC execs are actually getting cash kickbacks from the Guardian, but we are certainly entitled to assume that the relationship is far from ‘normal’.
Since this would bring the BBC into disrepute, the BBC Trust ought to do its job and investigate what’s going on.
Shouldn’t it be referred to those who deal with anti competition? Why can’t the Daily Mail for example ask why it’s greater circulation isn’t given a preference over the Guardian?
One more thing. The Guardian’s circulation is around 270,000. In 2008, the BBC spent £340,406 on personnel advertising with the Guardian. That’s $1.25 per reader.
Since a first class stamp costs just 41p, surely the BBC would have been better off just writing a letter to each of the readers individually, asking if they had thought of a career in the BBC.
Actually, looked at in this cost/benefit way, the difference between the cost of mailing out individually to the Guardian’s readers, and the BBC taking out this advertising works out as £228,840 in 2008. (Probably more, given that the BBC could probably get a lower postal rate for junk mailing.) I would suggest that this £228,840 should therefore be seen as a direct subsidy (ie, an economic gift) to the Guardian from the BBC.
Mind you, I can’t see why they need to do any dead-tree advertising for personnel anyway. It’s not as if they don’t have a pretty effective market-share in online services themselves.
33%+0%+8%+1%+0%+2%=44%
Where does the other 56% go?
The total is all publications, the 44% is national publications [from the original post]
BBC-NUJ shares its political ideology, and our money, with the ‘Guardian’.
So the BBC is saying it advertises in the Grauniad media section because it is there. In other words, it chooses to do this regardless of its public duty and charter obligations to little things like, oh, impartiality. All part of the airy-fairy disregard of the we-do-as-we-please-and-you-can-all-go-to-hell Beeboid Corporation
The original blogger has made the point that the Beeboid Corporation is the big fish here and if it advertised in national papers or for that matter the Village Post (fictional), readers and applicants would follow the fish. It is not as if the nationals are obscure places anyway.
Actually the Grauniad is an obscure place, why does the BBC spend the biggest chunk on this one little festering rag? It’s read by a total of 9 people in the Country. I thought the BBC were all about diversity? Shouldn’t they advertise across the social spectrum? Or is the BBC just a place of right on gay drug taking Liebour voting white middle class dross?
I don’t think many copies of the Grauniad are read in the bars of Hackney somehow.
Post 10:10, the Graun is so on the back foot it’s plain funny.
They have been caught modding or closing their ironically named Comment IS Free boards like Richard Black on a day of inconvenient revelations, and then digging even deeper with editors trying to claim time and/or number limits that are total fantasy, again like Mr. Black’s & Mr. Robinson’s.
Unique. Just like the relationship.
“Vote Labour or else”
http://www.guardianoffers.co.uk/mall/productpage.cfm/GuardianOffers/_poshboy/-/%27Step-Outside-Posh-Boy%27-and-%27Vote-Labour-Or-Else%27-T-shirt