Description: DAVID CAMERON, the British prime minister, was in Brussels meeting the press last October when he took a few moments to make fun of the British Broadcasting Corporation. “Good to see that costs are being controlled everywhere,†Mr. Cameron said as he directed a mocking glance at three BBC correspondents, each from a different BBC program, covering his news conference. The implication: Considering that the BBC has agreed to freeze most of its public funding for six years, effectively sentencing itself to a 16 percent budget cut through 2017, it surely could have looked harder at its staffing needs for the event.
Source: NYTimes.com
Date: 04/23/2011
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/business/media/24bbc.html?ref=business
Questions for discussion:
- How should government approach the financing of public bodies, like the BBC?
- Would a public/private arrangement be better than the current structure?
- Which financial metrics should be employed to monitor the performance of the BBC besides top-level across the board budget cuts?
- Should government be more directly involved in selecting how to allocate available funds?
Leave a Reply