Mark Thompson: BBC biggest mass media, second only to China Mass Media

Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, indicated that the BBC is the second biggest mass media employer, second only to Communist China mass media.

This comes after the news about even more job losses at the BBC that could become the BRC (Biggest number of Repeats Corporation) when both television channels and radio stations are forced to broadcast, re-broadcast and re-re-broadcast programmes due to less new programmes being produced.

Chris Patten, former Conservative MP, former Governor of Hong Kong, indicated that having a frozen TV License was the best possible scenario for the BBC. It makes you wonder what else is being done that would have the remaining BBC staff walking on broken glass in the coming months.

The Andrew Gilligan affair that led to the resignation of the then Director General Greg Dyke started the ball rolling after a confrontation with Alistair Campbell that led then Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell MP to implement a new set of budgetary conditions for the running of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It has been reported that any other budget reductions would jeopardize the very existence of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Let us remember that this is happening when other mass media are laying off staff because of dwindling advertising revenues and traditional BBC sources like The Guardian have been forced to increase the cover price of its newspapers to try and counter loss of advertising revenue.

If this wasn’t enough, The Guardian is being attacked by its own distribution network because an association of Newsagents wrote to many of the Guardian’s advertisers telling them that The Guardian had cut their profit margins at the same time that the cost of each newspaper copy had been increased. If there are less advertising revenues and less newspaper copies are sold……… you get the picture.

There is also on the table another round of News of the World-like series of scandals when the Trinity Mirror Group is about to be investigated regarding hacking. There is an additional aspect to be considered. The Trinity Mirror Group does not have the financial endurance of Ruppert Murdoch and is already facing financial troubles having to lay off staff.

As they say in China, we are living in interesting times when the National Union of Journalists is seeing its supporters losing their jobs by the thousands and with nowhere to go.