BBC News increasingly desperate for non-election stories

The news room is well-stocked with general election stories right now.  Party press offices are spewing out media opportunities, propaganda and policy tit-bits at a rate of knots.   There are plenty of election stories, non-stories and scandals (real and imagined) to fill the news bulletins.

The dilemma is how to balance the furious electioneering with something a bit more light-hearted. On the local news, it is fairly easy. Cat stuck up tree. Tree stuck up cat. Man immersed in beans/prawns/sewage to raise money for charity/motorhome/dying relative. Local businessman banged up again. Local issues with cladding/waiting lists/housing issues. No problem. But finding non-election stores at national level is harder.

Editors have been advised to try and find fun stories about, for example, animals, the environment, historical sex abuse scandals, and funny shaped vegetables (as long as there is a national context). If desperate, they are advised to run stories about anniversaries (85 years since the invention of string) or ‘national-day-of’ stories or things they found on TikTok.

The final option is to admit defeat - run the election stories, and then end the news bulletin twenty minutes early.  And then fill the gap with the potter’s wheel or the test card. The public will be grateful. And somebody might win a Bafta.

image from pixabay

Panem et Circenses

Rutland demands its fair share of BBC spending

The BBC needs to spend as much on television content in Rutland as it does elsewhere, say protestors.

They claim the corporation spends almost nothing producing content in Rutland.  Even the TV series Rutland Weekend TV had been filmed in London. Adding the detective series Shetland could just as easily have been filmed locally and called Rutland instead. Licence fee payers in Rutland ‘deserve better,’ they said.

‘We’re calling for a year-on-year increase in locally produced content until we are getting our fair share of BBC spending. We are fed up being the butt of the joke,’ said parish councillor Colin Dull, citing the band called the Rutles and their album ‘A Hard Day’s Rut’, and the cartoon series Beavis and Rutt-Head.

'The BBC should play a greater role in Rutland - portraying and shaping the Rutland identity,' he added.

A BBC spokesperson said: 'The BBC is committed to audiences in Rutland and indeed everywhere in Great Britain, and to all of the media and creative businesses based in Rutland, if indeed there are any.'  He went on to say that Rutland had benefited economically because two episodes of "tweet of the day" on Radio 4 were recorded nearby, and a part-time BBC researcher had lived in Oakham until 2012.