BBC Resources

FORMATION

1990’s

SIGNIFICANT EVENTS

1990‘s

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FAMILY TREES

Background in 1990’s

The leader of any organisation needs to be far sighted. Broadcast inflation is always higher than RPI and the BBC’s costs were soaring. Michael Checkland, DG, was an accountant and he paved the way for the infamous Producer Choice an internal market system that encouraged budget holders to look anywhere for facilities and resources at the right price.

As staff working at the ‘coal face’ many of us scowled at the mass recruitment of more administrators and highly paid accountants but, and my colleagues may shoot me for saying this, the public frankly needed to know exactly what money was going where and why. Without armies of bean-counters I have to admit I know of no other provable way.

Within this infinite wisdom it was therefore necessary to separate the programme makers, those who performed, wrote scripts or were journalists, from from the so called hands on parts of the corporation - I believe the phrase to be, “realisation teams”. At the earliest stage I’m sure part of the plan was to ultimately prepare parts of this division for sell off for cash to put into production (it wasn’t until the formation of BBCT that this would be possible). Thus was created an absolutely enormous division to be known as BBC Resources:

(click on this family tree for a list of locations)

The vastness of this division cannot be overstated (click on the family tree for a list of locations).


I was but a minow. The departments that I was formally in, or worked closely for long periods, are shown emboldened. In the following order they were:


Television Centre Studios

Research & Development

TVC Projects

VR

Project Management Services

BBC Res