Exclusive: BBC sets aside redundancy cash for musicians
OrchestrasWe understand that Simon Webb, the BBC’s beleaguered director of orchestras, has told an internal meeting that redundancy money has been ringfenced from next year’s budget to pay for laying off musicians in the BBC orchestras.
Webb said it was a ‘one-off cost’ that came ‘from a different part of the BBC’ and had already been signed off.
He also admitted there was not enough commercial work ‘out there’ to fulfil DG Tim Davie’s plan of external funding for the orchestras.
Given these admissions, it seems hardly worth the Musicians Union continuing to negotiate with the BBC if the layoffs re a foregone concludion. They should go straight into dispute mode, with all that this might entail.
The amount of doubletalk at the BBC is rising week by week.
BBC ensembles should boycott the Proms. Audiences probably should as well.
That would never happen except that audiences – whatever about London – have not gone back fully since the pandemic and 10% inflation running nationally and a cost of living crisis not gone away. Boycotting any further would only make me the world of classical music even more financially fragile than it is already and more cuts, and not help the situation. Something that might work in America and it’s filanthropy bit not here.
Collective bargaining and strike action are really all that’s left for the orchestras, and withdrawing from the Proms will make a big enough statement. If the orchestras do not make a stand here and now, then the long-term is likely to see similar or even more drastic cuts in the future.
I agree with some of the other commenters that the non-BBC orchestras should withdraw from the Proms in solidarity, and do it at such a time to cause as much disruption as possible, and use it as leverage.
Ultimately the only way significant changes are likely to occur is with a change in leadership.
No. Audiences should ensure that this is the best attended Proms season ever.
I think this course of action very unwise. If anything, non BBC ensembles should be the ones who boycott.
‘BBC ensembles should boycott the Proms.’
Sure, and within a few years the Proms will be outsourced entirely to external groups only too glad to play when they are booked to play.
The BBC ensembles should tread very carefully and concentrate on showing their true value in constructive ways.
Sounds like old stories of ship builders not finishing the ship they were working on until the got a contract for a new ship. Didn’t work out well.
Funnily enough, have already been asked for many of the upcoming BBC Proms concerts as a freelancer! This obviously means I’m replacing either a redundant player or lack of appointment. A moral dilemma yet the MU shall do nothing.
How many senior management roles have been Ring fenced from the attrition that is being exacted further down the scales? Not too any, if any at all, if other restructuring are anything to go by. If this should go through, God forbid, then expect to see big performance bonuses to be slipped through before the leaner, meaner, philistine BBC gets ready to cut some other groups to satisfy the whims of the next Governmental attack on its future. Sadly, the people that made the BBC what it once was will be sacrificed by those that have reduced it to what it is today and are being very well rewarded for their perfidy.
I don’t think the BBC needs any help from the Government. The BBC’s priorities have been clear for years.
Cynical, the people who’ve massively damaged the BBC are the philistine morons we’ve had as governments since 2010 who’ve cut its budget by a third.
At the behest of, and cheered on by, the right wing press.
You mean the governments that have not allowed the BBC to extract more cash from a disappearing audience, under threat of criminal prosecution, and using an outdated licence system?
It’s the BBC that thinks Lineker is more important than a small but excellent choir.
There are lots of pies that the BBC could withdraw its excessive number of fingers from, if it so wished.
I could’t agree with you more. The way in which the BBC always hides the true cost of things is astonishing.
the closer you get to the microphone the less important you appear to be syndrome. Just aspire to be the best BBC, and not be pushed around by the likes of Mad Nad and The Daily Murdoch & Mail
Simon Webb wasn’t that popular when was with the CBSO.
I have just read a very well-considered piece on the Eurpoadisc website on the current plans of the ‘men (and women) in grey suits planning the cuts to BBC classical music provision. I’m unsure whehter SlippedDisk allows links but the piece is well work a read. It can be found here
The way things are heading, it would not surprise me if the whole BBC classical music operation disappears in a few years, and with it the likes of Webb, Davie et al. Their demise would be most apposite, given the shambolic way they have conducted themselves and behaved towards their musicians these past few months.