As the BBC saga shows, the idea of deferential old ‘Auntie’ is no more, says our TV insider |
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I can't help feeling sorry for BBC1 Controller Peter Fincham as he's paraded round the media ring for the BBC newshounds to have a snap at.
And well they might: it's their credibility he's damaged by playing a misleading clip about the Queen to another scandal-hungry pack of journalists.
Of course Fincham could have asked someone to check that the Queen really did storm off in a huff before he played it, but he didn't. He took it on trust. So who was he trusting?
A Year With The Queen has been made by RDF, one of the UK's five largest independent producers, best known for such intellectual fare as Faking It, Wife Swap, and Holiday Showdown.
The award winning 'super-indie' is much admired for the way it has turned factual
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| If the Queen thought she was in safe hands with the BBC she was wrong |
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subjects into entertainment formats which
consistently deliver ratings. Doing this needs smart people, and the man in charge is one of the smartest.
Stephen Lambert has been at the helm of RDF for 10 years. Before that he was for 16 years a documentary maker at the BBC, and worked on BBC2's peerless series Modern Times.
So Peter Fincham had every reason to trust the factual accuracy of the tapes he was supplied. But Stephen Lambert probably never saw the clips supplied to the BBC before they left his office. As someone who's had to supply footage for one of those press briefings, I can tell you what happens.
A producer working in the edit gets a call from the series producer who's been contacted by the press office to say they need some clips urgently. They agree over the phone what to send and it's dumped off to tape, probably by a runner or an editor at lunchtime - unsupervised.
Although there might have been a couple  |
