02.22
How Mike Whitby cost Birmingham Its Rightful Place as a Film and TV Powerhouse.
Jonathan Stuart-Brown for Save The British Film Industry.
There has possibly never been a Council Leader as disastrous as Mike Whitby who has presided over the decline of the once mighty Birmingham – still by far the second most populated city in the UK.
The Birmingham Press run ‘Earth calling Whitby’.
http://www.thebirminghampress.com/2012/02/18/earth-calling-whitby/
Whitby has had countless chances to get Birmingham the very best sound stages in the world at the 650 acre NEC which is desperate to fill its huge vacant spaces and losses running at £1 million a month. Its losses stem from loss of media juice in the centre of the UK for its magnificent exhibition and convention facilities, with customers moving to far inferior sites which are right next to the media outlets in London and soon Manchester/Salford.
But it could and should be the state of the art film and tv studio in Europe. It can have sound stages twice the size of Pinewood’s 007 sound stage, the biggest in Europe.
It is five minutes walk to a major airport and train station which gets you in London in 80 minutes.
It has magnificent parking, superb hotels, and access to outstanding countryside as well as William Shakespeare’s Stratford-on-Avon and Warwick Castle.
There are many dozens of alternative sites in Birmingham which could house studios far bigger than Pinewood Studios 108 acres. There are hundreds of sites which could comfortably house studios the size of Elstree at a mere 9 acres. Yet under Whitby, Birmingham has no sound stage. The Council has spent billions under him, bid for every City of Culture prize known to man (always unsuccessfully), spent hundreds of millions on marketing, and had UK Government and EU grants galore. Yet the city has almost nothing to show for it.
Whitby has presided over the BBC evacuation from Birmingham. Despite 19% of the BBC Licence fee coming from the Midlands, only 2% is spent there. Whitby has managed to reduce this further following his negotiation last week with Mark Thompson, Director-General of The BBC.
Alas the man is a fool and completely unaware of what a fool he is.
Whitby has lived in thw world of spin so long, where council and quango fatcats talk about stuff they do not understand and try to pretend they do on the false assumption other people in the room understand the rubbish they are spouting. They just learn the buzz words, repeat them over and over. Learning to speak English and learning to correct ignorance by education would be a far better solution.
On a forum on Restirred, a sharp mind analyses the idiocy of the deal he thinks he has pulled off.
You can see the spin here.
http://birminghamnewsroom.com/2012/02/bbc-backs-birmingham%E2%80%99s-creative-city-initiative/
But the Restirred analysis of The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is here.
http://www.restirred.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1864&start=240
- Pilot an apprenticeship scheme, linked to targeted worklessness programmes, in conjunction with the creative and cultural sector and education providers.
- Develop a senior management skills sharing programme.
- Work with small and medium sized enterprises in the city’s digital media sector and its specialist university research functions, to develop future technologies and digital content and to pilot new digital approaches in Birmingham.
- Work across the Corporation, including its research and development and training functions to support the development and testing of new content from Birmingham content producers.
- Open up access for Birmingham based production companies through Meet the Commissioner events.
- Digitise and release more Birmingham-related digital archives for the opening of the Library of Birmingham.
Mike Whitby made much of Mark Thompson’s personal guarantees….without noting Mark Thompson is leaving the BBC in the next few months.
He will be perfectly free to become an Oxford Don – as he lives in the City – and absolutely free to work with or for John Whittaker who has within his 292 company empire the 33 000 acres in the Peel operation, which include Media City where the BBC is investing minimum £500 million in the next few years.
The BBC will -as things stand – be investing possibly nothing in the Midlands by 2015. They can like ITV move out of Birmingham and broadcast TV and Radio local news from Cardiff, Salford or London.
Well played Mike Whitby.
http://union-news.co.uk/2012/01/bbc-birmingham-to-strike-over-empty-mailbox-threat/
Jonathan Stuart-Brown
www.savethebritishfilmindustry.com
Mark Thompson made the following points:
a) the decision to move the Factual Unit to Bristol has been made and will not be reversed….”
Here’s the thing. The BBC is mostly about making and broadcasting TV and radio programmes. And what’s more, as its funding reduces, it will be forced to concentrate on these core activities. But Mike Whitby is engaged in a ridiculous clown dance in which pretends (while parroting the word ‘digital’ five times per sentence), that guff about youth training and archives and The Creative City and skills sharing have more than the slightest importance. When they really don’t.
I’ve had a look at the bullet points.
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