Is The Guardian's expensive role as lead sponsor of the Hay Literary Festival about to stop?
It is understood that the Left-wing paper is mulling whether to renew it. The Guardian is proud of its link to Hay but the event has become increasingly corporate.
This year, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger found himself chairing an event in the Barclays Wealth Pavilion. This was the same Barclays which
the Guardian had recently confronted as part of an investigation into alleged tax avoidance.
Meanwhile, the Guardian's sponsorship of the
Edinburgh TV Festival is rumoured to be under scrutiny
All quiet at the BSkyB AGM
BSkyB's annual general meeting was surprisingly tame considering the angst among so much of the political and commercial media world about the prospect of News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch taking full control of Sky.
Friday's AGM lasted all of 43 minutes and there was only a brief frisson when one small shareholder asked deputy chairman Nicholas Ferguson whether this might be a "Citizen Kane" moment if News Corp gained too much power.
Chairman James Murdoch's parting words were: "We look forward to seeing you next year." It now looks possible that Sky will still be a separate company in a year's time. Analysts, who had pencilled in the second quarter of 2011 for News Corp to complete a takeover, are pushing back that date as Europe is yet to begin a formal regulatory probe.
Jeremy Hunt's no show
Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt abruptly pulled out of yesterday's Voice of the Listener & Viewer event, where he was the main speaker, with less than 24 hours' notice.
Hunt, who slashed 16% off the BBC's licence fee settlement, cited an unforeseen meeting overseas, required by the Prime Minister himself. It was VLV president Jocelyn Hay who went on Radio 4's Today last week to blast the Government's negotiations with the BBC and complain about the complete lack of any consultation with licence-fee payers...
Finding the positives
The BBC spin is that the licence fee deal is good because it is guaranteed until 2017.
It's still a blow to the Beeb, which campaigned in the past against "top-slicing" to fund non-BBC content. That surely applies to picking up the Foreign Office's bill for the World Service, which is barely seen or heard inside the UK.
BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons wrote an open letter to licence-fee payers a year ago, citing IPSOS Mori research which showed the public would prefer to see the fee cut rather than "top-sliced" to fund, say, commercial TV news. Lyons said "accountability to licence-fee payers" was key and they must be consulted before any big change. Not any more.
