SCANDALS PRODUCE TOO MUCH “DRAMA” AT BBC, U.K. MINISTER SAYS

For the BBC, the past year, in which it was dogged by two major scandals, has been an “annus horribilis,” British Culture Secretary Maria Miller said on Wednesday. She indicated that the recent accusations that extravagant severence payments were made to BBC executives suggested that there was a breakdown in the relationship between the BBC Trust, the governing body of the public broadcaster, and management. “This must be addressed,” she told the Royal Television Society convention in Cambridge. The controversy over the payments and the spiking of a news report that would have exposed the late BBC star Jimmy Savile as a serial child molester put the work of the BBC staff at risk, she suggested. “The corporate dramas of the BBC should never eclipse its actual dramas,” she said.