Memo to Mark Thompson: On Talent Management and Damage Control

Michael Hedges October 29, 2008

Broadcast managers have a love-hate relationship with talent – love the ratings, hate the management. Buying high priced talent, for ineffective managers, means not managing at all. When damage occurs, somebody has to pay.

Sometime on Saturday October 18th BBC Radio 2 aired a stunt pre-recorded by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand. In it was an exchange between the two DJs – job descriptions notwithstanding, they are DJs through and through – joking at the expense of retired well-known actor Andrew Sachs about the sexual exploits of one DJs and Sachs’ granddaughter. The language was crude, the tone rude. How many UK license fee payers are grandfathers? How many are granddaughters?

So crude and rude, in fact, it drew the attention of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Not normally given to joking around on a good day, PM Brown has been rather preoccupied of late with saving the financial well-being of the UK and much of the rest of Europe. The PM demanded “appropriate action.”

Spilling over from the rather limited audience of the originating broadcast with the aid of YouTube and every UK newspaper the episode captivated a nation reeling from weeks of bad news and worse prognostications. Rather than providing a bit of comic relief, the bad joke turned on the BBC. The most common response from both inside and outside media circles continues to be “What is going on at the BBC?” The seriousness became obvious when the story was the third lead on the BBC World Service Tuesday evening (October 28), the newsreaders’ tone bland as dirt.

Ultimately that’s a question BBC General Director Mark Thompson will answer most formally in a meeting with BBC Trust Chairman Sir Michael Lyons. Creative license and artistic expression will not likely be on that agenda. With the BBC facing yet another round of regulatory review the episode is another wound.

After reading the eighth account of the Ross/Brand episode and fielding 28 emails and phone calls, several from BBC people, I began to channel a former life managing and directing high profile talent. Oh, when they’re good they’re oh, so good. When they’re bad they’re terrible. After a good nights’ sleep – which never occurred in that former life – and an invigorating run in the rain and cold a few thoughts coalesced on talent management and damage control.

One report making its way through UK media wags is that a program controller, producer, sub-producer or somebody had encouraged Ross and Brand to be more ‘edgy.’ There’s a difference between ‘edgy’ and ‘crude and rude’. At the BBC – being a public service broadcaster – the distinction should not be misunderstood or lost.

DJs – accept my apology for using the simple term for presenter, show host and on air personality – can be trained. The vast majority bare their souls in semi-lit rooms day after day asking only for a bit of recognition and occasional food. Effective talent managers use both because DJs, suffering alone for their ratings, can lose perspective and ‘wonder off the reservation.’ Frameworks are essential.

Ineffective talent managers believe an inverse relationship exists between a DJs’ compensation and the degree to which the manager can direct the talent. In fact it is a direct relationship. Performers working at the low end of the pay scale need to be thanked, with sincerity, each day for showing up. Those at the high end – and Jonathan Ross’ reported £6 million annual compensation is up there – require a different approach. Screaming works. The effective manager of high profile and highly compensated talent gets in their face, with blood flowing from their eyes, all day, every day. No mistakes go unpunished.

Commercial broadcasters in the UK have roundly criticized the BBC’s compensation of high profile talent as market distorting. This is unfair since, as commercial broadcasters have admitted, the talent market is limited. There are only a few ‘stars’ to go around and their agents know it. But defending a £6 million DJ just got harder.

The other criticism of the BBC that can gain traction because of this episode is arrogance. The lack of definitive response from the top, deferring to a formal investigation, degrades the thousands of BBC employees who invest their time creating sterling audiovisual content. Not that many months ago BBC producers were involved in a premium phone competition found to be rigged. Providing ‘sensitivity training’ is no defense. The axe must fall.

Other public service broadcasters look to the BBC as a role model. While many differences in style and scope exist, PSBs follow every BBC success and failure. As that role model is further denigrated the entire public service broadcaster concept is weakened.

Suspending Ross and Brand – and their producers – is insufficient, as announced by Mark Thompson at noon (October 29). Presumably new Director of Audio and Music Tim Davie has met BBC Trust Chairman Michael Lyons in happier times. To begin what may be the insurmountable task of regaining political trust Mr. Davie needs to send his PA out for ice chests and a few bags of ice, place a head in each and personally deliver to Sir Michael. Then he needs to walk the halls of Broadcast House… screaming.

According to BBC News and other agencies at about 2000 CET (October 29) Russel Brand announced that he had quit the BBC Radio 2 program.