[interestednovice]

I probably shouldn’t even say this, but when it comes to the BBC: one minute we are being told there supposedly isn’t money for anything, the next we are seeing a fortune being spent on seemingly-unnecessary things and the justification is that the amounts involved, even if circa ~1 million pounds, are supposedly “small”.

For example, the whole time the famous five were off-air, they were suspended and paid. At the same time, freelancers and reporters were paid overtime or locum pay to keep the wheels rolling on the 24 hour channel. Yet we were told it “wasn’t a lot of money”. Obviously, in the context of every penny counting, it absolutely was, and they should have just had the 5 on air from the very beginning. Launching a new channel has meant some money had been set aside. Personally, I’d rather it had been spent on (for example) a professional graphics package rather than pointless touchscreens in the newsroom; and if money had been really, really tight they could have kept the old BBC NC package. There was no need to launch a messy hybrid look - either do a refresh, or don’t.

BBC budgets are seemingly extremely inflexible and often appear, to the viewer, to make no sense.

Things like this are why people get frustrated with the BBC.