BBC World is reporting that the BBC Monitoring
Service country estate of Caversham Park may be
up for sale if these proposed UK service cuts go
through. I wonder if they'd sell it
"as-is"--complete with monitoring post equipment
and antenna farm? It could be rented out to DX'ers and to honeymooning SWL's.
-Ed Cummings
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38372067
BBC Monitoring: MPs raise fears over service's future
BBC Monitoring, the UK service that translates
and analyses global media, is in danger of
becoming a "hollow shell", MPs have warned.
The government has moved responsibility for its
funding to the BBC, which the Defence Committee
said had "entirely predictably" led to cuts.
It added that BBC Monitoring was "vital" to diplomacy and business.
The BBC said it was "confident" the service would
continue to meet the UK government's needs.
The government directly funded BBC Monitoring
until 2013, when responsibility passed to the BBC
under an agreement announced by Chancellor George Osborne in 2010.
The cross-party committee said this had left the
service exposed, with around 100 jobs set to go
under a re-structuring programme.
It expressed concern at plans to move Monitoring
out of its current Caversham Park headquarters in
Berkshire, where it operates alongside US
counterpart Open Source Enterprise, because of
potential disruption to information-sharing.
'Catastrophic decisions'
Currently, Monitoring covers 25% of the globe,
while Open Source Enterprise covers the remaining 75%.
The committee's report said: "The government uses
open-source information for indicators and
warnings of areas of instability and potential threats to UK security.
"The decisions made concerning the funding and
governance of BBC Monitoring over the past decade
or so have been woefully short-sighted and catastrophically ill-thought-out.
"A service that has the potential to be a vital
tool in opening the world to UK diplomacy and
business is in grave danger of becoming a hollow
shell of its former existence."
A BBC spokeswoman said: "The media landscape has
changed vastly since the creation of BBC
Monitoring in the 1930s and we believe our
planned restructure is vital to equip us for a
world in which digital skills are far more important than physical location.
"We are confident that we will continue to meet
the UK government's needs for open-source
monitoring and they have told us they are happy with our changes."
What is BBC Monitoring?
BBC Monitoring was set up in 1939 to tap into
foreign broadcasts and propaganda during World War Two
The service was independent from the BBC, and
paid for by the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign
Office and the BBC World Service
Since its inception, it has provided coverage of
the Cold War, the Yugoslav War and most recently, the Arab Spring
The service translates communications in 100
languages from 150 countries, with offices across the globe
In 2013 the service began being paid for by the licence fee
Since 1943, Caversham Park in Berkshire has been
the home of BBC Monitoring but after a £4m
funding cut, the remaining journalists, academics
and translators are to leave the country estate for offices in London
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