Mark Thompson is quitting as director-general of the UK public broadcaster after 8 years, his legacy being the greatest amount of budgets and job cuts in the company in its history thanks to a five-year freezing of the license fee on TV sets that provides the bulk of the BBC's budget. Among other things, he approved the demolition of the TV Centre studios in London after the Olympics (while presiding over a costly renovation and expansion of the Broadcasting House headquarters where the news department and World Service radio will be moved--the sports department has already moved from the TV Centre into BH), the moving of news-talk-sports Radio 5 Live and children's programming (including the iconic "Blue Peter") to cheaper facilities in Manchester and in letting Jonathan Ross go when his contract ran out indicated to other BBC stars like Graham Norton and Bruce Forsyth that their next contract renewals may not be so generous (Ross' infamous hectoring with Russell Brand of Andrew Sachs on Brand's Radio 2 show didn't help matters): http://www.thewrap.com/tv/article/bbc-director-general-mark-thompson-stepping-down-36353 Another strange decision made under Thompson's watch was switching the funding of the World Service from the Foreign Office to the license fee--I would expect that sooner or later that the Tories and Beeb-haters like the Daily Mail will point out that taxpayers' money is going to pay for foreign-language shortwave broadcasts that Brits don't want to listen to. (The BBC World News channel and foreign BBC channels like BBCA are managed financially by the Beeb's for-profit division BBC Worldwide.)
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