I’m watching BBC Three and BBC Four quite a bit these days. It’s got a cracking mix of comedy and documentaries that are seemingly aimed square at me. However, both channels have been under the threat of closure thanks to a funding gap of £2billion at the BBC, with people demanding that they should suffer in favour of news and current affairs.

Now, reports are suggesting that it is in fact BBC Two and BBC Four that are to be the hardest hit in the corporation’s forthcoming budget cuts. Having said that BBC Four is safe from the chop, insiders believe the corporation will look to share content between the two channels, enabling them to reduce the total programming budget. The only great news on this is that the constant repeats of 2 Pints of Lager… will be shunted off to the TV glue boilers in the sky.

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Over the years, the BBC (like any other big company) have suffered from strikes by staff. I witnessed one first hand in Manchester quite recently. Previously, the biggest was at the tail end of 1978 when our screens were filled with silence and apologies (see accompanying image). Now, another strike is gaining support across the corporation, with staff angry at possible cuts to the BBC’s news operations.

According to The Guardian, head of BBC News Peter Horrocks has said in an email that many editors in the news department “believe there will be strong support for action,” because staff want to protect their jobs, and see cuts to the news budget as not delivering what the public want from the BBC. Horrocks says in the email: “Many of the assistant editors will be militant as they are under threat themselves.”

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The BBC are under siege at the moment after unveiling further incidents of editorial breaches in competitions and voting. An internal BBC review, which included programmes going back to 2005, discovered four incidents though none involved premium rate telephone lines. Two of the incidents included shows from BBC 6 Music, and as a result the station’s head of programmes Ric Blaxhill has resigned from his position.

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Later today, the BBC are to make a statement about the future of former Blue Peter editor Richard Marson and up to 25 other staff who were (allegedly) involved in viewer deception. The statement is expected to be the BBC’s first official response to the Guardian‘s revelation yesterday that children’s show Blue Peter was involved in a second incident of viewer deception when a poll to name its new cat was disregarded. The swines!

This news follows on from the faking of a Blue Peter competition winner, which led to the BBC being fined £50,000 by Ofcom. Apparently, Marson was sent home on Monday after it emerged that the name that topped a Blue Peter poll was not given to the show’s cat. The name that came top is thought to have been deemed inappropriate for a children’s show and the cat was eventually called Socks. I imagine I’m not alone in wondering what the bloody hell the kids of the UK came up with. (insert Socks, Videotape and Lies pun here)

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My editor tells me that it’s Talk Like A Pirate Day (or something) today so to keep in the spirit of things and avoid looking like a surly grump, I’m going to join in. So, with that, please enjoy this news about the new BBC budgeting… in pirate speak.

Aarrr. Th’ lily livered BBC director general, Mark ‘Red Beard’ Thompson, will today present proposals t’ th’ BBC Trust t’ plug a predicted £2bn budget shortfall that be expected t’ lead t’ buckets o’ job losses across th’ corporation. Ooo… aaarrr…

Th’ TV factual an’ news divisions be expected t’ take th’ brunt o’ th’ cuts, while th’ BBC’s core services – includin’ digital channels BBC3 an’ BBC4 – be understood t’ be safe ashore. Mateys be havin’ spake th’ London factual department be one o’ th’ hardest hit, wi’ th’ current six studios – arts, documentaries an’ specialist features, events, features an’ formats, science an’ history an’ Th’ One Show – bein’ merged together under one leader.

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Seconds away! Round one! BBC News heavyweights Jeremy Paxman (J-Pax) and John Humphrys (The Humph) have been scrapping over funding cuts at the Beeb in the pages of its in-house magazine. Humphrys (in the white trunks) who presents Radio 4′s Today, last week told Ariel he thought budgets at Newsnight and other television programmes should be slashed before that of his programme.

He declared: “The Today programme is vitally important to the BBC and its licence payers. It might even – God forbid! – be more important than television programmes such as Newsnight or even late-night chat shows aimed at the yoof audience. Both Today and Newsnight must have an adequate budget but when the chips are down, Today matters more. In my experience, and I’ve worked in both, there’s a lot more fat in television – if fat is the right word – than there is in radio.”

J-Pax wasn’t having any of that from the silver haired one.

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The BBC has admitted that Alan Yentob has performed “noddy shots” on interviews that he did not personally conduct for his arts series Imagine. If you’re unsure what that entails, essentially, it means someone has interviewed a celebrity, and Yentob has been edited in nodding away like he was there. Does this fill you with horror and distrust… or could you not care less?

Yentob is one of the BBC’s most senior figures and regarded by many as the corporation’s ambassador. He’s interviewed artists Gilbert & George, musician and genius Scott Walker and Radiohead, Jarvis Cocker, Simon Amstell and David Bowie. However, it is understood that scenes featuring Mr Yentob reacting to some of the more peripheral figures and experts featured in his programmes were edited in even though he was not actually present. The BBC declined to issue a statement about the matter last night. It comes after the BBC director general, Mark Thompson, last month told staff that those involved in deceptions could face dismissal.

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The BBC have been accused of a lot of things in the past (too many repeats…) but undoubtedly the heaviest accusation comes from the writer of Cracker and The Street, Jimmy McGovern. In an interview McGovern called the corporation “one of the most racist institutions in England.”

The writer was being interviewed on BBC Five Live by Simon Mayo about his stage play King Cotton. When Mayo asked whether the country was less racist than it once was, McGovern said: “I have got to say this, you will not like this. But I’ve worked a lot in the BBC, you know. I love the BBC as an institution and as an organisation and you do see lots of black faces in the BBC. But you see them in the canteen. You do not see them in positions of power. It would appear to me that one of the most racist institutions in England is in fact the BBC”.

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BBC3 and BBC4 have come under increasing attack from inside the corporation, with claims that the channel should be axed in an attempt to save £2bn by 2013. Could the BBC do more to save pennies without lynching the digital channels?

Today veteran John Humphrys and Panorama reporter John Sweeney suggested it should be closed down. Humphrys said it was “utterly, utterly ludicrous” that all parts of the BBC were suffering equally in the budget cutbacks. “If continuing to fund channels like BBC3 and BBC4 means that the price to pay is that there must be damaging cuts to core programmes, then I don’t believe that that is a price worth paying.”

However, defending the channel, Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn (not exactly known for his love of the BBC) said that BBC4 “embodies the best of the corporation’s public service traditions”. Littlejohn is not so keen on BBC3 though, and “given the choice I’d get rid of BBC1 and Radio 1 too”. Also standing up for the digital channel was Brian Groom of The Financial Times saying “The save BBC4 campaign starts here! Although it may be watched by – in Mr Humphrys’ words – ‘six men and a dog’ (I think I know the other five, but not the dog) it seems to me to come a lot closer to Lord Reith’s mission to inform, educate and entertain than many other parts of the BBC’s output. I am not saying that Today or any part of news and current affairs should face cuts, but the BBC’s choices will be difficult. Once the genie of viewer choice is out of the bottle, it is hard to put it back again.”

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