Lanced

It's not going to bring the Stock Market crashing, but apparently around 96 of the 469 personal service companies which provide on-air talent at the BBC may shortly be heading for dissolution.

The BBC's review of the way it pays freelance talent says it will "prioritise" a look at its arrangements with these companies/people, and 330 self-employed on-air presenters, and, if they look like staff, employ them as staff - at no additional cost to the licence-fee! There's a considerable amount of protestation in the full review that the BBC DID NOTHING WRONG IN ALL THIS; but it does make reference to letters from BBC Regions to some talent saying that PSCs were the only way they could be paid in future.

The BBC offers a narrower argument, that they were moving existing freelancers to PSC deals, not staff members.

The report makes much of the reasons under which the BBC might want to part company with talent, a rationale for the PSCs in the first place - changing schedules, loss of sports rights, new specialisms for old, etc - but doesn't answer a key question from the Public Accounts Committee - how long have these PSCs been going ?

In many news roles, these PSC contracts were first issued when "losing and retaining talent" was thought to be a big risk; they also allowed payments to soar away from traditional staff and freelance rates more discreetly. The theory was also that, if news talent lost their on-air role, they wouldn't be hanging round on the staff waiting for redundancy and an early pension, doing a little light copytasting in a dark corner of the newsroom. It would be a painless end to a contract. The reality is that, as the oldie debate moved on, no-one dares move any one out of a presenter chair - and nobody's that interested in nicking BBC talent.