Ben Webster, The Times media editor, is certainly not coasting ahead of a return to the environment brief. This morning he has news of a £500k severance payment made to Peter Fincham, when he was Controller of BBC1, and got caught up in the abysmally-cut trail for the documentary "A Year With The Queen".
The film was made by indie RDF, who messed with time in the trail, which then clearly gave the impression that Her Majesty left an Annie Liebovitz photo-session grumpy. Peter showed the trail to the press in July, saying she'd "walked out in a huff". Thus it became a news item - and, though people inside the BBC knew things were wrong by 7pm that evening, the apology and correction came after it was still running on morning bulletins.
The sledgehammer nut-cracking services of Will Wyatt were comissioned for a report. Fincham (and Stephen Lambert of RDF) resigned. Jana Bennett, Director of BBC Vision - Fincham's boss - was criticised for "displaying a lack of curiosity", but survived.
The payment, presumably made in October 2007, doesn't feature in the Annual Report 2007/8 - nor does "Fincham" or "The Queen". Mark Thompson was DG, Zarin Patel was Group Finance Director, Caroline Thomson Chief Operating Officer and HR was under the care of Stephen Kelly. The recent NAO report covers BBC severance payments from January 2010 to December 2012.
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