The man who is leading the BBC’s move to Salford has hit out against a ‘pathetic’ slur campaign against the north.
Peter Salmon, director of BBC North, took the extraordinary step of speaking out after a series of ‘grim up north’ stories in the national press claimed there was a revolt among staff unprepared to give up their London homes for MediaCity.
Mr Salmon, who has been involved in programme making in Manchester and London for 20 years, accused critics of a ‘mud-throwing campaign’ against Salford.
He said it was ‘unforgivable’ for London-based media to peddle old stereotypes and mislead people into thinking the city was an undesirable place to live.
He said stories suggesting BBC bosses – including himself – were not committed to the project were ‘outrageous’.
Mr Salmon told the M.E.N: "People are throwing mud and hoping it might stick at the north which I think is unforgivable.
"We are trying to build on what Manchester has had in its DNA for years and years – lots of entertainers, great storytellers, wonderful journalists, a great television company, the world’s first soap. Instead, they dredge out all those old stereotypes about why it is so dreadful in the north and so wonderful in the south which I think is out of date and pathetic."
Flagship shows including Match Of The Day, BBC Breakfast and Blue Peter, will begin moving to MediaCity next year.
But the national press has run a string of stories – illustrated with what Mr Salmon called ‘misleading’ images of the
Salford Quays site – claiming that staff would rather quit than move.
Last weekend, it was announced that human resources director Paul Gaskin was quitting his £190,000-a-year job because of concerns. Mr Salmon’s deputy, Richard Deverell, will not be moving immediately – a decision the director said was due to ‘complex’ family reasons.
Mr Salmon’s own commitment was questioned in some quarters after he revealed that he and actress wife Sarah Lancashire – best known as dippy Coronation Street barmaid Raquel Watts – would only be renting a home in the north west.
He has now confirmed they plan to buy a family home in the region as soon as the move would not disturb their children’s education.
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Recruit local talent - if the 'London' crowd want to stay in London then let them.
Well said that man. Not really any skin off our nose if some toffee-nosed southern jessies would rather quit than move north, hopefully it would create opportunities for local talent.
Anyone who says it's grim up north are actually leading a grim life and are just covering over the cracks.
Hello MEN,
I have posted this article on my MediaCityUK LINKED Group (1660+ members).
I thought I would draw your attention to an initiative I started 3.5 years ago in Salford Quays, Greater Manchester.
I have produced a MediaCityUK BBC North Photographic Timeline Journal of the Peel development. Photos have been taken from May 2007 (when the build started) and the collection is made up of 15,000+ photos in all, as of August 2010 (split by financial quarter and month). The link to the timeline is given below. The link will always re-directs to the current month’s pictures and is updated weekly.
At a similar time, I started a MediaCityUK group at the FREE professional networking site, LINKEDIN. This is currently made up of 1600+ professionals from media and television companies as well as journalists, cameramen, actors, lecturers, entertainers, producers, directors etc. etc. It contains the latest news, discussions and jobs relating to the MediaCityUK BBC North, University of Salford development.
I work as an IT Manager close to the build and have worked in Salford Quays for 15 years now.
Hope this comment and links below prove useful and feel free to join the free professional LINKEDIN group if you would like to be a little closer to all events surrounding the Peel MediaCityUK development. Any of the links can be circulated or made use of if required without seeking permission from the author (me of course).
A small article about my efforts also exists at the following link by LuvTheCity (http://www.luvthecity.com/salfordtimeline.aspx ) written in March of this year…
If you have any questions about the development, please email me at: mediacityuk.timeline@gmail.com
Thanks again…
Best Regards
Mark Whitfield (IT Manager, Salford Quays)
MediaCityUK Photo Timeline : http://www.mediacityuksalfordquays.net/mcuk.htm
MediaCityUK LINKEDIN Group Invite : http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=79227
It seems rather pathetic & hypocritical that those supposedly "liberal lefty" workers at the BBC, have been running & crying to their "brand new friend", the Daily Mail, over this move? Strange bedfellows!
Anyway at least it's now all out in the open, that they (both left & right) really do despise us down there. (And I thought we were meant to be the ones with the chips-on-our-shoulders??)
I can understand where they are coming from. I work in Manchester and if my company said thy were relocating to London I'd look for another job and stay in Manchester as I have no desire to move to London.
Why hasn't the BBC countered all this opposition by producing a programme on Media City and the attractions of Salford, Manchester and the North West?
Typical champagne socialists. I lived in Chiswick for a few years, place was full of them, almost all working for the BBC. We're better off without them, leave them where they are, they definitely wouldn't fit in with the 'real' people of the fabulous North!
Although I enjoyed my time down there, there's nowt can beat Greater Manchester and it's their loss not coming here. As has been said, ditch them and hire locally, we'll not let you down, we're grafters not whingers!
Who are these people that refuse to move north..?? And if the truth be known, do we really care..?? More jobs for local talent and probably at a fraction of the salaries paid 'darn sarf'
As Jerry Sadowitz says, the defintion of a genius is someone who lives in London for 5 years and still has a sense of humour.
Sorry the the delay posting a comment, I was just getting coal from the bathtub and taking the whippet for a run.
but they still all support united....
It's laughable, most of the people who live and work are not natives to the capital, they have moved there. Are these the same employees who are complaining about having to move up North, if so they are probably ignorant to everything the North of England has to offer.The people, the coutryside, the great cities of Manchester and Liverpool, the value for money property, the Universities, the culture etc etc.
The BBC should make the staff involved a decent relocation package and if they decline the offer then so be it. It is about time the British taxpayers stopped paying extra London charges to keep everything in the South. There is more than enough Northern based talent to fill any vacancies, should the ignorant employees at the BBC decide to stay put in London.
Was in London last year on holiday, glad to get to Manchester ,at least they speak English without an eastern european accent
Let's be honest...If your family were settled in London, wife/hubby had a job down there, kids at School, friends, family, chilminders etc etc....To re arrange all that is amassive upheaval... would you relocate?
Well, I, as probably many, would love the opporunity to apply for Mr Gaskin's £190k a year job. When is it advertised?
Well they do have a point.
Manchester is a good city to be in but if you live in London how is Manchester portrayed? Coronation Street, Royle Family and Shameless to name but three.
You have only to read on here all the people with a stereotypical northern chip on their shoulder grim-up-north/streets-paved-with-gold-down'south attitude. Very negative and let's be honest we have many up here who are stuck in a time warp and wallow in the notion that they are downtrodden working folk with only dirt to eat.
What decent restaurats do we have in Manchester since the decent one's closed down? It is braserie after brasserie after brasserie. Same menu in each place and food that I could cook better at home.
What bout our prime shopping street, Deansgate? Lapdancing bar, football pubs, Tesco Express, Pawnbrokers, Bookies and a Charity shop. Let's hpe the BBC move results in an upgrade on what's on offer because I doubt that a kebab and 18 vodka shots followed by puking in the gutter is what Sian Williams and the like want of a night out.
citypedro, just what I was thinking. They are not all born within earshot of the Bow bells -they moved there from all over the country.
Anyway if Manchester and the North West is so good then why did the Gallaghers move away as soon as they had some loot? How about McCartney, Lennon, Starr and Harrison. Did they move to teh Wirral? No. How about Cilla Black and Tarbuck? Nope, moved south.
How about other famous sons of Manchester? Bee Gees, Patrick Stewart, Ben Kingsley, Sir Ian McKellan etc? All moved away. The Gallaghers have lived in London longer than they lived in Manchester.
It makes me laugh when you go to Liverpool and also on the local news it is Beatles this, Beatles that but they scarpered as soon as they could afford to get out.
Kendals! So they don't have House of Fraser in London? Peter Jones near Sloane Square tube is but one example.
Bookstores eh? No Waterstones in Londo n then? No WH Smith? They have a darn good Foyels which wipes the floor with our shops.
Harvey Nichols and designer clothes shops. Granted we have a Harvey Nichols but I am yet to find Gaultier, Gucci, Dolce & Gabanna, Prada, Chanel, Dior shops up here.
Restaurants? OK I'll ignore the places like le Gavroche, Gordon Ramsay and Helene Dorz with their Michelin Stars but tell me, where can you get a fish restaurant better than Scotts of Mayfair or J Sheekey? Where can you get a Shepherds Pie as good as the one in The Ivy? Where can you get Italian as good as Locanda Locatelli? How about an Indian as good as Tamarind?
Art Galleries? Yep, the Saatchi Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tae Modern etc have nothing on our one gallery.
It's a shame that many in this area seem to be proud of the BBC's move to Salford.
A public sector organisation, whose main business is the mass manufacture of dumbed down entertainment and pop music radio is moving some jobs to the region.
It shows just what a depressed region we live in. The government is leaning hard on the broadcaster it funds to move jobs out of the affluent south east to less well off regions. That should not be a source of local pride.
Scrap the licence fee and let the corporation make its junk where it likes. funded by those stupid enough to pay voluntarily for the likes of Eastenders, Car Booty and Chris Moyles.
I wonder what all those who are quitting will do for a job in order to maintain their superior lifestyle. Or will we see some of them on Panorama next year bemonaing the fact that the BBC moving to Manchester has cost them their livlihoods and homes.
What's so wonderful about London its not even as clean as Manchester,I was there some months ago and its a filthy dump
blueballs, no I am not being ironic. I think that Manchester has a lot going for it but one has to be realistic and accept that we are what we are.
Manchester should be shown in a good light but we celebrate Coronation Street and Shameless. Ask a Londoner what a typically Mancuanian is and he would point to Liam Gallagher.
The city needs a new branding and marketing campaign, somthing that the late Tony Wilson was behind.
Instead we had a council who psent millions of taxpayers money on advertising and newspaper campaigns tellig everybody who awaful teh city was because nobody could get to work, cars were at a standstill all day long, fumes were choking our children etc. That did a lot of damage to the city and there has been no positive campaign to help wipe out the negative one.
If you lived in London and were half and half about uprooting your family to Manchester and all you heard from Mancunains was 'soft southern jessies' what would you do?
The atraction of working for any company in London is 50% because London itself is the attraction.
My response wasn't negative but based on what evryone can see, Are you telling me that it is positve that our prime shopping street is now taken up by pawnbrokers, lapdancing bars, bookies and kebab shops like a street you would find in Sunderland or Moston? Fantastic architecture like the John Rylands library and we stick those near it.
Stop revelling in self pity.
Rich coming from him who is not moving up here, merely renting courtesy, I might add of the licence payers. Ex Oldhamer, Sarah Lancashire, has stated she has no desire to move back oop north.
Regarding them buying a property up here, I wont hold my breath!
Jason Taylor, there you go. You have answered your own question. That is all that we have and DKNY isn't designer. Mainline Donna Karan is but not the DKNY street diffusion label.
It would be like you going to live in some village in the Shetlands. Here you have Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsbury's, M&S, Asad, Morrisons etc on your doorstep but you complain they don't have much to your liking there an another Jason Taylor in the Shetland Eco, Sentinel and Gazette pipes up 'we have a Spar, what are you talking about'.
How are my comments ignorant? Ignorant is 'keep the southern jessies out'.
Having lived in Sydney, New Jersey, Los Angleses and Hampstead in my time I am qualified to speak. I have travlled to such places as Tibet, Cambodia, Zimbabwe, Siaerra Leone, Laos, Eritrea and some of the most desperate places on earth as well as living it up in some of the best places in the world.
My opnion is formed of my varied travle and experiences including fighting in wars. Most expereince I read on here is based on a bedsit in Rusholme and holidays to Fuengoraola. Ring any bells?
I know why they don't want to come here. Someone might look at them in the street and smile at them, or shock horror, they may even start talking to them!!
That would never do...