Monday 29 June 2009

BBC Glastonbury Numbers

*** Please note I am not Mark Wadsworth ***

Staff required to film, edit and produce 1970s festival movie Woodstock: 80*
Staff required by the BBC to film, edit and produce Glastonbury 2009: 405.

* Which was shot on film with the sound on tape and manually edited, unlike today where it's all done with computers.

7 comments:

Lars said...

I'm no BBC apologist - but: Woodstock had 32 bands on one stage; Glastonbury 2009 had *hundreds* of bands on 20 stages (a lot more logistic work for sure). Plus, hours and hours of Glastonbury was transmitted (and more is kept for later) whereas the Woodstock people only needed a couple of hours of good film.

Simon Fawthrop said...

Lars beat me to it.

Plus I suspect there was a lot more off site editing of Woodstock and we all have much higher expectations on quality and coverage.

I quite enjoyed the bits I watched.

JuliaM said...

Probably so, but still seems impressively overmanned. I wonder how many of those 405 were 'managers'...?

Am quite looking forward to this though...

Alice Cook said...

"Woodstock had 32 bands on one stage; Glastonbury 2009 had *hundreds* of bands on 20 stages (a lot more logistic work for sure)."

Isn't that the point; a sensible strategy would have been to film the best and dump the rest. However, the BBC decides to film everything. They can only get away with this lack of editorial control because the taxpayer pays for it.

Alice

http://ukhousebubble.blogspot.com

dearieme said...

"*** Please note I am not Mark Wadsworth ***"

Perhaps we should call you "Mark 2"?

Lola said...

Out of interest, who actually watches it? I don't.

Paul said...

"*** Please note I am not Mark Wadsworth ***"

Not ... Cynicus Economicus, surely? All my RSS feeds are merging with each other!

The point perhaps is that 80 staff can more or less manage themselves, with perhaps one co-ordinator. To even start to manage 405 staff will need a whole team of 'administrators' and 'co-ordinators', before any work is done. And their assistants will need to come along too. And the assistants' mates to carry the battery packs for the cameras.

Well next year it'll need to be even bigger and better, so here's an idea, why don't the entire White City BBC staff just all take the long weekend off and go and wig out at Glasto 2010? It'd be just like a work jolly only with drugs and warm lager - only paid for by you and me sitting at home wishing we were all going there all expenses paid.

How many BBC staff are there in London? 500? 1000?