Chairman’s foreword

The BBC is part of the fabric of our everyday life in this country.
Practically everyone is touched by it – a huge achievement in a
multi-platform, multi-channel digital age.
But it needs to respond to an audience that is more diverse thanever in terms of background, interests and identity, and who areaccessing media in different ways.
How the BBC serves and reflects such a kaleidoscopic UK is apriority for the Trust and has been an important theme of ourwork during the past year.
People expect the BBC to be relevant to their lives. Our work
has underlined how important this is to the BBC’s continuing role
as a vital cultural and civic institution.
We have set the Director-General a priority for the coming yearof making measurable progress in reflecting the diversity of theUK in the BBC’s workforce, including increasing the number ofwomen on air.
The BBC needs to keep pace with rapid changes in technology.
The Trust has reviewed BBC network news and current affairs
and we found that, although it retains unrivalled audience trust
thanks to consistently high standards, it needs to innovate in orderto draw in a younger audience. Similarly, our review of children’sservices found that CBBC and CBeebies are held in very highregard, but must adapt to children’s rapidly changing ways ofengaging with media.
Audiences must be able to rely on the BBC to offer programmes
not found in the commercial sector. So the Trust has continued topush for more distinctive programmes; and our review of thefour main television channels has put a particular emphasis on this
aspect of their performance. Our impartiality review on ruralaffairs concluded that the BBC needs to ensure a broader rangeof rural voices is heard on network news.
The BBC has had some notable successes during the year.
Everybody will have their own highlights, but mine have included
shows like Rev, Hinterland and Call The Midwife, the iWonder pages
on World War I online, waking up to Farming Today each morning,
and, of course, Strictly.

‘‘The BBC needs to respondto an audience that is morediverse than ever.’’Over the past year we have been working with the DirectorGeneral to overhaul how the BBC is run and how we work
together to ensure we are clear about our roles andresponsibilities and to prevent such issues recurring. We aredetermined to ensure the BBC is spending money effectively.
We have set ambitious efficiency targets each year – which theExecutive has been achieving. As part of expecting the Executive
to demonstrate good value for money we have also asked for thenumber of senior managers to be reduced and want to ensure
the BBC has firm control of its headcount.
Under the strong leadership of the Director-General Tony Halland his senior team, the BBC has made progress on many of theareas highlighted above.
Finally I should say that I myself didn’t expect to be writing thisintroduction. The former Trust Chairman, Lord Patten, stood
down from the role on health grounds at the start of May 2014.
I would like to pay tribute to his commitment to the BBC and its
audiences during often very difficult times.
I consider it a huge honour to be performing this role. With myother colleagues on the Trust, I will be doing everything I can tomake sure the BBC is as good as it can be, for all of us.

Diane Coyle
Acting Chairman
19 June 2014

There have also been some high-profile failures. The BBC’s DigitalMedia Initiative project was closed, at a cost of nearly £100million.
And there was the controversy surrounding past severance
payments above contractual entitlements to some senior staff.
Both of these episodes involved significant sums of public money
and saw the BBC falling well short of what licence fee payers expect.

08BBC Annual Report and Accounts 2013/14