All change at the top of BBC NI

BBC Northern Ireland’s Controller, Anna Carragher, is retiring in October.

A graduate of Queen's University, she joined the BBC in 1970 as a studio manager. In her long career with the corporation, she was worked as a producer on the Today programme, lived in New York, helped launch on Breakfast Time (remember Frank Bough’s dazzling jumpers?), before switching to the other end of the day for Newsnight and Question Time.

Anna returned home to Northern Ireland in 1995, becoming BBC NI Head of Programmes, and was appointed Controller in September 2000. She’s a Trustee of the Grand Ole Opera House, which is currently in the middle of a major building programme.

And it’s not the only of change for the BBC locally at Ormeau Avenue.
With the transition from the long standing BBC Governors structure to the new BBC Trust, only three of the current eleven governors (along with the chairman Michael Grade) have a place in the new organisation. So Northern Ireland’s Governor - Prof Fabian Monds - will not move to the new body.

So both the head of the operational organisation and the local point of accountability will both switch.

You’ve missed the closing date (26 June) for responding to the DCMS (Department for Culture, Media and Sport) advert for a Trustee for Northern Ireland. But you’ll soon catch the Controller’s job being advertised as the BBC seek to fill the vacancy in the run-up to Anna’s departure.

Whether an internal or external appointment, whether a local or national/international figure, it will be interesting to see the effect of a new Controller on the local programming.

One of the issues facing the BBC in Northern Ireland at the moment is the lack of locally-produced programmes reaching a national network audience. Most of the entertainment/drama produced through BBC NI, is either filmed in the UK mainland under supervision of NI producers (eg, Murphy's Law, or is handled by local independent production companies like Wild Rover (Just for Laughs).

So other than financial control and senior producers/directors, there is in fact little local involvement. Ballykisangel is probably the best known BBC NI network drama - and back in 1996 it was filmed in Wicklow and Dublin. And although we used to dominate the national news programmes with NI reports for all the wrong reasons, that too is in decline.

BBC NI only contributed 26.9 hours of output to Network Television in 2005/6 (compared to the 627 hours shown locally). Facing the Truth with Desmond Tutu was perhaps BBC NI's highest profile national network production, shown on BBC2.