Tomorrow's Business Today
E-Scooter coverage gets sent to coventry
How serious is the BBC about being less London centric?
As we’ve noted before, it is talking the talk, moving entire departments to Birmingham, Cardiff, Leeds, Glasgow and Salford.
If the hacks at the sharp end of this feel like they are being ostracised, sent to Coventry in the famed idiom, they have mostly been too polite to say.
It will really mean something when a star name is moved out of London.
If Andrew Marr were sent to Coventry, some of us would cheer.
In terms of its coverage, London still rules though, and every now and then the Beeb gets caught out.
One blatant example today.
There have been numerous trials of e-scooter rental schemes up and down the country, including major ones in Birmingham, Liverpool, Northampton, Bristol and Cambridge.
In not one of those instances did the BBC give any of those trials national coverage – they were all covered on the BBC’s local evening news bulletins instead.
The London trial has just launched. It only covers four London boroughs and Canary Wharf and, as such, is one of the smaller trials to date anywhere in the country. It made the Today programme.
The burgeoning e-scooter industry is spending a ton, it seems to me, on PR at the moment.
I think the flaks should complain that the Beeb isn’t giving the issue a fair shake.
Press release of the day
A thorough guide here to the sixth Ethical Finance Summit, at Edinburgh this week.
There are a few big-name speakers including Sir Howard Davies and some brave talk about making banks do the right thing.
It will be interesting to see how much coverage this all gets.
