From The Sunday Times

A little light-reading from The Sunday Times, beginning with a beautifully-written bit from Roland White:

Candidates to replace John Humphrys at the Today programme and nudie revue probably shouldn’t invest in a new alarm clock quite yet. Although he announced last week that he’d definitely be retiring this year, we’ve been here before. In 2009, Humphrys told Saga magazine that he expected to be sacked “very soon” as he was struggling with “the absurd pace” of the job. 

Yet Humphrys was still at Today in 2016, when he told The Times that retirement was imminent — possibly the following year. It was “extremely unlikely”, Humphrys insisted, that he’d be covering another election. Another election passed, and last week Humphrys was still available to interview a naked economist. 

At least this shows he’s in tune with current politics: constantly insisting he’s a leaver, but somehow managing to remain. 

Also from The Sunday Times, apparently the BBC is planning to cut the News at 10 by more than ten minutes "in an attempt to stop viewers flocking to ITV and appeal to younger audiences".

“We are slicing the flagship output at a time of huge public service duty in news,” said one source. “A vacuous gesture to reach younger audiences with zero credible evidence to back it up. 

“ITV will now provide more News at 10 in a week than we do.”

And here's something about Sinn Fein and the BBC's coverage of Gaelic Athletic Association games:

There is something distinctly Trumpian about the way Sinn Fein is stirring up a false tribal grievance against the BBC. The Ulster Council of the GAA is having to defend the station from persistent Sinn Fein claims that it is not showing enough live championship matches, after party deputy leader Michelle O’Neill unfairly accused the Beeb of having “a clear bias against Irish national games”. 

As the Ulster Council explained: “The BBC don’t have the rights to show live championship games. The rights are dealt with nationally and lie with RTE.” 

In fact, the BBC is so keen to cover GAA games that it sends camera crews to four times more than RTE will let it show, and then waits to see which it is permitted to broadcast.

And, one more... Is Peter Rabbit the next rabbit-brained celebrity to appear on BBC One's Question Time? Apparently, Sony Pictures has explored a deal to buy the television production company behind the BBC’s Question Time.