Save Storyville support

BECTU is supporting the campaign to save Storyville, the BBC's acclaimed documentary strand faced with an alleged 60% budget cut.

Under BBC Director General Mark Thompson's current spending review, Storyville's budget is set to reduce from £2.2m to £1m, thus reducing it to buying-in programmes rather than financing UK co-productions with countries from around the world.

BECTU is supporting the Save Storyville campaign, which is running an online petition that has so far attracted over 2,250 signatories.

As part of the BBC's three-year Value for Money programme of job cuts, the head count in the BBC Factual department has already been slashed by more than 400, despite Mark Thompson's confirmation of his support for documentary programme-making.

BECTU has said that director and producer members are "greatly concerned about this latest threat".

BECTU's Assistant General Secretary Luke Crawley said: "Storyville has an unrivalled reputation and enjoys international recognition, so it is baffling as to why the BBC would want to destroy it.

"This latest threat is indicative of the diminishing budgets for the genre over the past few years."

Award-winning film-maker Tom Roberts, who has been instrumental in setting up the Save Storyville campaign, said: "If you look at the list of petition signatories it reads like the Who's Who of the documentary world, including Edge of Darkness scriptwriter Troy Kennedy-Martin and directors such as D A Pennebaker, Werner Herzog, Nick Broomfield and Kevin Macdonald [whose Oscar-winning documentary One Day in September appeared on Storyville last year].

"We have also garnered support from international documentary commissioners and co-producers from around the globe".

He continued: "Storyville has again been nominated for eight Grierson Awards this year, demonstrating the continued high calibre of programme-making.

"Storyville is one of the jewels in the BBC's crown and the last place in the broadcast arena where the story is king."

Since its creation in 1997, Storyville documentaries have picked up awards at Sundance, BANFF, Festival dei Popoli, Grierson Awards and the Oscars.

Roberts says genre is not format or schedule led and, likening Storyville's plight to that of the mountain gorilla in Africa, said: "without this habitat, documentary film-making will become extinct in broadcasting terms".