Written just for this blog.

Anyone who follows my frequent internet witterings will have seen that on Monday, I got my dream job – a desk post at NME as their Assistant Reviews Editor. Hurrah! Jubilation! I celebrated by drinking a lot of ale in my bedroom and watching five episodes of MTV “it’s not rubbish honest” reality series The City in a row. Boy do I know how to party. But there’s no way I would have got the job if it hadn’t been for a BBC work placement that I did aged 16, thanks to the fantastic BBC Blast – now sadly condemned to close following the conclusion of the BBC Strategy Review.

In May 2005 I was appointed BBC Cornwall’s Blast Reporter, which entailed spending the summer running my own section of the BBC Cornwall website. I interviewed bands, jewellery designers and the inventor of the first biodegradable surfboard, took photos of the Eden Sessions and played at being a real journalist for the summer. The same scheme went on in the majority of the BBC’s local newsrooms. With our sections being primarily arts-based and aimed at fellow teenagers, our duty as reporters was to file at least one article and diary entry per week in exchange for rigorous BBC training in internet content management systems, professional recording equipment, and safety procedures. There were compulsory training days in Bristol at the start of the placement, and a concluding session in Birmingham at the end of the summer, and each reporter was manned with their own personal mentor – mine was Matt Shepherd, who has looked after Cornwall’s Blast reporters since the scheme began in 2004. He only has lovely things to say about it:

“Being a mentor has been incredibly rewarding. Over six weeks you see your chosen reporter grow in confidence. Many have gone on to do some great things after BBC Blast: BBC Radio 1, NME, working at music magazines in other parts of the world. It’s been a tremendous amount of fun.”

Aside from covering travel expenses, the placements were unpaid – though the newer Blast Creative Trainee positions are paid – but considering the colossal effort put into the department by both the people running it and the teenagers taking part, it represented huge value for money by investing in talented young folk. As Matt pointed out, many were able to pay that investment back upon being employed on a long-term basis by the BBC, like BBC Cornwall’s first Blast reporter, Alex Full – he’s now an Assistant Producer on Fearne Cotton’s Radio 1 show after starting at Blast in 2004.

Unfortunately, that’s not how the BBC Strategy Review saw it. The department – which also entails a website encouraging creativity amongst teenagers, and a series of brilliant free outdoor events and workshops across the country – is being closed due to “a relatively high cost per user and a decreasing userbase,” according to the Strategy Review. That obviously refers more to the website and its thousands of users rather than the work experience placements, which are being axed without explanation. They could be integrated into the BBC’s established work experience programme, or they could vanish for good. No-one’s commented on it – and no-one from BBC Blast or the Strategy Review has replied to my emails requesting statistics or clarification (yet, though if they do I’ll be sure to blog them) – because there’s been no public uproar at the closure of Blast and withdrawal of these placements, unlike the appropriately loud furore around the closure of 6Music which succeeded in getting it saved. Even when the Guardian evaluated the different parts of the Beeb recommended for closure, Blast wasn’t on the agenda. 78% of nearly 50,000 online responses to the consultation focused on 6Music; I suspect less than 1%, including mine, focused on Blast.

During my time at BBC Radio Cornwall I met Fraser McAlpine, who then worked for BBC’s Top of the Pops Online website. The Tweeters amongst you will know him as @csi_popmusic, now the editor of the BBC Radio 1 Chart Blog, and all round pop fiend and wonderful chap. His desk in the Cornwall office has seen him sat opposite eight different Blast reporters, to whom he’s offered advice, a wealth of pop culture knowledge and brilliant common sense, along with merciless teasing about going to a girls’ school. That last one might have been reserved just for me. As such, he’s had a lot of experience with the scheme and the Beeb, and has theories on why Blast is for the chop:

“[Amongst the programmes proposed for closure], Blast is the anomaly, because it’s not an editorial-led initiative, it’s designed to be a kind of community outreach programme for an underserved audience – the same audience Switch [another BBC teen programme headed for closure] is supposed to serve. It’s one of those great BBC things which creates editorial, generates massive goodwill for the corporation, creates transparency – people love transparency – but viewers/listeners/readers wouldn’t necessarily miss if it wasn’t there.”

However, the people who will miss Blast – in particular its work experience placements and free event and workshop tours – are a group chronically underserved by commercial media, which is in complete antithesis to the BBC’s justification for proposing various closures on account of intruding on the competition. That group includes young people in geographically remote areas, away from the London-centric media world – regions like Cornwall, where there are very few other opportunities for teenagers to get experience in the limited local press that exists here. It includes kids whose parents/aunties/godfathers aren’t industry highflyers, able to wangle their progeny work experience placements on account of the family name; kids who wouldn’t make it to Oxbridge – still renowned for giving applicants a leg-up into the Beeb – but who nonetheless have incredible skills to offer. Blast is open to kids from any social background, making them feel comfortable in a very middle class industry, and the application process is the same as any fair, equal opportunities job application – proving that you’re worthy of the job because of your enthusiasm and achievements.

“Blast provides an entry point to the media for kids who’d find it almost impossible to get that experience elsewhere,” says Wendy Roby, a music journalist who worked in television for seven years and who has put on free BBC Blast workshops for teenagers this summer (hers specialise in music reviewing and playing ‘Bad Review Bingo’ – I wish I could lop two years off so I could go…). “The Blast schemes mean that kids who wouldn’t normally dream of entering the media get a chance to see how it works and have it demystified. More than that, they’re shown that the media doesn’t just have to be the preserve of the Octavias and Tarquins of this world. They get proper, useful advice about how to get a foot in the door from people who are already doing it.

“If the BBC is serious about inclusion and equal opportunities, killing off Blast is a funny way to go about it. People like David Attenborough got into the BBC during the liberal post-war boom, when it was possible for lively people who had ideas to get in front of the right people; it wasn’t the huge bureaucracy it is now. As the organisation has grown, of course it’s had to become more formalised – but this is why we need Blast. Entry-level positions in radio, film and television are almost always incredibly badly paid – think £12k – so it’s no surprise that most of the people who can afford to live in London and take these jobs are those who come from a more privileged background. And young people in farther flung places have less opportunity to get involved in projects or companies that might look good on their CV. There aren’t a great many film and TV companies outside of London; the young people Blast serves won’t have mummies and daddies who ‘know people’. If harder-to-reach young people can’t get that vital early experience, or see how competitive it is, they’ve got even less chance of getting a job as a runner or studio assistant. I’m a great believer in awakening ambition as early as possible, I want kids outside of London to see that they can and deserve to work in the media, just as much as kids who’ve grown up in Primrose Hill.”

Recent figures have shown that as many as several hundred applicants apply for every graduate job going. The economy has shrunk, starting salaries are dropping, and the amount of graduate positions is dwindling, meaning that such jobs are becoming exclusive to those students able to afford to undertake internships that gild their application with experience. Even then, a huge amount of graduates are underemployed and forced to take menial jobs that don’t utilise their skills, making it even harder for 16 – 18 year olds and anyone without a degree to get a foothold on the jobs ladder. Earlier this year, Barbara Ellen writing in the Guardian highlighted a BBC report which said that anything between three to 12 months of work experience is required for certain professions, 90% of which is unpaid, and which 60% of interns say is not beneficial. Not everyone gets the same chances as Tom Meltzer, an Oxbridge graduate who scored work experience at the Guardian only to find himself filling in for Charlie Brooker one week and writing his own column the next.

But as well as being a barrier to social mobility, many of these internships are fairly chuffing useless to boot. I recently went to see a friend who attends a first rate university in London. In the pub she and her friends were all proudly laying out their summer work experience placements and internships like trump cards on a casino table: investment bank, fashion house, advertising. Fast-forward a month, and despite being at a highfalutin PR company, said friend is miserable: ignored, stuffing envelopes, making tea, and learning approximately nothing about the industry despite the cut-throat application process to get the hallowed placement.

Take a look at the messageboard for the BBC Blast Creative Trainee: after describing their time working with CBBC and the Blast events team, Blast_Creative_Trainee_(U14054348) wrote in June 2009:

“Oh, and perhaps best of all, I’ve yet to be asked to brew a pot of tea or fax a copy of my manager’s expenses. The traineeship is lookin’ good.”

As my friend’s experiences prove, work placements in the commercial sector can be extremely hit and miss – they’re not regulated, and unlike in France, they’re under no obligation to pay interns or even cover their costs. Not Blast, which, as its 2005 Positive Image Award for Coverage of Young People and 2010 Webby People’s Voice Award for Netart prove, promoted professional office conduct and a rigorous intern support system along with invaluable experience. Anthony Lee, a recent English Literature graduate from the University of Bristol and one of the last batch of BBC Blast Creative Trainees, says that the people behind Blast go out of their way to cater to the experience that each individual intern is looking for:

“I started an 8-week, paid placement at the beginning of June, working from the Blast office in White City, London. The placement is based in Blast’s online department, so mainly I’ve been helping the team in the maintenance of the website, but the beauty of it is that it’s extremely diverse and flexible; I came in wanting to learn more about television production and radio broadcasting, and so they’ve tailored my Blast experience to suit my interests; another trainee who has exactly the same role as me is more interested in social media, games and the online platform, and so likewise they’ve offered them different opportunities.

“I have a line manager who oversees what I do and offers help and support where necessary, but I’m allowed a great deal of creative freedom and independence. At the beginning of the placement, my line manager and I discussed my objectives and what I wanted to get out of the placement. I have weekly and monthly meetings to see how I’m progressing and whether I’m meeting my goals.”

The BBC’s reputation with regard to its teenaged audience isn’t great, television wise, and they’ve accepted that their commercial rivals serve this age group much better than they do. But that doesn’t mean that the BBC should abandon teenagers completely. At the time of the proposed closures back in March, Erik Huggers, head of BBC Online, said: “In preparing for a digital age where BBC Online is at the heart of our future, we need to improve the quality level, and reprioritise on what we do best.”

What the BBC does best in terms of serving its teenage audience, is Blast, and unequivocally so. Whether offering feedback on creative writing through its website, webchats with professional artists, ‘Bad Review Bingo’ with Wendy, or summer-long placements at the behest of merciless tease Fraser and all-round sweetheart Matt, BBC Blast supports teenagers in a fairly selfless way that no other broadcaster does.

“When the question was posed as to where Blast would now direct all of the young talented people it has supported and nurtured over the years,” says Anthony Lee, “the BBC appeared to have no answer. It just goes to show that Blast is a unique and invaluable service to young people, without an equivalent and without any competitors. If, or rather when, it does close, it will create a vacuum as there’s currently no service that offers the same level of quality for young people.”

Despite the closure of Blast (amongst other services) supposedly being proposed to stop the Conservatives hacking the BBC to bits, it actually fits in very well with the coalition government’s plan for a “Big Society”, and with a statement that the communities secretary, Eric Pickles, gave to Radio 4’s The World At One on Monday 19th July:

“Even at a time when money is tight it is still possible to find different ways of delivering. It is unashamedly about getting more for less. But it is about passing power down to folks so you can start to mould your own neighbourhood and put something back in.”

Swap “neighbourhood” for “career” and take “folks” as normal, unconnected teenagers, and you’ve got Blast. I bet that if Cameron and Clegg were to sit down and take a look at precisely what it is the BBC are going to cut, they’d be as outraged as I am. With an aging workforce, the country needs young, trained people, and despite massive pressure for budget cuts in the public sector, cutting on investments for the future doesn’t seem like the right way to go. As far as the government is concerned, organisations staffed by well trained individuals – such as Blast graduates – function efficiently, which is just what the BBC has been accused of failing at. As well as providing a service that its commercial rivals don’t, there’s also the other side of the argument, which is that the BBC as a public service organisation can provide the training that small, independent firms can’t afford to – it arguably has a role to play in this area.

I’ve written this blog post too late. I should have done it when the cuts were first proposed, but never got around to it amidst mires of university work. I’m angry that Blast is closing. Pissed off that the media is again being cut off from people in rural areas, bitter for my unconnected teenage self that it’s kids with fancy surnames who’ll get hotly coveted work experience placements, and sad for the hundreds of Blast employees who have done such a fantastic job nurturing the talents of young people who are going to be reallocated or lose their jobs. Like I said, I wouldn’t be where I am today without it – from Blast I went to BBC Top of the Pops Online thanks to Fraser, and from there to a work experience placement at NME, aged 17. I owe it my whole career, though I still feel like I’m playing at being a real journalist despite the desk job. When the BBC cuts were first proposed, I tuned in to Lauren Laverne’s 6Music show and unsuccessfully tried to stop myself crying in the middle of the library as I heard her lovely Mackem accent quivering. But I knew 6Music would be ok; it was Blast I was worried about.

***

As a present for reading the whole blog, here is a picture of my gawky teenage self on my Blast placement, giddy with glee after interviewing the Magic Numbers.

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Tags: BBC, BBC 6Music, BBC Blast, BBC Cornwall, BBC Strategy Review, BBC Switch, Big Society, Blast Creative Trainees, Conservatives, Eric Pickles, Erik Huggers, internships, Laura Snapes, teenagers, The Cut, work experience