Beeb Overkill?

There has been significant comment in British media about the extravagant number of staff in Beijing from the BBC, namely from The Telegraph and Daily Mail

The actual figure is around 440, well over the 320-odd athletes representing Team GB. Many newspaper bloggers report an incident from yesterday's press conference with Michael Phelps, the American swimming champion (see report in The Guardian). A Children's BBC reporter asked "just how amazing is amazing? Amazing like Christmas? Like your birthday? Or like winning the lottery?"

Earlier this week, one BBC reporter decided to see how many different sports he could see in one day. Sounds like fun, but was it worthwhile and what exactly came of this intrepid investigation apart from a few amusing comments on their live ticker?

There were similar over-staffing allegations at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. I was there working for a number of magazines, and particularly remember travelling to the triathlon event in the media bus.

"What sports are in this then?" Asked one BBC employee a few seats back.

"Err, cycling, running and swimming?" replied another. "No idea what order they go in though."

One wonders what was the point of sending two journalists half way across the world to report on events they know nothing about. Even more irritating was the fact that these two clowns could have at least done some research into a sport they are expected to describe to an entire nation.