BBC's Roger Mosey defends spending on Euro 2008 studio

Roger Mosey, the BBC executive in charge of the corporation's 2012 Olympic coverage, has defended its decision to spend £250,000 on a new studio in Vienna during its coverage of the Euro 2008 football tournament. The cost of the studio was revealed last week when the National Audit Office published a report into the BBC's coverage of major music and sporting events. "We believe in being at the heart of host cities, and our audiences have come to expect 'landmark' shots like the Eiffel Tower in World Cup 1998 and the Brandenburg Gate in 2006", Mosey wrote on his BBC blog . Mosey, who was the BBC's director of sport at the time of the Euro 2008 tournament, said the response to the NAO report had been "disappointing" and singled out one pressure group for special criticism. "For the Taxpayers' Alliance to say that this was a "whim" is bizarre, given it has been our policy for more than a decade and has been seen in action by most of the population," he added. The group, which campaigns for better use of public funds, said last week that: "Spending £250,000 on a whim because [the BBC] wants a better view is profligacy of the highest degree." Mosey defended the BBC's decision not to use facilities provided by the Euro 2008 organisers. "It was never an option to broadcast from the International Broadcast Centre some miles out of town, and the renting, construction and staffing of a city-centre studio costs money – though so, actually, does a studio without a view," he said. The BBC Trust asked the NAO to review the corporation's coverage of six major events in the year to the end of March 2009: the Beijing Olympics, Euro 2008 and Wimbledon from BBC Sport; and The Proms, Glastonbury and Radio 1's Big Weekend. Mosey argued that the NAO report contained "no criticism of what we actually delivered at these events or the total amounts of money we spent. "Crucially, they don't say we fail to deliver value for money," he said. The NAO, the government body charged with ensuring that public sector bodies are using taxpayers money efficiently, did criticise the BBC for failing to bring the total budgets spent by individual departments on covering major events together. Mosey conceded this was true but said it was "a very narrow point without any negative consequences … We knew at every stage what our resources were." He insisted that costs are under constant scrutiny and budgets are permanently under review at the BBC as it seeks to justify the way the £3.7bn-a-year licence fee funds are spent. "Scrutiny has massively increased, belts have been tightened and people are being asked to deliver more for less," he said. He also said that lengthy NAO investigation, which took months to complete, had demonstrated beyond doubt that the BBC's coverage of the Beijing Olympics in 2008 represented good value for money and was appreciated by viewers. Mosey added that audience research, and "also a lot of the emails, blog responses and letters we received", showed that most licence fee payers thought the BBC's Beijing coverage was "one of the highlights of 2008 and some of the best sports coverage in recent memory". Acknowledging that there were those who felt the BBC had sent too many staff to cover the 2008 games and spent too much money covering it, he said that the NAO report had exonerated the corporation, and took a swipe at newspapers which had suggested otherwise. "I read in one paper last week that the NAO would condemn us for the numbers of staff sent to Beijing. Other speculation said a culture of profligacy would be identified. But this has turned out to be way off the mark," Mosey added. "In reality, there is not a single criticism of our staffing or of our overall expenditure, and after all those months of investigation there is nothing that suggests these major events don't deliver what our audiences expect and require." • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email [email protected] or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. • If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".