SIS Outside Broadcasts To Cease Trading

Members at SIS Outside Broadcasts have received news that the company is to cease trading at the end of March 2014.
Following the loss to competitors of all of its BBC Sport work - 75 per cent of SIS OBs' long term contracts - the company emailed customers to say: "The Outside Broadcast market, as it is today, no longer offers an arena in which we would wish to continue to operate. We have therefore decided to withdraw from the OB sector."
All 240 jobs in SIS OBs, the largest OB provider in Europe, are at risk; staff are angry at the BBC for breaking up the sports work into ten lots.
The announcement comes some five years on from the BBC's decision in 2008 to sell its OB operation to Satellite Information Services.
BECTU branch secretary Sean Kelly said: "By inviting bids for one third of our work in ten separate lots, BBC Sport opened the way for competitors to bid at marginal prices, ignoring overheads, whilst SIS OBs did not have that luxury. The structure of the tender process seemed designed to disadvantage SIS OBs.
"BBC Sport has destroyed the company which was BBC Television Outside Broadcasts, together with the livelihoods of members who had worked loyally for the BBC for most of their careers."
(CD)