Media Brief

I'm the BBC's media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

BBC Radio 2's Electric Proms have fallen victim to the corporation's latest-round of cost-cutting says the Guardian. Last year's event, featuring Robert Plant, Neil Diamond and Sir Elton John, is set to be its last. The Radio 2 controller, Bob Shennan, said the five-year-old spin-off from the classical music Proms was being axed because of efficiency savings.

Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times, has warned that the Britain's newspapers are now at risk of facing political "retribution" in the form of statutory regulation in the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. The Guardian says he gave the Hugh Cudlipp memorial lecture.

Gillian Reynolds says in the Daily Telegraph she's not convinced by the BBC's strategy of "fewer things better", after listening to director general Mark Thompson interviewed by Steve Hewlett on Radio 4's Media Show.

Children in Britain sit in front of a TV or computer screen for four-and-a-half hours a day, reports the Daily Mail. A report released by research firm ChildWise shows that youngsters now spend an average of one hour and 50 minutes online and two hours 40 minutes in front of the television every day.

Jeremy Paxman last night became the latest BBC presenter to use the c-word inadvertently on air. The Guardian says Paxman's error was the third such mistake on the corporation's output within the past two months. It says the news item related to "tongue-twisting UK Uncut", the direct action group that lobbies to ensure corporations pay their taxes.

The BBC's newspaper review says events in the Middle East are again the focus for the papers. The Times and the Guardian talk of Egypt's President Mubarak being "on the brink" after the announcement by the army that it would not use force against protesters.

Links in full

• Guardian | BBC Radio 2 axes Electric Proms
• Guardian | FT editor: press risks political retribution over phone-hacking scandal
• Guardian | Lionel Barber's Hugh Cudlipp lecture: the full text
• Telegraph | Are the World Service cuts a sign of things to come?
• Daily Mail | Screen addicts: Children spend more time in front of a computer or television every day than they spend exercising every week
• Guardian | Jeremy Paxman follows Naughtie example with on-air 'cuts' blunder
• BBC | Newspaper review

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