Richard Bates

Richard Bates is a Fellow of the UK’s Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, who worked for the BBC for almost thirty years in a number of financial posts, including eleven years as Financial Controller, Television, and seven years as Financial Controller, Regional Broadcasting. He represented the BBC in a number of EBU activities, and served as a member of Council of the Royal Television Society. Retiring early from the BBC, in 1995, he produced a number of business skills courses for the National Film & Television School, before taking a series of assignments in Bosnia and Herzegovina and  in developing countries, teaching basic business skills to the managers of television and radio stations.

Suffering from deteriorating hearing in his latter days at the BBC he was drawn into voluntary work on behalf of the deaf and hard of hearing, and now chairs the Media Access Group of the Royal National Institute for the Deaf. The Group’s twin concerns are the quantity and quality of subtitles, and the clarity of soundtracks in television and radio programmes. (The latter is invariably about the overlaying of speech with music – a subject on which he now lectures regularly to broadcasters and media training colleges.)