HR: How not to handle contract renegotiations

Countdown: it's a letters-on-tiles game that was originally broadcast on French TV. The format was revised for British audiences and, with Blockbuster, underpinned the evening schedules for the new Channel 4 TV by the simple expedient of broadcasting game shows with broad - and intellectual despite lightweight presentation - appeal when all other channels were broadcasting children's tv.

The end result was a surprisingly large audience grew up within weeks of the channel launching, and they stayed on into the evening until a soap was followed by the best news programme on TV - but at 7pm its timing was a little too radical, being around the time the previous audience was getting ready to go out and the "home from work" group was either trying to adjust to being at home or was in the middle of dinner.

The soap and Blockbuster have both gone (indeed, the houses used in the soap, set in a housing estate, went on the market just a few weeks ago, in a decrepit and vandalised state) but Countdown went on for ever.

It was launched with a tubby presenter with a northern accent and a leggy woman with a slightly edgy voice. He sat down, she stood up wearing the kind of gowns usually reserved for game show hostesses that wave their arms whilst doing something inconsequential.

And indeed, for much of the programme, she did nothing but pick up letters from a pile of either consonants or vowels as directed by contestants and put them into a rack. But it was when it came to "the numbers game" that he role changed. From submissive little miss, she became the dominant force: contestants chose cards with hidden numbers, they were put into a rack. She pressed a button and someone or something created a formula using some or all of the chosen numbers and produced a result. Contestants had two minutes to solve the formula. Few did. The woman in the gown then stepped up, and wrote the answer on a board, almost invariably getting it right.

Fans of the show realised that far from his apparently duffer-ish demeanour, Richard Whiteley was anything but thick and he played his part as the buffoon-like foil to Carol Vorderman's mathematical brainpower and the rapid dictionary-reading skills of a minor celebrity and someone who worked for the Oxford English Dictionary (although one of those, Susy Dent, became a star in her own right as a result of frequent appearances over a period of years).

So from 1982 to 2005, millions of people sat down to watch the programme, to try to make longer words from the seven letters chosen within the minute allowed to the contestants, and to try to beat not just the contestants but Vorderman and Dent, too. In 2005, Richard Whitely was taken ill, and a substitute brought in. It transpired that Whiteley had advanced heart disease, dying as a result. A substantial part of the relaxed charm of the programme was gone.

The producers tried to find a similar presenter but Des O'Connor and Des Lynam were unable to play dumb as successfully as Whiteley. Somehow, they became the focus of the programme - something Whiteley appeared never to do.

Three years on, and with O'Connor about to sever ties, the figures have reduced by two thirds. The producers, under pressure from Channel 4, need to cut costs: the numbers don't justify the price they pay, says Channel 4.

Vorderman, at 47 now not too dissimilar to the age Whiteley was when they started the programme together, is certainly showing her age. Over the past quarter of a century, her hair and dress sense have swung between perfect and frankly dreadful and her periodic attempts to regain her youthful appearance have been risable. And entirely pointless for when she is simply Carol Vorderman, she remains a beautiful and shapely woman with a sharp brain.

In short, she still meets the criteria that brought her to the programme in the first place.

And she is one of those "celebrities" of whom large portions of the public is deeply fond without feeling the need to see her in the gossip columns.

The programme is made by ITV Productions for Channel 4. Recently, the production company told Vorderman that they had to cut costs, and that her annual salary (rumouired to be between 3/4 million and one million pounds) would be cut by 90% if she chose to renew her contract. That, Vorderman has told UK media was not so bad: she is a wealthy woman and she loves doing the programme.

However, two comments caused upset which is now dominating the media pages of the UK press: first, she says, she was told that this was a take-it-or-leave-it deal and that she had 48 hours to accept it. That, people around her say, is tantamount to firing her if she didn't take the drop.

Secondly, and most hurtfully, she says that one of the production company bosses told her that the programme had survived Whiteley's departure and it could survive without her.

The row has hit the media in a big way: Vorderman says she was "forced out." The rights owner, Marcel Stellman, has told newspapers that he is not happy and implied that there is already a contract dispute with the programme makers. This, he indicates, is the last straw and he is considering terminating or not renewing the rights. "without the format, there is no show," he told one UK newspaper.

The programme has been accused of suffering from a general dumbing down at Channel 4. And there is no doubt that changes in it since Whteley's death have moved it towards entertainment with the minor celebs talking for ever longer and the host chatting inanely seemingly to fill time. In short, the qualities that made the programme was it was have been eroded. The one constant has been Vorderman.

For the production company, what began as a no-doubt serious desire to do something about both ratings and costs has backfired into a huge PR disaster. The company says it had no intention of forcing her out, that the offer was not an ultimatum and that it was intended a tough starting point for negotiations.

And, worse, if the spokesperson at the production company quoted by The Daily Mail did actually say what the Mail printed, then the implication is clear: dumbing down is needed. For the English in the statement is so poor, that the ability of the company to produce a show which is based upon knowledge of the language must be something of a challenge. The "source" is quoted as saying "Her and Richard negotiated mega-deals because we could not afford to lose either of them because they were like a partnership."

So there we go:are the educated and intelligent being hunted by those who would be more suited to walking dark streets in a hoody so as to appeal to their mates?

Or is it just a faux pas in HR?