The BBC has told a small number of senior staff to step back from their day-to-day duties on music and live events, following the broadcast of Bob Vylan's controversial Glastonbury set.In a statement, the BBC said it was taking action to "ensure proper accountability for those found to be responsible" for the broadcast.The BBC also said Bob Vylan were one of seven Glastonbury acts it had deemed "high risk" in advance of the festival.The broadcaster said it would make "immediate changes to livestreaming music events", so that "any music performances deemed high risk by the BBC will now not be broadcast live or streamed live" in the future.The corporation's chair, Samir Shah, said the decision not to pull the live feed was "unquestionably an error of judgement".In a message to staff on Thursday, director general Tim Davie said: "I deeply regret that such offensive and deplorable behaviour appeared on the BBC and want to say sorry – to our audience and to all of you."The BBC said Bob Vylan had been deemed high risk following a risk assessment process applied to all acts appearing at Glastonbury.The statement continued: "Prior to Glastonbury, a decision was taken that compliance risks could be mitigated in real time on the live stream."The BBC noted that the live stream was monitored "in line with the agreed compliance protocols and a number of issues were escalated".Warnings appeared on the stream on two occasions, but, the BBC added: "The editorial team took the decision not to cut the feed. This was an error."Davie, who was attending Glastonbury himself on the day, was "subsequently made aware of what had happened and instructed the team that none of the performance should feature in further coverage".The BBC said the team on duty prioritised stopping the performance from becoming available on demand, meaning that the set would not appear separately on iPlayer or BBC Sounds.However, the live feed remained available for more than four hours, which meant viewers were able to rewind and view the content."Given the failings that have been acknowledged, we are taking actions to ensure proper accountability for those found to be responsible for those failings in the live broadcast," the BBC said. "We will not comment further on those processes at this time.""This was unquestionably an error of judgement," he added. "I was very pleased to note that as soon as this came to the notice of Tim Davie - who was on the Glastonbury site at the time visiting BBC staff - he took immediate action and instructed the team to withdraw the performance from on demand coverage."
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