BBC News to cut 45 more jobs

Job losses part of a five-year plan unconnected to Mark Thompson’s ‘Delivering Quality First’ initiative BBC News is to axe a further 45 jobs in the final stage of a five-year plan that will see the loss of more than 450 posts. The latest job cuts are unconnected to BBC director general Mark Thompson’s latest cost-saving initiative, “Delivering Quality First”, but the conclusion of another three-word initiative launched by Thompson in 2006, “Delivering Creative Future” . BBC News has already closed 420 posts in the first four years of the Creative Future plan. By the end of year five, with another 45 jobs to go, BBC News will have saved £161m, of which the corporation said £63.4m has been reinvested into journalism. Further cuts are expected in the news division as a result of Delivering Quality First, the review which is examining how to make 20% of budget cuts as a result of last year’s flat licence fee settlement. Ideas already been put forward include merging some local radio output, axing overnight programming on BBC1 and BBC2, a “slimmed-down” news channel and scaling back the Parliament Channel. Major savings are also expected in newsgathering when the separate operations of the BBC News and the World Service are brought together at the redeveloped Broadcasting House in central London. A final list of proposals is due to be prepared in June and the report will be presented to the BBC Trust in July . A BBC spokeswoman said the 45 posts would close by April next year. She said compulsory redundancies would be avoided “wherever possible”. “The closure of 45 posts proposed today are part of the BBC’s Delivering Creative Future project – a five-year plan to achieve savings. This is year five,” said the BBC spokeswoman. “In years one to four network news has radically changed the way it works and the way it is organised. 420 posts have closed and we will have saved News £161m by the end of Year five, of which about £63.4m has been reinvested in BBC journalism. “At the beginning of the five-year plan it was said that this would be a continuous process and so today in the final year it is proposed to close around 45 posts by no later than April 2012. “News has a very good record on redeploying people and the BBC remains committed to avoiding compulsory redundancies wherever possible. Volunteers for redundancy will be considered.” • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook . BBC BBC Trust BBC licence fee Television industry Radio industry Mark Thompson John Plunkett guardian.co.uk

Posted by on May 5, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.