News to bear the brunt of BBC cuts that bite across the board

Two thousand jobs to go, a reduction in sport and entertainment – and more TV repeats A shrunken BBC will lose 2,000 jobs, show more repeats on BBC2 and cut spending on sport and entertainment programmes as the broadcaster sets out plans to show that it could contend with a licence fee freeze that is due to last until at least 2017. BBC News will bear the brunt of the job losses, with 800 positions lost, largely from merging the broadcaster’s publicly funded news operation with the World Service, and not transmitting programmes such as Newsnight and Radio 4′s PM live from party conferences. Meanwhile, BBC3 will be moved to the corporation’s northern base in Salford, which will become home to at least another 1,000 staff, taking its total workforce to 3,300, while the BBC prepares to leave its west London headquarters. There will also be wide-ranging cuts to the BBC’s radio output, with the exception of Radio 4. Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director general, said the review – called “delivering quality first” – would lead to a smaller and radically reshaped BBC. The changes were designed to save £670m a year by 2017. But the corporation had come to the end of the road, he said, if more cuts were forced on it in the future. “We can’t do this again. Another real-terms cut in the licence fee will inevitably lead to a loss of services or diminution in quality or both,” he said. “If [we are forced] to go for more real-terms cuts the amount of road left for productivity savings is rapidly running out.” A year ago, intense behind-the-scenes negotiations between Thompson and the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, left the BBC with its licence fee frozen at £145.50. The corporation also agreed to take on extra responsibilities from the government, including the taxpayer-funded World Service. Despite the freeze, the corporation has been able to avoid axing any of its digital channels or services, and its chairman, Lord Patten, argued that its scope was not significantly diminished: “The BBC is far from perfect but it is a great institution and, at its best, a great broadcaster. We have a tough and challenging new licence fee settlement, but it should still be possible to run an outstanding broadcaster on £3.5bn a year.” Unions voiced concern at the impact of the changes. Gerry Morrissey, general secretary of technicians’ trade union BECTU, said: “When Mark Thompson did the licence fee deal he said the BBC could not continue to do everything. But this is salami slicing. I believe the BBC should have been brave and should have said we are not going to damage quality. This strategy is destroying quality, jobs and the

Posted by on October 6, 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.