The BBC has announced it will cut between 1,800 and 2,000 jobs, or almost one in 10, in an attempt to tackle “significant financial pressures”.
The broadcaster needs to make £500m savings over the next two years, and interim director general Rhodri Talfan Davies did not rule out axing entire channels or services.
“We need to look at everything, and at a scale of £500 million, inevitably there are going to be some big and some difficult choices, but we do need to step through this carefully,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Media Show.
He said the corporation would give more details later this year about how its services would be affected.
“For audiences, the job in hand now over the next three or four months is to work through how we make those changes without damaging the services that we know are critical to the BBC across radio and television and online,” he said.
He also acknowledged that the job cuts would be “really difficult news” for staff.
Philippa Childs, head of broadcasting union Bectu, warned that “cuts of this magnitude” would be “devastating for the workforce and to the BBC as a whole”.
The BBC currently has about 21,500 full-time equivalent employees.
In an email to staff on Wednesday, Talfan Davies said: “As you know, the BBC is facing significant financial pressures, which we need to respond to with pace.
“Put simply, the gap between our costs and our income is growing. This is being driven by a number of factors: production inflation remains very high; our licence fee and commercial income is under pressure; and the global economy remains turbulent.”
He also imposed tighter controls on spending on recruitment, travel, management consultancies, and attendance at conferences, awards and events.
‘Difficult decisions’
The BBC is currently negotiating with the government about its future, and that of the licence fee, ahead of the renewal of its royal charter at the end of 2027.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said the BBC, “like every institution”, has to make “difficult decisions”.”That is something that I know the leadership of the BBC take very seriously, including exploring commercial options and other revenue raisers that can help to sustain the BBC’s finances,” she told Radio 4’s World at One programme shortly before the announcement.
The news of the cuts comes in advance of the arrival of a new BBC director general, former Google executive Matt Brittin, who will officially succeed the recently departed Tim Davie on 18 May.
‘Death by a thousand cuts’
Childs said BBC staff were “already under significant pressure after previous redundancy rounds”, and further cuts “will inevitably damage its ability to deliver on its public mission”.
She continued: “At a time of fake news and an industry that is becoming more concentrated in the hands of a few multinational corporations, the UK needs a confident, ambitious and sustainably-funded BBC more than ever.
“The government must ensure that Charter Renewal puts the BBC’s funding on a more secure, long-term pathway and prevent our national broadcaster from facing death by a thousand cuts.”
Laura Davison, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said the plans for “more brutal job cuts are wrong, damaging and will cause uncertainty and distress for workers at the BBC”.
She said: “These cuts severely undermine the BBC’s ability to fulfil its purposes: providing quality journalism and programming that informs, educates, and entertains.
“Plans for further cuts follow years of real-terms budget reductions and relentless cost-saving measures that have affected core parts of the corporation. This can’t go on. The BBC cannot provide quality journalism without the talented and experienced workers who make it possible.”
Source: www.kumasimail.com
