The BBC is set to axe up to 450 jobs from its news operation in a massive cost-cutting cull, insiders at the corporation have said.
Flagship shows such as BBC Radio 4’s Today, World at One and PM, as well as BBC1’s The News At Six and The News at Ten and BBC2’s Newsnight are thought to be most vulnerable to a huge centralisation drive.
Staff were due to be briefed on the sweeping changes — described as “devastasting” by one BBC employee — this afternoon by head of news Fran Unsworth before a public announcement.
The cuts, involving around 10 per cent of the BBC’s entire news operation, will take power away from individual editors and assign staff to work on broad topics across different shows.
A trial last year saw environmental coverage pooled so that Martha Kearney’s reports from the Antarctic for Radio 4 also ran on BBC Breakfast and the BBC News Channel.
One source said: “This is not a recipe for getting original journalism into the BBC. It is an attack on the independence of news programmes that have been pretty successful in breaking stories for the past 50 years.”
Another told the Standard that even senior staff had been left in the dark about specific cuts, but were told “the direction of travel was centralisation”.
The redundancies come as the corporation faces an uncertain future, with director-general Tony Hall having announced his departure this summer and speculation on the replacement of the licence fee.
This week Gary Lineker, the corporation’s highest-paid presenter, said payment of the fee could become voluntary, while Culture Secretary Baroness Morgan said voters had raised the issue with her in the election campaign.
Read More
BBC bosses need to save £80 million, and believe the cuts will help them to persuade licence-fee payers it is committed to providing value for money.
One source told The Times that BBC bosses felt that had to be seen delivering value for money at a time of public criticism over issues such as revoking free TV licences for over-75s.
The source said: “The BBC has got to show that it is doing some tough stuff.”
Plans to axe Victoria Derbyshire’s BBC2 programme have already been leaked, with the host saying she is “absolutely devastated”.
The cuts also come amid payouts to some female staff, with radio presenter Sarah Montague getting a £400,000 settlement and Samira Ahmed winning an employment tribunal case in a dispute over equal pay.
The BBC hopes most of the cuts will come through voluntary redundancies and scrapping vacant roles.
The BBC’s news and current affairs budget is £355 million a year.
MORE ABOUT