BBC BLOODBATH
450 news jobs slashed... Top presenters at risk... 5 Live and Newsnight hit the hardest
HIGH-PROFILE and highly paid BBC presenters are facing the axe after a cull of 450 jobs in the corporation’s news department was unveiled yesterday.
Staff were left reeling at the scale of the cutbacks, which will see around one in 13 roles go and are part of an £80million savings programme.
Newsnight, BBC2’s flagship current affairs show, is among the programmes bearing the brunt of the cuts, along with popular radio stations Radio 5 Live and the World Service, which will lose 50 roles.
As a result, the BBC, which has about 6,000 news staff, will cover fewer stories and plough more money into its online output, saying it was currently ‘spending too much’ on ‘traditional linear broadcasting’.
A well-placed BBC source said it was not just rank-and-file staff that faced losing their jobs, but potentially well-known on-air presenters. Many have been under scrutiny since the BBC’s pay list revealed that many earn huge six-figure salaries. The source said: ‘ No one is immune from the cuts, not even the presenters. Big names are not protected.’
Last night, unions warned of an ‘ existential threat’ to the BBC and insiders hinted that compulsory redundancies could lead to potential strike action.
There was also fury that the corporation was slashing the number of journalists while continu
‘We need to save substantial amounts’
ing to pay a fortune to sports and entertainment stars, such as Match Of The Day presenter Gary Lineker, who is on around £1.75million per year. On a dramatic day for the corporation: Victoria Derbyshire confronted the BBC news boss Fran Unsworth about why her show had been axed;
It emerged that Newsnight would axe 12 posts, slash the number of in-depth films and spend less on investigative journalism, according to the National Union of Journalists;
Radio 5 Live faces losing about ten roles, driven by ‘changing listening habits’ and demand for digital content;
Up to 60 radio production and operations posts are being closed.
In 2016, the BBC revealed it needed to save £800million a year from its annual licence fee revenue of £3.7billion, with about £80million coming from the news department.
At the same time, the licence fee, which accounts for around 75 per cent of the BBC’s revenue, is under unprecedented pressure. Last June, the corporation controversially announced it was scrapping free TV licences for most over75s. However, even after the cuts, the budget for BBC News programming will still be around £480million per year.
In yesterday’s announcement, the BBC said the moves would reduce ‘duplication’, amid longstanding concerns about the way multiple reporters from different programmes are sent to cover the same events, and that the measures would also see more of journalists based outside
VICTORIA Derbyshire yesterday laid into a BBC boss over the axing of her show, suggesting that she had been lied to about its future.
The popular presenter confronted director of news and current affairs Fran Unsworth during a briefing for staff about plans to cut 4 0 jobs.
Accounts of the row were livetweeted from the presentation attended by around 130 employees and streamed to other BBC workers.
Miss Unsworth, 62, had claimed the Victoria Derbyshire show’s audience in its 10am slot on BBC2 was ‘too small’.
But Miss Derbyshire hit back, saying the show was never asked to increase live TV viewing figures and had met its target of growing its digital audience.
She said those working on the show were told they had been ‘future proofed’ against cuts, and asked Miss Unsworth: ‘Were we lied to?’
Miss Derbyshire, 1, only learnt of the decision to axe the five-year-old show when she read about it in the media. She said she was ‘devastated’.
Details of yesterday’s confrontation were recounted live on Twitter by Charlie Haynes, a reporter on the Victoria Derbyshire show, who said the presenter did not ‘hold back’.
He wrote that in response to Miss Unsworth’s claims about the show’s viewership, Miss Derbyshire told her: ‘Never have you said to me, “you need to grow the linear audience”.
‘No one on the news board has ever said that to anyone in our team.’
She added: ‘Our remit was original journalism reaching under-served audiences and growing the digital figures. All of which we have achieved.
‘It feels like changing the goalposts
London. Miss Unsworth, director of news and current affairs, said: ‘ We need to reshape BBC News for the next decade in a way which saves substantial amounts of money.
‘We are spending too much of our resources on traditional linear broadcasting and not enough on digital.
‘Our duty as a publicly funded broadcaster is to inform, educate and entertain every citizen. But there are many people in this country that we are not serving well enough.’
When she was asked by staff if the £80million savings programme would be the end of the cuts, she was said to have admitted she could not be sure and pointed out that the Government is considering decriminalising non-payment of the licence fee – a move which could hit its budget further. She said she felt the BBC was ‘under threat’.
A former BBC editor said: ‘ The big question is whether this makes BBC News better in quality terms.
‘It has become less distinctive in recent years, and its digital offering is sometimes weak. It’s hard to see how cutting journalists helps this. So it seems to be a case of fingers crossed and hope for the best.’
Michelle Stanistreet , general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said: ‘These damaging cuts are part of an existential threat to the BBC and a direct consequence of the last disastrous, secret licence fee deal the BBC agreed with the Government. This is before the impact of taking over responsibility for the over-75s licences kicks in.’
The BBC needs to save £80million by 2022 but prior to yesterday’s announcement had saved about half this amount.
The job losses will happen between now and 2022 with some happening more immediately than others.
One BBC insider warned that there was a willingness to ‘work to rule’ once the details of the cuts became clearer.
BBC Newsnight’s diplomatic editor, Mark Urban, wrote on Twitter: ‘I’ve been on Newsnight a long time, I know, but this is the fourth reporter cull since I’ve been working here. Glum.’
Damian Collins, former chairman of the culture, media and sport select committee, said: ‘There will be concerns about proposed BBC News cuts. They should explain how it’ll impact the BBC’s ability to reach people.’
The BBC has suspended the closure of its Red Button text service – which enables headlines, football scores, weather and travel news to be read on TV sets – a day before it was due to begin phasing it out.
The news comes days after a petition, organised by the National Federation Of The Blind Of The UK was handed in to the BBC and Downing Street, which warned that removing the service would ‘leave many people, who are already vulnerable, further isolated from society’.
BBC director general Tony Hall said he would examine the concerns and make ‘a fresh decision’ in the spring.