CULL AT BEEB
1000 jobs cut as BBC Four and CBBC axed and news channels are merged in digital push
CBBC and BBC4 will be ditched as TV channels as part of the BBC’s “digital-first” strategy.
Director-general Tim Davie said the two stations would come off air within a few years, when they will switch to becoming online only, available via iPlayer on smart TVs and devices.
Telling staff about his strategy to turn the corporation into a “digital-first” media organisation, Davie yesterday said 1000 jobs would also have to go.
In other changes, the BBC’s two news channels, BBC World News and the BBC News Channel, will merge to become one rolling 24-hour global service.
Davie told staff: “This is our moment to build a digital-first BBC.
“Something genuinely new, a Reithian organisation for the digital age, a positive force for the UK and the world.”
The BBC needs to save a further £285million in response to the Tory decision to freeze the licence fee at £159 for the next two years.
In an announcement that will bring further gloom to news staff, he said changes to drive the digital-first approach would include “making savings in broadcast news, reinvesting that in video and digital news”.
The number of TV hours commissioned will fall by around 200 hours. “We’ll still a very broad range but fewer hours will mean we are not constantly thinning programme budgets,” he said.
But the news has been met with disappointment from some. Historian Greg Jenner, who worked on CBBC’s much-loved Horrible Histories, said: “No other channel but CBBC could have made Horrible Histories. Not even close. “I can’t tell you how enormously influential it has been on my career – without CBBC, I wouldn’t be an author, I wouldn’t host a podcast, I wouldn’t work in comedy. It changed everything for me.”
Others raised concerns about access, suggesting that going online-only will impact on families with poor access to the internet as well as those with no access, which Ofcom figures suggest is around 1.5million UK homes.
BBC Four’s move to online-only is also likely to cause dismay.
Its diet of arts programmes and vintage Top of the Pops has seen it do better than the newly relaunched BBC3 in the ratings.
I can’t tell you how enormously influential it has been on my career GREG JENNER REVEALS DISMAY AT CBBC NEWS