Ready, steady, don’t cook! BBC axes web recipes
IT IS one of the best-loved offerings on the BBC’s website, with thousands of home cooks using it for inspiration every day.
But following months of speculation, it has been confirmed that the recipes section of the BBC website will be shut down.
The database currently holds 11,163 recipes, including ‘one-pot wonders’ and ‘exam-day breakfasts’. Fans have set up an online petition in a bid to protect it from budget cuts.
But the Corporation’s review into its online services, published today, will announce that it will be focusing on six key areas in future – and recipes aren’t among them.
The recipes section is not the only service facing closure, as the travel section and any magazine-style content will be ‘closed or scaled down’ over the next 12 months, as news and sport are prioritised.
There will also be an ‘overhauling’ of the local news section of the website, with an effort made to improve the linking and crediting of outside news sources.
A BBC insider said: ‘What we do has to be high quality, distinctive, and offer genuine public value.
‘While our audiences expect us to be online, we have never sought to be all things to all people and the changes being announced will ensure we are not. These changes won’t be popular with all members of the public, but we think they are the right thing to do.’
Following the review, which was led by director of BBC news and current affairs James Harding, the decision has been made to focus on news, sport, BiteSize and iPlayer.
Historic events will also be broadcast on the website, and the Ideas Service will continue to publish stories about arts, culture and history as well as science.
Last July, Chancellor George Osborne gave the first sign that the BBC would be asked to cut back its online content if it competed with commercial rivals, accusing the broadcaster of being ‘imperial in its ambitions’.
He said: ‘If you’ve got a website that’s got features and cooking recipes – effectively the BBC website becomes the national newspaper as well as the national broad- caster. There are those sorts of issues we need to look at very carefully.’
And in October last year, Culture Secretary John Whittingdale told Radio 4’s Media Show that the BBC should stop behaving like a newspaper.
Speaking about the concerns of newspapers, he said: ‘They have expressed the view that the fact you can access content which looks like long-form journalism on the BBC website is clearly something they are unhappy about, and raises this question as to whether or not the BBC should be essentially entering the printed news market and that, I think, is a legitimate concern for them to express.’
In light of these views, the BBC review also includes a requirement that long-form content focuses on current affairs journalism.
A petition on the campaign site Change.org called ‘Save the BBC’s recipe archive!’ has drawn just under 5,000 signatures in the last few days. One person who signed the petition called the site a ‘go-to every time I cook’, while another said it is a ‘valuable resource for time-pressed mums and dads’.
And several even claimed that they use the site, which has guidance on seasonal produce as well as celebrity chef recipes, every day.
‘These changes won’t be popular’