The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
BBC presenter raced across London with police escort
Bruce rushed to HQ after IT glitch causes havoc on channel
BBC News presenter Fiona Bruce was raced across London with a police escort to present last night’s Six O’Clock News.
An IT glitch hit the corporation’s Broadcasting House headquarters, forcing the News 24 live channel to run previously recorded content throughout the day.
In an effort to get the flagship programme out live, Ms Bruce and fellow presenter Mark Easton took a taxi to a back-up studio in the capital’s Millbank.
After getting stuck in traffic due to a women’s pensions demonstration in Westminster, police officers escorted the team to ensure they made it to Millbank tower on time.
At least a thousand women were protesting outside parliament over the change in state pension age. The pair made it to the studio in time for the 6pm broadcast.
A BBC spokesman said: “Due to a technical issue, we’re currently running recorded programming on our live news channels.”
The issue appeared to last for around one hour before the news channel returned to air.
Earlier, the BBC had warned of further “difficult choices” and an impact on programming as a report showed it has made sweeping cuts and halved the number of senior managers. More than 1,000 jobs have been stripped from the public broadcaster, according to the report into efficiency savings.
The organisation warned the impact on jobs will soon extend to an impact on content, with efficiency cuts likely to be noticed by viewers and more “difficult choices” to be made.
Although 94% of the publicly funded broadcaster’s expenditure now goes directly into creating content, overhead costs at the BBC are up £12.2 million from last year.
The cost of overheads currently stands at £196.1 million from a total BBC spend of £3.4 billion.