BBC favourites face the axe
THE BBC is planning to “retire” traditional programmes from its schedules, the public spending watchdog has found, raising fears that the corporation’s output could be “dumbed down”.
The National Audit Office found that an internal BBC review “recommended retiring more shows” which would “free up slots for new ideas”.
It was suggested that long-standing favourites such as Gardeners’ World and The Sky at Night could be under threat. The NAO also warned that the BBC could lose its ability to make programmes such as Songs of Praise if it continued the trend of outsourcing production to independent companies.
Last April, the corporation set up a new commercial operation to make programmes, called the BBC Studios division.
Since then BBC Studios have won the right to continue to make three shows – A Question of Sport, Holby City and the lunchtime medical drama Doctors
– but lost the tender for Sunday
evening’s flagship religious programme, Songs of Praise.
A spokesman for the campaign group Voice of the Listener and Viewer, said: “Clearly there is always a need for the BBC to refresh schedules and to be distinctive, but this shouldn’t be at the expense of programmes the nation loves.”
The NAO report, published today, says: “There is a risk that, if Studios loses too many commissions in a particular genre, the ability of the BBC as a whole to make programmes in that genre could be diminished, or even lost.
“In addition to losing programmes in open competition, Studios could also lose work if the BBC decides to retire old formats. The likelihood of this happening increased in November 2017 when an internal [BBC] review of the tendering process for recommissioning existing programmes recommended retiring more shows, where this made sense from an audience point of view, in order to free up slots for new ideas.”
The report added: “These programmes are popular for a reason and coming up with a winning formula is harder than you might think.”
Andrew Bridgen, the Conservative MP, said: “I am all for having the schedule refreshed but there must be no dumbing down of the quality of the programmes. Given the BBC’S nearly £4billion of taxpayer-funding through the licence fee, there is no excuse for it.” Lord Hall of Birkenhead, the director-general of the BBC, is already under pressure to plug a £700 million annual hole in licence fee revenue to continue to fund free TV licences for people aged over 75.
The NAO report found BBC Worldwide paid out £423 million in dividends in the past five years, but only spent £312 million to supplement licence fee income, holding back £111million. The BBC’S total commercial profits after tax fell nearly two thirds to £39million in the five years to 2016-17.
A BBC spokesman declined to say which “old format” programmes could be facing the axe. He said: “It’s not true that this is about ‘chasing viewers’ or ‘dumbing down’. Recommissioning decisions are always made on a case-by-case basis, and we are committed to finding the very best new ideas, as well as keeping long running shows at the top of their game.”