The BBC is set to axe over 10 percent of staff in its management, programming and news divisions after Britain's cash-strapped government imposed deep spending cuts on the world-renowned, publicly-funded broadcaster. The corporation set out the changes on Thursday in response to a 20 percent cut to its annual 3.5 billion pound ($5.4 billion) budget imposed by the government a year ago as part of the deepest public spending cuts in decades.
--- 2,000 jobs to be axed, senior manager roles to be cut
Unions said the changes would damage independent journalism at a time when a phone hacking scandal has revealed embarrassingly close ties between the Prime Minister David Cameron and Rupert Murdoch's right-leaning News Corp, a long standing critic of the BBC. The BBC budget was imposed by the government with very little negotiation. Around 600 BBC News posts will now go.
With eight national TV channels, 50 radio stations and an extensive website, the BBC's size and resources had already attracted envy and criticism from rivals, led by James Murdoch at the dominant pay-TV group BSkyB. As the recession gathered steam in 2008, that criticism intensified as advertising-funded groups such as ITV struggled to cope, cutting staff and budgets.
Under the new plans, the corporation will cut 2,000 jobs, reduce the budget for buying sports and other rights, slash the number of senior managers and share more content. More repeats will be shown on television and property in west London will also be sold. The changes will result in savings of around 670 million pounds a year by 2016/17.
"The realities of what this country looks like in 2011 and what households up and down the country are going through, what other public institutions are going through, (means) it would be a bit odd if the national broadcaster wasn't feeling some of the same pressures," Director General Mark Thompson said. Last year, the BBC agreed to freeze the annual licence fee, payable by every TV-owning British household, at 145.50 pounds. It is also taking on extra costs from the government including funding the BBC World Service, which is broadcast overseas.
The agreement was hammered out in a matter of days, stripping out the months of negotiation normally involved in setting a licence fee, as the coalition government scrambled to cut spending after taking power. The National Union of Journalists condemned the move and called again for the licence fee to be renegotiated "especially given what has since emerged about the close relationship between the government and Rupert Murdoch at the time the deal was done."