For years, a multi-million-pound budget cut has been looming over the BBC like a spectre. Corporation staff and the licence-fee-paying public have been warned over and over that dramatic changes were going to have to be made and that we were going to have to get used to a BBC that is slimmer than the all-encompassing, innovative authority it has grown into in the past 104 years. Adapt or die, as the saying goes, and the BBC’s survival depends on radical evolution. The question is whether what is left can be classed as survival at all.
Yesterday, the new director-general Matt Brittin announced the first round of cuts, and it’s brutal – especially for BBC Radio 4. In a bid to close a £500m funding gap, the BBC is slashing 550 jobs, axing programmes across TV (Sunday’s edition of Breakfast) and radio (The World Tonight, Midnight News,Money Box Live, Crossing Continents), shortening programmes (5Live Weekend Breakfast), merging production teams (News Streaming andNews at Ten and Six) and operating some shows, like the Today programme, with fewer presenters (they will not replace Amol Rajan, instead having a roster of four presenters with only one hosting the Saturday edition). This is only the first phase – Brittin has warned that further announcements are to come. These should save around £25m, but they need to save £51m by next April.
