I’m unlikely to be invited to dinner at BBC Director General Matt Brittin’s any time soon but judging by the cuts he has announced, it would be salami slices all round for starters. The £500 million savings plan for the corporation, unveiled earlier this month, includes the axing of Radio 4’s The World Tonight and, inexplicably, the station’s Midnight News. Budget-wise, this is like dropping a pint of semi-skimmed from the monthly food shop for a family of six. One prominent BBC lifer is so baffled and distressed by the binning of the flagship bulletin that they have written to King Charles in protest. Credit to Matt for trying, though: things couldn’t carry on the way they were.
The axe (or rather, kitchen knife), however, has fallen in the wrong place. So here are my top six suggestions for saving money at the BBC where it wouldn’t hurt nearly as much. (Bona fides disclosure: I have worked for the corporation, on and off, over five different decades.)
Firstly, while I feel bad advocating that some highly paid news presenters should be dispensed with – some are lifelong friends – the inconvenient truth is that times have changed. We no longer need to pay people huge sums to bring us tablets of stone, Moses-style, from the mountain top. There was an argument for news anchors in the mould of Trevor McDonald in the 1980s when the BBC’s main news regularly attracted 11 million viewers. But that figure is now down approximately 70 per cent, including on catch up. Most of us now get our news online and don’t need autocue readers to help us.
