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29th Jan 2020

BBC to axe 450 jobs as part of £80 million savings target

Dave Hanratty

BBC job cuts

“We need to reshape BBC News for the next five to 10 years in a way which saves substantial amounts of money.”

Approximately 450 jobs are set to be cut by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in a bid to meet its savings target of £80 million by 2022.

The affected positions concern BBC’s news division, with BBC Two’s Newsnight, BBC Radio 5 Live and the World Update programme on BBC’s World Service all expected to be hit by cutbacks.

“The BBC has to face up to the changing way audiences are using us,” said BBC News chief Fran Unsworth in a statement issued on Wednesday.

“We need to reshape BBC News for the next five to 10 years in a way which saves substantial amounts of money. We are spending too much of our resources on traditional linear broadcasting and not enough on digital,” Unsworth added.

Currently, the BBC employs roughly 6,000 people, a number that includes 1,700 outside the UK.

In 2016, it was announced that the BBC needed to save £800 million. To date, the corporation has successfully reduced that number by £40 million.

The corporation noted that its budget will be around £480 million per year following the cuts.

Victoria Derbyshire, whose show has been cut, was among those voicing opposition to Wednesday’s news, live-tweeting the announcement as it happened internally.

Derbyshire also responded to claims that her show’s audience was too small and limited to an older viewing audience, noting that she and her team achieved what was originally asked of them.

“We were NEVER asked to grow the linear TV audience,” Derbyshire said.

“Ever. We were asked to grow our digital audience – we did – our digi figures are huge (our successful digital figures appear to be an inconvenience to those making the decisions.

“Our remit when we set up: 1) Original journalism, 2) Reaching underserved audiences, 3) Growing the digital figures. We achieved all three.”

 

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Topics:

BBC,World News