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The BBC has announced plans to eliminate 155 jobs from across its news operations as part of a wider £700mn cost-cutting strategy.
The move will save £24mn, according to an internal memo sent to staff at the UK national broadcaster on Tuesday and seen by the Financial Times, or 4 per cent of the budget of the newsroom.
The BBC has increasingly struggled to cover the costs of its wide range of services, having lost close to one-third of its income over the past decade.
The previous Conservative government capped funding for the two years to 2024 and then awarded the lowest level of licence fee increase up to 2027. BBC executives will enter into talks with the Labour government about the terms of its next licence, which starts in 2027.
The corporation’s news operation will shed 185 roles in total but will open 55 new positions — a net reduction of 130 posts, or about 3 per cent of staff in the newsroom. Its media operations division is also proposing to close the equivalent of 25 posts related to the news division, with a further 25 unrelated jobs being cut.
The cost cuts form part of a wider plan set out by the BBC in May 2022 to find £500mn in annual savings, with a further £200mn of extra cuts announced subsequently. This will lead to total cuts of more than 500 roles, comprising 1,200 post closures and the addition of 700 new positions.
The BBC said it would do “everything we can do to avoid compulsory redundancies”, including through its voluntary redundancy scheme.
This year, the BBC announced plans to close up to 115 posts in regional editorial and production teams, or about 3 per cent of the division’s staffing. The corporation has already cut jobs in its local news teams, as well as in individual programmes such as Newsnight.
All BBC divisions have been told to reduce content creation by one-fifth. The newsroom cuts announced on Tuesday include closing the bespoke Asian Network News service, axing the HARDtalk long-form interview programme and synchronising the production of news bulletins used on Radio 5 Live and Radio 2.
Domestic radio stations will also take World Service news summaries overnight rather than producing their own.
Stephen Sackur, presenter of HARDtalk, said on X: “This is sad news for me personally, but much more important, I think it’s depressing news for the BBC.”
The broadcaster is having to balance the rapid shift by much of its audience to digital platforms — which require different sorts of programmes and presenters — while meeting the demands of the often older users of its traditional linear channels.
The proposals do not include cuts to the World Service, which is subject to separate discussions with the government. On Monday, BBC director-general Tim Davie warned in a speech that cuts to the World Service risked helping Russia and China spread “unchallenged propaganda”.
