"The BBC News and BBC World channels are expected to merge in an overhaul of services planned for the spring. Staff at the corporation believe that Lord Hall, the director-general, will sanction the merger as he tries to find £550 million in annual savings by 2020/2021. BBC Four is likely to survive despite speculation it might be closed. The BBC declined to comment."
"The BBC News and BBC World channels are expected to merge in an overhaul of services planned for the spring. Staff at the corporation believe that Lord Hall, the director-general, will sanction the merger as he tries to find £550 million in annual savings by 2020/2021. BBC Four is likely to survive despite speculation it might be closed. The BBC declined to comment."
At this point it's probably worth noting who The Times' proprietor is.
That said the News Channel in recent years has been showing more of World's programming (e.g. Business Live, Outside Source), so it possible that it could effectively merge but have some UK opt-out programming and separate national (BBC One) bulletins.
If the NC and World merge, it will be a bureaucratic nightmare on who owns what, which bulletins and staff receive licence fee funding and which pre-recorded shows will the domestic side pay for.
Currently the NC pays out of their budget for the back half hour shows to the commercial arm that operates BBC World News, such as Click, Our World, Talking Business and Reporters.
Whatever happens, I still expect Victoria Derbyshire to stay on the merged channel as a UK opt-out, along with network bulletins, PMQ's (possibly a simulcast of Daily Politics), major UK breaking news and Breakfast.
Right now, there is still somewhat of a delineation between the commercially funded part of the BBC, and the licence fee funded part, but to be honest, that delineation is little more than lines of text and numbers. Channels like BBC World News may be funded by commercials, but the programming is mainly, if not exclusively, paid for the licence fee. The news gathering operation is paid for by the Licence Fee, the presenters and reporters are paid by the licence fee, so just what does the commercial revenue of BBC World News actually pay for?
This move would actually be little more than another move towards back door privatisation of the BBC, but it has to be done. You can't delineate between commercial revenues and licence fee revenues any more, it just isn't practical. And to be honest, I think what'll happen is that we'll see World News back half hours get added(mostly) to the BBC News Channel. It won't be 24 hour news anymore, it'll be UK News on the hour, from 11am to 8pm, with an additional bulletin at 10pm, and the simulcasts from 6am to 11am, as well as 9pm and overnight.
That's probably what we'll see. Heck I wouldn't be surprised to see the Breakfast simulcast replaced with WORLD NEWS, after all, why simulcast Breakfast when you can watch it on BBC1, and the 10pm simulcast could go the same way, replaced with World News America. I've never understood why they bother with simulcasts of BBC1 bulletins, after all, it's not like you can't watch them elsewhere.
The WN operation is a bit more than "lines and numbers", there are staff who are funded either by the NC's budget, the WN budget which is funded by commercials and programmes indirectly funding WN programmes, i.e. Click which is technically a NC acquisition.
With shared resources programmes, you'll find a mix of staff who are funded by either the licence fee or BBC Global News Ltd. This is hugely important for freelancers who invoice either the corporation or the commercial company.
If you take Business Live, which is a shared programme, it's likely that Ben Thompson is being paid from licence fee revenue and Sally Bundock by BBC GNL despite working together at the Business Unit. It gets a bit more complex if Victoria Fritz covers a WN Biz Live only shift, where it's likely the licence fee side of BBC News will invoice BBC GNL for her services.
However it does happen that licence fee employees can be seconded to BBC GNL or vice versa while still being paid by their original employer. Even those I have spoken to at the BBC are as confused!
In previous discussions, some have commented the savings would be, from how I read them, insignificant. Also, I saw somewhere (here maybe?) that there was no plan to shut the news channel after a review was carried out.
In previous discussions, some have commented the savings would be, from how I read them, insignificant. Also, I saw somewhere (here maybe?) that there was no plan to shut the news channel after a review was carried out.
The savings would be fairly minimal as most of newsgathering and studio costs would have to be maintained for BBC National News anyway. It's probably just another rumour going around - the best way to think of the BBC cuts is like a cabinet reshuffle. A lot of the coverage is pure speculation with little substance and at the end of the day some services will be demoted (like BBC Three), most will stay the same and and the odd few will be promoted. Let's not forget that only weeks ago we were being told the News Channel would be axed, something we now know will not happen.
There would be some savings to be made, at least on the margins. You would need fewer presenters, fewer production journalists, and with a One/Six/Ten only studio you could probably reduce and/or share some crew. You could probably reduce the reporter pool size a bit if you only had to worry about packaging and network lives and didn't have to worry about live output on the News Channel.
However - if you needed to switch from a News Channel linear TV operation to a boosted online presence, you would need people to write, produce and manage the increased 'digital' output - so I suspect the savings are not massive...
The WN operation is a bit more than "lines and numbers", there are staff who are funded either by the NC's budget, the WN budget which is funded by commercials and programmes indirectly funding WN programmes, i.e. Click which is technically a NC acquisition.
With shared resources programmes, you'll find a mix of staff who are funded by either the licence fee or BBC Global News Ltd. This is hugely important for freelancers who invoice either the corporation or the commercial company.
If you take Business Live, which is a shared programme, it's likely that Ben Thompson is being paid from licence fee revenue and Sally Bundock by BBC GNL despite working together at the Business Unit. It gets a bit more complex if Victoria Fritz covers a WN Biz Live only shift, where it's likely the licence fee side of BBC News will invoice BBC GNL for her services.
However it does happen that licence fee employees can be seconded to BBC GNL or vice versa while still being paid by their original employer. Even those I have spoken to at the BBC are as confused!
Streamlining that structure sounds eminently sensible - sounds like it does a good job of keeping the beancounters in work moving money between the two divisions.