BBC News Cutbacks

These will be announced soon ... I think that it's worthy of a thread on it's own ....

I'll start with this ...

BBC One O'Clock News faces the axe

More than one in five BBC News journalists are at risk of losing their jobs, the National Union of Journalists said this afternoon, with the flagship One O'Clock News bulletin under threat in swingeing cuts due to be announced next week.

Jeremy Dear, the NUJ general secretary, said he believed that "600 to 700 jobs are at risk" out of a total of 3,000 - a level of cuts that if proposed formally will almost certainly lead to strikes at the corporation in the run-up to Christmas.

Other union sources also said that they had heard credible reports that the One O’Clock News would go, with the bulletin replaced by a half an hour feed taken from the BBC News 24 channel.

A decision by Mark Thompson, the Director-General, to take the axe to BBC News, including the possible elimination of a separate one o'clock programme, is likely to generate political concern.

from (and more) ...

That One o'clock News story is old new isn't it? Anyway, they've gone the other way since (axing News 24 and simulcasting the 1pm news).


The way the BBC is moaning anyone would think they'd actually had their licence fee cut - they seem to forget it'll still go up each year, just not as much as they want. And though there may be new expenses to meet, the rumoured huge volume of cuts seems pointless - though of course this week the BBC are leaking numbers of 2000-3000 so that the cuts of say 1000-2000 next week don't seem so bad.


On the whole though BBC News is a massively oversized operation and though it's fair to say you can't expect one person to be covering the story for all television and radio networks at the same time, there is still alot of duplication.



I don't think though axing BBC1 bulletins in favour of News 24 simulcasts would in reality save much money - much more beneficial would be to have greater links between BBC World and BBC News 24.



Elsewhere though it may not save massive amounts of money, it be a nice act of revenge for the BBC to impose severe cutbacks on BBC Parliament. On Freeview at least it can be a waste of space at weekends and during recess when there are often more interactive services than the BBC has space for on Freeview - and that extra stream would be more useful to the viewer than delayed coverage of some House of Lords discussion the Lords couldn't even be bothered turning up for!

News 24 and BBC World joining forces would definitely not work. Their agendas are completely different. People around the world would not be interested in the bulk of the domestic UK news, and in any case, everything would have to be simplified (like referring to Gordon Brown as "the British Prime Minister" or Alistair Darling as "the British Finance Minister"). Let's face it, many British people are not even interested in every domestic story covered on News 24, so you can't expect a person in Sydney to be. On the other hand, some people in Britain couldn't care less what is happening in far-flung Siberia.

It works overnight because there's hardly anyone watching in Britain so they can cater for BBC World properly without too much trouble. However, you couldn't have shared output during peak hours, as people would switch off. It just wouldn't work.

Don't think for a minute I'm suggesting merging them completely - but there are certainly more options for them to join up at points during the day - for example, at 7pm when BBC Four screen World News Today while N24 screen News 24 Tonight and perhaps for an hour at some point during the day.


I wonder if there might be any suggestion from the BBC to reduce the number of regional bulletins in an effort to save cash?

BBC World and BBC News 24 merging is unlikely - the "arms length" requirement for licence-fee payers who fund News 24 to not fund the commercially funded BBC World operation would make this very difficult.

My suggestion for cutting spendings would be as follows.

Lose the 'Breakfast' simulcast as the programme fits BBC1 more than News 24. Replace it with a continuation of the BBC World simulcast until 8am, then begin the News 24 schedule here.

The News 24 schedule ends at 10pm, with a simulcast of the Ten O'Clock News, followed by an airing of "World Business Report", which would have originally aired at 9.30pm UK on BBC World. Then the BBC World simulcast would begin with the 11pm UK airing of World News America.

If further cuts are needed, add airings of Talking Movies, Click and other feature programmes in the eveniing on the half hour. Not ideal, but might work.

You use this word a lot. What does it mean? I am familiar with the English phrase a lot (two words).

If I had a pound for every time you'd suggested this I would be a very rich man.

It is an important principle that the proceedings of both houses of parliament are covered in full by BBC Parliament. You simply can't start picking and choosing.

Axing jobs and bulletins is not the way to go. As has been said there isn't even a budget cut, just a reduced increase, to suggest such a financial situation warrants these changes is barmy.

Really, the Beeb should be looking into expenditure. How many needless helicopter shots (£1,000 per hour) are used to illustrate stories, how many pointless OBs are there to irrelevant locations, how many big name correspondants and presenters are flown out to locations which have regional correspondents, how much money is thrown around by crews with extortionate shooting budgets? If they sorted their house out in these areas they could continue to provide the high quality service the public demand.

Valid points, however in my experience many more ex pats and holiday makers would watch BBC World if it was 'News 24'. I suspect they'd actually get just as many, if not more viewers overall doing that, than the present arrangement. Of course providing N24 in place of BBCW is a political no no for many reasons.

I think the point about regional correspondents is noticeable when there is a big story. From one location there will often be...
- 1 News 24 correspondent (sometimes 1 daytime and 1 evening/night)
- 1 (BBC One) National News correspondent (usually different to News 24)
- At least one regional correspondent, and often if major at least one regional presenters.
...this doesn't take into account what Newsnight does if they also give coverage of the event. Taking a wild guess I wonder if the reason for the separate presenters is due to something in the contracts.

Does the BBC have a similar set up to Sky where (from memory) reports/footage are uploaded to a server? Presumably part of its advantage is easy access by any of the Sky News outputs. A similar set up might improve efficiency between regional and national news, provided regional newsrooms had access to it, though it has an initial (set up) cost.

The big diffrence is that Sky news is all in one building, but BBC News is in about 20 up and down the country.The BBC does already share footage, though it won't help much with live reports.

It is perfectly possible to have one reporter and then schedule the lives correctly and that is what they do - they could pop up on BBC1, then World then a regional programme.

You often need more than one reporter and crew at a major news story, either taking it in turns or one out filming reports while the other does lives

That's making it worse. As it stands, there are two operations until 0830 - Breakfast and BBC World. At 0830, the News 24 operation starts up. Under your proposal, the Breakfast and BBC World operations continue but News 24 starts half an hour earlier. That's actually adding expenditure, not cutting it back!



Actually, WBR now only airs at 2215 on BBC World.