BBC Cuts

It's the only place putting money into locally based broadcast journalism. It's also invaluable during a natural disaster.

It's a shame that outside of the time's when it's truly essential, its relegated to phone in's about biscuits and knackered old Abba songs.

This is why I would merge it with Radio 5 Live. Local voices, local news, supported with a national spine as the home of hard news and local journalism.

Edit - made me laugh when I clicked send and saw London Lite had also mentioned the biscuit phone-ins! Great minds...

Merging 5Live with local radio is clearly a smart move. It enables 5Live to gain new audience on FM and enables the BBC locals to focus their attention on breakfast and drive. This model is used successfully in Canada & Sweden.

CBeebies should be untouched, it’s hugely popular and it serves its audience very well likewise CBBC.


I think perhaps the BBC could license the iPlayer software to other broadcasters, they’d make a fair bit of money doing that.

I think perhaps BBC Studios should be more like ITV Studios and buy indies from the UK and abroad.

Agreed. CBeebies is distinctive and is probably the most important of the two children's services. CBBC isn't what it was and if I am honest I am not sure that kids today would miss it too much. That's a shame though.

iPlayer is probably the best implementation of a catchup service in the world. There's definitely scope to licence it for use overseas. In the UK I would love to see iPlayer become a one-stop-shop for BBC/ITV/All4/My5/Local Channel content, get all the PSBs under one roof as a joint venture.

Perhaps they could save money by having CBBC come off air a couple of hours earlier and simulcast some youth orientated content commissioned to air on the iPlayer in the evenings instead.


Sadly suspect the same areas will be targeted for cuts as have already been hit - sport seems an easy target, as long as it isn't football. In theory both Premier League highlights and the FA Cup can be done (not as well) by the commercial market and although it would be a huge blow to the BBC's portfolio to lose either between them that would likely be half the savings required.

Even have to wonder now they've only a fraction of the coverage we've become accustomed too whether sacrificing the Olympics is a price worth paying.

I’m not sure if Channel 4 or ITV would be interested in a joint venture for catchup, Channel 5 might though.

My idea was to lease unused FM frequencies to smaller stations. It would be a source of money for the BBC, would put the frequencies to good use, and increase diversity in radio (i.e there would be more stations that are owned by someone other than either the BBC, Global, Bauer or the Wireless Group)

They'd have less control and less autonomy to exploit the platform commercially, so I get why they'd be apprehensive.

Conversely, with the current iPlayer being the most popular catchup service, I'm sure the other broadcasters would love to plug their programmes alongside Strictly, The Bodyguard, Poldark and EastEnders though.

All spectrum is 'owned' by the crown. You use it or you lose it.
If you don't want to broadcast on spectrum you have a licence for you hand back the licence and Ofcom decides if it can be licenced out to other parties.

Yes, it's measured in the quarterly RAJAR listening figures. It's below 5%.

Thanks. Axing it wouldn't cause huge issues then (or delivering them through Connected TV instead). That said considering the recent local rollout the costs can't be that significant.

I guess this is easy to do.



https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/over-75s-face-losing-free-tv-licences-in-bbc-cost-cutting-rg0m5grwj