BBC cuts jobs / Charter renewal

This makes me pretty angry - the Tories truly are scum. Osborne going on this morning about people saying last time they froze the fee that Radio 4 or BBC2 would have to go and saying it didn't happen, so they can take more cuts. Heck, he probably views it as a challenge to cut until it no longer exists.

Saw today that £650m is the entire BBC Radio budget.

The sad thing is the BBC will have to take on unrealistic commitments and a price they can't afford just to secure the licence fee. In an ideal world they'd get the cash then tell the government if they think the licence fee payer is funding their international propaganda then think again and pull the plug on World Service.

I think the BBC is either going to deal with this badly (cutting whole areas) or well (scaling back areas). I have a few reasonable ideas on how the BBC could attempt to save money
- Reorganise Regional News: BBC Regions are arbitrary and often have boundaries which are illogical at best, some regions are also too small to have a meaningful half an hour bulletin. IMO the BBC would be better reorganising English Regions to follow the Government Administrative Regions and merging Local Radio Stations - why does nearly every English County get one when the Scotland and Wales only get National Radio Stations?
- Merge smaller channels: BBC Four carries a lot of programming that would have previously been carried on BBC Two and many of its successful programmes have been moved to BBC Two (QI, Thick of It, Charlie Brooker, Only Connect) - why not just merge BBC Four with BBC Two, some of its documentaries can be carried during the day instead of repeats of Bargain Hunt. Also on Radio the 3 'extra' stations add little, with Radio 4 Extra predominantly carrying repeats.
- Amazon Prime style BBC iPlayer : Not saying abolish free catchup, but the BBC's back catalogue is amazing, vast and people would pay to see it. It cuts on DVD costs and would be an easy revenue raiser - the BBC for instance won't put TMWRNJ on DVD for fear of it making no money but online they don't have that worry.
- Cut back the Sports portfolio: The BBC obviously carries some events such as the Olympics extremely well (although they may lose it ) but some sporting events they are just wasting money and don't need to do it. For some FTA events they could possibly do deals with ITV/C4 to prevent bidding wars.
- Do more international co-productions: This enables the BBC to produce programmes at both a lower cost and without having to pay for broadcasting rights. It could also work in some areas of Current Affairs - sharing resources with RTE for Ireland/Northern Ireland events, ABC for Australia etc.

However, it is more likely that the BBC will continue to make stupid investment decisions like building two new buildings at the cost of over £2bn when it would cost 10% of the price to upgrade the iconic current building and then lease back three studios of which one is pointlessly small for the kind of productions that need it or replacing a block of rolling news coverage and repeats with an expensive pointless human interest programme with an inflexible running order, but nevertheless some 'beautiful' films, which use every video filter known to man or continuing to allow expenses claims for stars and managers on six figure salaries or creating expensive, short run gameshows which are clearly created from the title and working their way back so ultimately are poorly thought out and don't get recommissioned or not standing their ground when being ideologically attacked by a government that despises you for the fact that the BBC represents the idea that you don't need to be run for profit to succeed or the theory that every prime time programme has to have a big name star to succeed.

And this is while the valuable World Service is being stripped back, the connection with crucial audiences (BAME and under 30s) is being cut, there is a London based studio shortage and the BBC is having to take crap from every corner (The Daily Mail's bias claims, The Guardian's counter bias claims (with Cardiff University study), The Conservatives ideological hatred, The SNP seeing it as anti-Scottish, Plaid Cymru seeing it as not delivering enough for Wales, the DUP seeing it as ignoring Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin saying it is biased to the Union, the TUV calling it biased to Republicans, UKIP seeing a pro-Europe bias, the Greens annoyed at them giving climate sceptics airtime, the NHA complaining it is uncritical in the privatisation of the NHS, Mebyon Kernow annoyed that there isn't BBC One Cornwall, George Galloway compaining he isn't allowed to represent Respect on every political programme, the racist BNP annoyed Andrew Neil has called them racist, the Lib Dems complaining they are treated as an irrelevance and Labour copying whatever the Tories think without that second kick in the groin.)

Sorry for the essay, but if the BBC is serious about saving its sorry arse then it better stand up for itself, grow some and stop wasting money. And this is from someone who usually has unwavering support for the BBC,

The point of all this is that the BBC pisses away so much money. Why do we need so many local radio stations? Why are there so many pointless "extra" radio stations? What purpose does BBC Alba serve? Do we need Radio 1 and Radio 2 when there are commercial equivalents that are just as good?

Spend spend spend. The BBC has become too big. I'd never say get rid of it, but it needs to be reined in significantly - it can't be run as if it's been handed a blank cheque.

There are no commercial equivalents to Radios 1 and 2. Have you ever listened to Capital or Heart FM> And commercial music stations that initially launched as specialist services like Choice FM (now Capital Xtra), Kiss 100 and XFM (the latter rumoured to be relaunched in September) have all gravitated towards the centre in recent years.

The BBC extra stations are run on a shoestring and are highly valued by audiences. See this Esquire profile of BBC 6Music:

http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/music/8523/how-6-music-defined-the-music-we-listen-to-today/

The point behind this is that the future funding of the BBC is being handled in a very shabby way with constant off the record briefings to the Tory press with various threats being made to the corporation without a proper public debate.

If the Conservatives really are set on reducing the BBC's income by another 20% (which will no doubt delight its friends in the press) then I predict a massive backlash.

As I said previously, freezing the licence fee makes no contribution to the public deficit. It is purely ideological.

The BBC English regional TV regions are not chosen arbitrarily, they are based on a combination of transmitter coverage and editorial consistency. There aren't huge numbers of main transmitters, so you don't have a huge amount of granularity in deciding your regional boundaries. You can do a bit of re-arrangement (as happened with the BBC Oxford, BBC London and BBC South East split which was previously the single BBC London and South East region) and you could close the sub-regions (Cambridge, Oxford and Channel Islands) However BBC regional news is one of the BBC successes, with the 1830 regional news opt usually the most watched 30 minutes of TV News of the day. (It never gets reported as such as each show is BARB-reported separately)

If i remember, weren't the sub-opts set for closure a few years ago? It was only public backlash that stopped them seriously considering closing them down.

They could still reduce the sub-opts to two with Cambridge and Oxford merging for a sub-opt bulletin from the more modern Cambridge studio. Both could still keep ST/Look East as the sustaining filler. There were plans for Cambridge and Oxford to become a region itself.

My plan.

• Close BBC Three and BBC Four. Modify the remit of BBC Two to take this area on (as it did before, effectively.)

• Close 6Music and move its remit onto Radios 1 and 2.

• Regional networking of BBC Local Radio between Breakfast and Drive.

• Serious cut-down on role duplication in news. Global/Communicorp have one team where, say, Heart, Capital and Smooth co-exist in a given area. At the very least Radios 1 & 2 could follow this model, as could Radios 4 & 5 Live.

• Privatise Asian Network. There's been a couple of Asian stations bidding against commercial radio incumbents so there's definitely interested parties willing to pick it up.

Some good suggestions made there, particularly with regards to BBC Two.

With regards to local radio, how about merging it with one of the national stations such as 5 Live, giving it local opt outs for breakfast and drive as you say. So you'd have 5 Live London, 5 Live Bristol etc

Would the savings made by doing that actually be worth it? Other than saving presenter and producer salaries for the late morning and afternoon slots, you'd still need local news teams etc for the breakfast and drive bulletins. You'd still need the premises in the local areas if you want to maintain any local content at all. Plus as a lot of regional radio stations share journalists with TV and Online, getting rid of local radio staff will also massively affect regional TV and Online content operation in some areas.

We've gone off topic, but the only radio station I think should be closed is Radio 4 Extra, and make the radio archive (all networks) available online with a small fee for downloading. A lot of radio - I believe the entire of 5 Live's output since it began - is electronically archived already so it wouldn't take much to put a public front end on it. The closure of any other national station would spark an outcry like the proposed closure of 6 Music a few years ago.

Regional networking of local radio already happens in a lot of places but there are some areas where it could be increased. Why does Radio Cambridgeshire need to have a separate breakfast opt out for Peterborough? Why not rebroadcast some local radio music programmes nationally? Most stations have a local "introducing" show, why not simulcast them on rotation or repeat them overnight on a national network? Close down all MW frequencies including Five Live.

Close BBC3 and BBC4 if they're not going to be used properly. Between now and this time next week there are a total of just five programmes on BBC4 that aren't repeats. On BBC3 there are 9, and 8 of them are coverage of T in the Park music festival, which is also on the Red Button. A lot of BBC3 shows have already moved to BBC1 or BBC2.

I'd also get rid of the BBC1 and BBC2 "nations" - how much does it cost to separately rebroadcast what are mostly the same programmes? There's no reason why many of the programmes that are broadcast only in Scotland can't appeal to an English audience, for example. If we're to keep BBC 4, perhaps repeat some of the programmes from the nations there.

Scrap Victoria Derbyshire. I don't mind BBC News channel having some appointment to view programmes as long as they are able to continue with rolling coverage as and when they need to, but this particular programme is a waste of money. I worry that something like Saturday Kitchen will be replaced with Victoria Derbyshire's Best Bits before long.

Let's have a bit more variety including some archive programming in daytime instead of relying on repeats of Homes Under The Hammer, Bargain Hunt and Animal Park. Yes, you're never going to compete with ITV in daytime but that's no reason to make the schedules as bland as possible.

I think you need to keep BBC Local stations, rather than collapse them into 5 Live. Shut down the AM transmitters though except where they're particularly needed. Use DAB for split sport commentaries. Co-location using the approved areas model in the Commercial sector should also be looked at.

I'd also shut down the extra stations, especially 1Xtra. Again, Radio 1 proper can pick up that remit. At the moment there's too many services and content is being spread really thinly in places.

Definitely worth reviewing sports rights

This isn't about "evil Tory scum". It's about forcing the Corporation to start being more cost-conscious and business-like. The BBC is a haven of waste. It's a loved, uniquely British institution but it's also spunking money up the wall like a sailor on shore leave.