BBC cuts jobs / Charter renewal

I would have sport as one of my early cuts. It's expensive, and there's plenty of commercial providers who not only can do provide the coverage to a similar (or better) standard, but are fighting to get those rights, massively inflating the costs. The BBC are no longer the home of any sport, those they have are a selection of high profile events, rather than a commitment to high quality coverage.

If any sport still values the FTA benefits that the BBC bring, that should be at their expense, not the licence fee payers.

If thats the case then F1 will be disappearing away from the BBC.

F1 can get lost but sport still needs FTA coverage and ITV, C4 and C5 can't do that alone. The benefits are way beyond some decent TV for a few hours - it can boost the nations economy for key events and inspire children (and adults) to have a fitter and healthier lifestyle, saving the NHS money in the future. Or it would at least if George Osborne hadn't raided the school sports budget.

A Guardian article (http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/06/osborne-slashes-bbc-budget-pay-over-75s-tv-licences) answers part of that question

F1 will probably end up being a Sky exclusive, with perhaps their own highlights programme on Pick TV to compensate, and the odd qualifying session as an incentive.

BBC will probably give up things like their secondary rights to the Australian Open finals, and athletics highlights where Eurosport have the live coverage, allowing Discovery/Eurosport to sell them on or show them FTA themselves (perhaps we'll see an evolution of Quest into something more like ITV4 as a result.

Then that should be up to the owners of those sports to offer their rights at a discounted price to that of the commercial broadcasters, or conduct their rights auctions as a beauty contest rather than a all-out cash grab. It's their own fault that the FTA broadcasters can only just afford to show their events, and if they don't value the (very real) benefits that free, widespread coverage can get them, then the BBC shouldn't be filling their pockets with our cash.

Under the current rights regimes, I would rather see the Open leave the BBC than BBC Four, or the Six Nations leave than Radio Three. It would be no great loss to the BBC if Match of the Day went, along with the FIFA World Cup. ITV would be glad to have them both exclusively, and would do just as good a job as the BBC do.

Overstating the case massively. There's more sport on TV now than ever before and yet child obesity is rising.


The point is that if the BBC stop indulging sports rights holders by putting up large amounts of cash so as to 'compete', then the sports rights holders will actually have to decide what is more important to them. Ultimately, the BBC is not the only organisation capable of providing sports output on an FTA basis. Channel 4 have done an excellent job both with the Paralympics and with the cricket. Although ITV Sport is a little bare right now, it was they who were first to provide full F1 coverage.

Some ideas:

- Merge BBC Hull and BBC Leeds and provide a Hull opt-out from Leeds. The Hull region was heavily invested in around 2003/4 to justify 'project Hull', a £24m development which was originally supposed to house a local television service, in partnership with telecoms provider Kingston Communications. This service, known as 'KIT' was subsequently retired in 2006 and Queen's Gardens, the BBC's Hull headquarters (HQ), was left with office space and a very expensive lease.

The Hull region itself is catering for very differing demographics between East Yorkshire/Hull and Northern Lincolnshire. As the region's HQ is based in Hull, viewers in Lincolnshire could argue the news is Hull-centric, and viewers would no doubt rather receive news in their own region. Many people feel that the Look North EY&NL programme struggles for news as the region is so small, and often cannot access the news that is local to them from surrounding areas such as York and Scarborough, as these areas are served by different regions.

Another option to consider could be the BBC moving into a small industrial unit/office near to the Humber bridge (there are some newly built). This would provide a radio studio and TV opt location and be handy for the satellite trucks - at a much lower price than the present city centre lease. The money saved from duplication of non-broadcast staff and comfy offices would give a good cost saving and enable a wide range of stories on-screen.

- Merge the BBC News Channel and BBC Four. The BBC News Channel and BBC Four are seen as informative channels, although generally speaking the former is strictly news and the latter for documentaries. The merger of both channels could be carried out in such a way, so that from early morning to the evening, the channel shows BBC News coverage, and after 7 pm the channel switches over to become BBC Four. Alternatively, the channel could become a mixture of BBC Four and BBC News type programming, but take on a completely new brand, such as ‘BBC News, Information and Documentaries’. I also imagine that this merger would free up resources for BBC News operations, as instead of the department concentrating on providing a rolling news service, it would allow them to focus on their flagship bulletins, much as was the case pre-1998. Likewise the merger would bring substantial savings in regard of transmission and production costs. Alternatively there is the added option of simply closing BBC Four, a la BBC Three and moving its programmes to BBC One and Two.

- Merge the CBBC Channel and CBeebies. CBeebies could potentially feature as a strand within the Children’s BBC channel, rather than as two separate channels. This merger would also provide substantial savings, as only one operation would be required to run the channels and not two separate ones, and yet the CBeebies branding would be preserved.

News Channel should stay, but I'm sure massive efficiencies could be found.

No.

Sounds like a solution in search of a problem.

I think the News Channel should stay, but we'll probably see more simulcasting with BBC1 and BBC2 (Daily Politics, Newsnight, Andrew Marr etc) and more integration with BBC World News.

I'm not normally one to moan about the BBC being bloated etc, but it does seem to have an extraordinary number of political reporters and editors.

They can't axe 1-2 of the nighttime channels and keep all four during the day. CBeebies and CBBC could easily work as one, using the iPlayer argument they've used with BBC3, but more beneficial would be to use the BBC2 daytime schedule. I'd have CBeebies on BBC2 from 6am to 6pm and CBBC timesharing with BBC4 instead. When BBC2 needs it's daytime hours CBeebies will run 6am to 12noon and CBBC from 12noon-7pm.

I guess the BBC News Channel could run along the same lines as 5 Live and take on some sport content and be rebranded as "BBC Live". That wouldn't be ideal at all though and would cause bigger problems than Victoria Derbyshire!

Realistic cuts could see one shift taken from the Radio 1, 1Xtra, Radio 2 and 6Music schedules by extending shifts. I remember when Chris Moyles breakfast slot was extended it was pointed out all DJs are contracted to do up to 4 hours a day, so Radio 1 could for example move the breakfast show from 7-10.30am, then cut one of the afternoon shows (with one airing 2-5.45pm) and start the evening show at 6pm instead of 7pm.

The trouble is though whatever the BBC do it will never be good enough for the current self serving gits in government. These cuts aren't designed to make the BBC more efficient and safeguard it for the future - they are absolutely designed to destroy significant elements of the corporation.