Bye Bye Beeby

[Summanus]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/BBC...253983613.html

And there goes probably the best news network in the world, at least one I have experienced (though I was listening to RadioHolland on the drive home today)

[Banned]

Requires registration. Pirate it for us.

[Summanus]

Originally Posted by The Sydney Morning Herald

The BBC today announced plans to cut 3,780 jobs to save hundreds of millions of dollars, as the world's biggest public broadcaster undergoes a major shake-up.

The BBC said today it would slash 2,050 posts after 1,730 job losses confirmed earlier this month, making a total of 3,780 positions or one in seven jobs.

The cuts would bring cost savings of $860 million a year to reinvest in programs -- $85 million more than first targetted by the BBC in December.

Among the redundancies announced today would be 420 posts in news, 66 in sport, 150 in drama, entertainment and children's programs, 735 in the regions, 58 in new media and 424 in factual and learning.

"This is all money we plan to spend on programs and content, both to improve the services we deliver to audiences right now and to build strong BBC services in the future," Thompson told staff.

"We want all divisions to figure out ways of achieving these savings through genuine improvements rather than crude cuts.
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"We are going through the toughest period any of us can remember. It's a difficult and painful process but necessary," he added.

The broadcaster said the elimination of 3,780 jobs amounts to 19 per cent of the workforce in Britain, or nearly 14 per cent of the corporation's staff worldwide.

The BBC -- which draws most of its annual revenue, $6.8 billion, from a yearly licence fee of $295 levied on all British homes with a television set -- now has about 27,000 employees worldwide.

Planned changes will mean the news departments will need to do some things differently and in many areas will have less money to spend, said an internal memo.

Despite the cuts, around $2.4 million will be spent next year on creating an investigations unit in Manchester, north-west England, and a new fund to enhance the coverage of major stories.

Journalists who will be leaving because of the cuts were told they had done nothing wrong.

"All of you have contributed to our success over the years. However, in a rapidly moving media industry, change is inevitable, though none of us underestimate how painful it can be," said the memo.

Union leaders will meet later this week to decide how to respond to the cuts but have already warned they will ballot staff for industrial action if there are any compulsory redundancies.

Luke Crawley, an official with the broadcasting workers' union Bectu, was shocked by the announcement.

"This is the worst day in the BBC's history," he said. "I can't see how the BBC will deliver all Thompson's promises about new services after ditching so many staff, and life for those who survive is going to be miserable.

"We're not against an efficient, productive BBC, but many of Thompson's proposals are going to make it worse, not better, and that's what we'll be fighting against."

Bectu said the policy of opposing compulsory redundancies and privatisation was likely to be reaffirmed at the meeting of union leaders and warned that the BBC could face "severe industrial unrest" later in the year.

[Banned]

[Yahwe]

Auntie has been employing far too many people for far too long.

I see nothing in the anouncement of job cuts to indicate that bbc news will lose any content or fail in its duties.

[meglamaniac]

Hurrah!
Hopefully this marks the end of shit programs like garden/house/lifestyle makeovers on the BBC and a return to a more current affairs, documentary and debate based programming which is where they should be in the first place.

[Phalon]

I wouldn't be surprised if it were the current affairs, documentary and debate based programming that gets the proverbial boot.

It is the BBC afterall.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by meglamaniac

Hurrah!
Hopefully this marks the end of shit programs like garden/house/lifestyle makeovers on the BBC and a return to a more current affairs, documentary and debate based programming which is where they should be in the first place.

Are you aware that it is the garden/house/lifestyle programs that are the "cheap" option?

[meglamaniac]

I know but the reasoning behind the jobcuts is to strip away areas that are not strictly part of BBC's mandate. So unless parliament rewrites it, we're not going to be seeing an increase of that sort of thing.

[Deepflow]

down with this sort of this thing

[Vaio]

What Yahwe said, although Sky TV has a far higher Does F'K all apart from download pr0n to Hard Working ratio

~Vaio~

[Deffeh]

Does it not seem to occur to anyone else, that unpopular as it is to do, that the BBC should perhaps consider showing more repeats - if not on beeb one and two, on bbc 3 and 4?

A program like Waking the Dead for example, must cost a shitload to make, throwing all this money at a series which will only get one viewing seems like folly to me. Theres plenty of people who didnt watch it first time, or would watch it again because they enjoyed it.


Of course, this is all just drivel. The only real problem here is people's inability to amuse themselves for more than half an hour a day without turning on the idiot box and then complaining when a program isnt entirely tailored for them and on at that instant.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Personally, I think the main problem with BBC's 3 and 4 is that the government tells them to put certain kinds of programming on them and then criticises the BBC for having that kind of programming on BBC's 3 and 4.