The BBC have announced a series of cuts, with around 2,000 BBC staff losing their jobs by 2017 and slashes to services generating savings of around £670 million per year by 2017.
Following a decision to freeze the licence fee for six years, the BBC have announced a raft of cuts in order to make savings of around 20%. Cuts announced include the phased closure of the BBC West London operations and a shift of spend and activity to Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and the North of England.
Other cuts at the broadcaster include a 15% reduction in the BBCs sports right budget, a 25% reduction in the budget for bbc.co.uk, a reduction in the acquired film and series budget on BBC television and reduction in entertainment programmes which have lower impact than the big events on BBC One, as well as on entertainment on BBC Two. BBC 3 and BBC 4 will change focus to play a more supporting role to the two main channels.
The BBC will continue to ensure extra broadcasting-related activities for new local television services and will aim to share more content from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales across the UK, with an expected 17% target for the network television programmes to be produced across these regions before 2016. The BBC has said that a strong emphasis on overhead savings will limit scope reductions to services in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland to 5% and by 2016, the proportion of the license fee spent in these areas will be higher than it is today.
There will be a phased reduction of broadcast Red Button services down to one stream on every platform after the Olympics, the BBC HD channel will be closed and replaced with a single version of BBC Two in high definition and all new general daytime programs will be shifted to BBC One, with BBC Two airing more international affairs programs and sports. BBC News and the World Service are being merged into One BBC News.
Senior positions at the broadcaster are also being streamlined and will be reduced to around 1% of staff.
Lord Patten, Chairman of the BBC Trust, said "The BBC is far from perfect, but it is a great institution and, at its best, a great broadcaster. We have a tough and challenging new licence fee settlement, but it should still be possible to run an outstanding broadcaster on £3.5bn a year.
