Downsizing the world's top global news-gathering organization

[marmar]

from Independent UK:




BBC details World Service job losses

By Alan Jones, PA
Wednesday, 26 January 2011


The BBC today confirmed plans to axe 650 jobs under huge cost savings, saying it was a "painful day" for its global news service.

Around 480 of the jobs will go over the next year and the savings will amount to £46 million a year by 2014.

The BBC made it clear the cuts were as a result of changes to the funding of the World Service, which will be paid for by the licence fee from 2014 rather than by the Government.

The World Service is to close five of its language services - Albanian, Macedonian, Portuguese for Africa and Serbian, as well as the English for the Caribbean regional service, which will reduce the world service's 180 million global audience by 30 million.

BBC Global News Director Peter Horrocks gave the grim news to staff and said they were "clearly very sad". ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/bbc-details-world-service-job-losses-2194667.html

[SoCalDem]

1. Apparently there is no money to be made from marketing the truth

:(

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. There's no money to be made from the BBC

That's the point; it's not a commercial operation. The UK Foreign Office used to pay the running costs of the BBC World Service, regarding it as a form of diplomacy - make the UK look like an honest source of information, and it improves the country's standing in the world. But the new Tory government decided that wasn't worth it, so told the BBC it must fund the World Service out of the TV licence fee (£145.50 per household, with discounts or free for older people). Since the licence payers get no personal use of most of the World Service (the foreign language services can only be picked up by short wave), you can expect the less used languages to continue dropping out from now, and also regional services. There's pressure on the BBC to cut costs wherever it can (it's cutting parts of its website, for instance), and it's hard to justify a flat tax on Britons for something they never hear.

An alternative would be for the World Service to start running adverts, I suppose. But marketing to rare languages, or in multi-country regions with fragmented markets, may not be easy. You'd need sales staff in the countries concerned. You can do it with broadcasts to large markets (eg the USA, or India, perhaps), but I can't see it working with Albania.

[SoCalDem]

3. Their parliament sets the budget for them, so maybe the conservatives they

have in there now, are unwilling to fund them..money for operations always comes from somewhere. Truth is not something valued by conservatives..so less of it is always better:(