BBC director-general Tony Hall has announced the corporation is to shed 1,000 more posts as part of a £50 million savings programme.
Technology teams across Digital, Engineering and Worldwide are to be merged and the number of management layers reduced to seven from the present ten. Management roles will be reduced across the BBC with the prospect of job losses for a number of senior managers.
Further details are expected later in the summer.
“A simpler, leaner, BBC is the right thing to do and it can also help us meet the financial challenges we face,” Lord Hall said. “We’ve already significantly cut the costs of running the BBC, but in times of very tough choices we need to focus on what really matters – delivering outstanding programmes and content for all our audiences.”
The BBC is already on course to deliver £1.5 billion savings by 2017 following the seven-year freeze on the licence fee. But the move of some viewers to online viewing alone – live TV requires the payment of the licence fee whereas on demand does not – means there has been an unexpected revenue reduction.
According to the BBC, this provides further evidence that the regulations regarding payment of the licence fee need to be modernised.
A new independent study by PwC being published today ranks the BBC among the most efficient organisations in the public and regulated private sectors.
Overhead costs are approximately 8 per cent of total costs and will fall to 7 per cent – well below both the public sector average of 11.2 per cent and the regulated industry average of 8.8 per cent.
