Almost 400 posts to go at the World Service
The NUJ says the government must directly fund the service, as it did prior to 2011.
The BBC has announced it is to cut 382 posts at the World Service, as part of £500m of annual savings caused by the freezing of the licence fee, soaring costs, inflation and to fund its move to a digital-first service.
Paul Siegert, the NUJ’s national broadcasting organiser, said:
“Today’s announcement is as a direct result of the government failing to fund the BBC properly. Let’s be clear, many of these services should be funded directly by the Foreign Office and not the BBC, as they were prior to 2011. There are direct benefits for the UK government through soft power and the influence it gets around the globe via the BBC World Service. The government needs to accept this and find the money to help fund the service before it’s too late.
“We are also concerned that some of the language services currently based in London are closing and the offices moving to Asia. This will lead to dozens of unnecessary job losses because many of the journalists will not be able to relocate due to human rights issues in the countries they are relocating to. The BBC needs to reassure us they are committed to redeploying these journalists and that there will be no compulsory redundancies.”
The cuts will make savings of £28.5m. Seven Asian-language services, Chinese, Gujarati, Igbo, Indonesian, Pidgin, Urdu, and Yoruba will become digital-only, meaning that almost half of the 41 foreign-language services will be digital-only. Some TV and radio programmes will stop, including BBC Arabic radio and BBC Persian radio.
The announcement said the World Service will continue to operate in all the languages and countries where it is currently present, and no language services will close. It will continue to serve audiences “during moments of jeopardy” and will ensure audiences in countries such as Russia, Ukraine and Afghanistan have access to vital news services, using appropriate broadcast and distribution platforms.
World Service English will continue to operate as 24-hour broadcast radio, available around the world. The World Service currently reaches 148m people in an average week.
The BBC said changes to the World Service include:
- Reducing the volume of syndicated TV and radio content on partners’ platforms in some territories. A focus on impact, rather than reach, means we need more audiences to come to our platforms. This is where audiences most closely associate with the BBC and where we can build long-term engagement.
- Creating a new centralised digital-first commissioning and newsgathering content production hub to create content for distribution across all non-English language services.
- Moving some production out of London: the Thai service from London to Bangkok; the Vietnamese team in London is also to relocate to Bangkok; the Korean service to Seoul; the Bangla service to Dhaka and the Focus on Africa TV bulletin to broadcast from Nairobi.
- Bringing together long-form content activity such as investigations and documentaries made by Africa Eye, the Investigations Unit and BBC Arabic documentaries to ensure a more collaborative approach across our platforms and services to enable stories to travel further across the world, as well as in the UK. Creating a new China Global Unit based in London to tell the global story of China to the world.
- Creating an Africa content hub that commissions and delivers original, distinctive and impactful digital first content for all 12 African language services, digital, TV/Radio, plus coverage of the continent for the rest of the BBC.
- Continuing linear TV broadcasting for both Arabic and Persian languages and investing in building audio and other digital capability in Arabic and Persian to replace radio.
- Closing some radio services, for example Arabic, Bangla, Persian and some TV programming on local broadcasters across Africa and Asia.
- World Service English making changes to its content and schedules which will allow investment in new initiatives, including a new podcast for younger audiences globally, and developing the podcast offer more broadly. The station also plans to launch a new hour-long science strand from the new science unit in Cardiff, as well as adding more live news and sports programming to the schedule.
The BBC said the proposals were subject to consultation with staff and trade unions.