The BBC has today announced that a further 65 redundancies will be made across its radio division as the Corporation attempts to “preserve the quality of its programming in the face of significant savings challenges.”
The job cuts form part of the BBC’s ‘Delivering Quality First’ programme, which aims to save £800 million per year out of the BBC’s overall public-service income of around £3.6 billion. The 65 job losses, which affect every station, are part of an ongoing plan that will see a reduction of approximately 200 roles – roughly 15% of the division’s headcount – between 2012 and 2017.
In 2012 the BBC Radio division contained around 1,300 people and this is expected to drop to 1,100 by 2017.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, the BBC said the restructure will see the creation of two new ‘hubs’ within the radio division, which will bring together “some management, running and support of BBC stations: one around pop music, incorporating Radio 1, Radio 2, 1Xtra, 6 Music and the Asian Network, and the other around classical music and speech output, covering Radio 3, Radio 4, 4 Extra and the BBC Proms and performing groups.”
“BBC Radio is the envy of the world and our creativity is second to none,” said Helen Boaden, director of BBC Radio. “But we must also be as small as we can be, to meet our savings challenges and increase our agility in the digital world without losing our distinctiveness or damaging relationships with our many audiences.
“Reducing the division’s headcount by 15% is challenging, but shows just how hard we are working to drive efficiency in everything we do.”
Within the hubs, some functions will be shared and others will remain separate. Each radio station will retain a dedicated controller who will “preserve the station’s culture and distinctiveness, but will collaborate with their counterpart in the hub.”
In the pop music hub, Radio 1 and 2 will share commissioning, filming, live events and operations, whilst keeping separate production, business management and music teams.
In the classical music and speech hub, some station management, presentation and administration will be shared, the BBC said, but Radios 3 and 4 will retain their own commissioning, scheduling and, in Radio 3’s case, music functions.
The new hubs will exist only as internal groupings and there are no plans to change the way the stations are represented on-air as a result of their creation.
The BBC’s director of news, James Harding, also announced 75 job cuts in his division last year, but said that “further substantial savings” would have to follow, with the BBC expected to announce around 500 job losses imminently.
