BBC Employees Brace For “Ominous” Town Hall Meeting About Cuts

EXCLUSIVE: BBC employees are expected to be updated on the British broadcaster’s plans to save an additional £500M ($675M) over the coming years.

In an internal email, the BBC told members of staff to join a town hall meeting on Wednesday, when they will be updated on “savings plans.” Employees were informed that “everyone should attend.”

The meeting will be led by Rhodri Talfan Davies, the BBC’s interim director general; CFO Bérangère Michel; and John Curbishley, the corporation’s chief strategy and transformation officer.

The savings briefing comes after the BBC announced in February that it planned to slash its cost base by £500M over the next three years, exapanding on an existing target worth £1.5B.

One insider said the meeting sounded “ominous,” with employees bracing for news about potential job cuts or a voluntary redundancy scheme.

This person said the BBC was getting some “bad news out of the way” before Matt Brittin, the former Google executive, joins as director general on May 18.

The BBC’s annual plan, published last month, made clear that the corporation faces “difficult” financial choices and that content would not be protected from cuts.

The BBC has been drawing up radical plans to save £100M through outsourcing thousands of non-content jobs — including HR, finance, legal, and operations — to private sector companies. Deadline revealed details of the changes last year, with executives dubbing the plan Project Ada.

A BBC spokesperson: “Over the last three years we have delivered more than a half a billion pounds worth of savings, much of which we’ve been able to reinvest into our output across the BBC. 

“In a rapidly changing media market, we continue to face substantial financial pressures. As a result we expect to make further savings over the next three years of around 10% of our costs. This is about the BBC becoming more productive and prioritising our offer to audiences to ensure we’re providing the best value for money, both now and in the future.”