The BBC will in the coming months set out how it plans to cut back on TV, radio and online following today’s brutal announcement of 2,000 layoffs.
Rhodri Talfan Davies, the BBC’s interim Director General, just said on Radio 4’s The Media Show that the corporation will “make sure changes are consistent with the direction of travel” of audiences who are migrating to social media and online.
He therefore raised the spectre of the BBC cutting back on more traditional linear services. More info will emerge between July and September, Talfan Davies said, at which point the next DG, former Google Europe boss Matt Brittin, will have taken over. The layoffs will take place from September.
“This is really difficult news for staff,” he said of the brutal cuts, estimated to be the BBC’s biggest for over a decade as it looks to save £500M ($678M) across the next two years. “For audiences our job now and over the next three or four months is to work through how to make those changes without damaging services across radio, TV and online.”
Talfan Davies said decisions won’t be “about salami slicing,” the practice of cutting small pots of funding from each department, but rather will be “mindful of our connection with audiences.”
“Before cutting content, you think about how to work more smartly,” Talfan Davies went on to say. “We will look at that across the organization.”
He said the BBC’s powers that be “knew we’d have savings requirements, but that has grown quite significantly over the last five or six months.” It revealed a few weeks ago that 10% of its spending over the next three years will need to be cut, which culminated in today’s layoffs announcement.
Under Talfan Davies’ predecessor Tim Davie, there were hundreds of layoffs over several years and a “fewer bigger better” approach to TV commissioning, which saw volume of hours slashed.
Trump lawsuit “not impacting” financials
Fighting the $10B Donald Trump lawsuit has “not had a knock-on impact on financial modelling,” Talfan Davies added. He stressed that the BBC’s “very clear view” is to have the lawsuit over the botched Panorama edit thrown out.
The deep financial strife, Talfan Davies said, has a two-fold cause. He cited “production inflation remaining stubbornly high… above household inflation” and falling license fee income due to less and less households paying their £180 annual fee. Less than 80% of households pay the license fee versus 94% who consume the BBC, the corporation recently said in its response to the government’s charter renewal paper. The BBC’s funding model will be renewed next year.
“We are a universal service,” Talfan Davies added. “We deliver to anyone and reach everyone but we have a funding model that doesn’t mirror that universal consumption. We’ve been pretty clear-eyed in our response to the government’s green paper that unless there is funding reform we simply cannot sustain what the BBC is doing.”
Talfan Davies had no words of advice for Brittin as he appeared on the weekly BBC Radio 4 show this afternoon. “He doesn’t need any advice from me,” he added plainly when questioned on what he would say to his successor.
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