During the past two years, the BBC has announced some of the most extensive cuts in its history, affecting nearly all of its production and creative departments. However, it’s the reductions to BBC News and the World Service that are arguably most concerning. David Davies reports.
There is no doubt about the straitened financial circumstances with which the BBC is now contending. The licence fee constituted around 65% of its total income in 2023, but under the previous government – generally considered to have been hostile towards the corporation – the value of that fee has declined in real terms by 30% from 2010/11 to 2023. Concerns that the TV licence might be scrapped altogether come charter renewal in 2027 have now faded, whilst there will be a modest increase to the fee in April 2025, but all the same, it’s not surprising that the corporation has made extensive cuts to programming – totalling more than 1,000 hours of content in 2023...
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