By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson and Ben Fenton
Published: October 9 2007 01:10 Last updated: October 9 2007 01:10
The BBC is poised to cut at least 12 per cent of its workforce, with the brunt of more than 2,000 redundancies falling on factual programming, senior staff have been told.
The final tally of job losses, which will have to be approved by the BBC Trust, could approach 2,800, according to one person familiar with the situation.
Mark Thompson, the corporation’s director-general, is seeking cuts amounting to 6 per cent of its £3bn-plus annual budget over each of the next five years. A below-inflation licence fee settlement in January left him £2bn short of the funds he had sought for the period.
BBC executives are believed to have resisted calls to close one or more services, such as BBC Three, and opted instead for cuts within existing services. The BBC employs 23,000, of whom 18,000 work in its core public service broadcasting activities rather than BBC Worldwide or the World Service.
Its factual output, which ranges from flagship programmes such as Planet Earth and Panorama to populist output such as Top Gear and Kill It, Cook It, Eat It, is understood to be particularly hard hit by the proposed cuts.
Follow the rest of the story at Financial Times website:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f027e8a4-75ed-11dc-b7cb-0000779fd2ac.html
