Thu 29 September 2022:
The BBC has announced significant cuts to its World Service output that will result in the loss of hundreds of jobs, claiming that the government’s ongoing license fee freeze has compelled it to take such action.
The corporation will stop producing radio output in 10 languages, including Chinese, Hindi, and Arabic, in a move that may reduce the UK’s soft power abroad.
The announcement that BBC Persian will stop broadcasting audio to Iran coincides with the country’s ongoing widespread protests.
The World Service’s English-language radio output will also shift its emphasis, with more time devoted to live news and sports programming at the expense of standalone programs.
About 382 jobs will be lost as a result of the proposals, which the BBC said was required to make £28.5m of annual savings. The broadcaster blamed years of below-inflation licence fee freezes imposed by the government, in addition to the rapidly increasing cost of producing programmes because of the state of the economy.
Philippa Childs of the broadcasting union Bectu said she recognised the BBC needed to adapt to the digital era but that the government’s licence fee freeze has “potential ramifications for the BBC’s reputation globally”.
The World Service was traditionally funded directly by the government and was seen as a soft power tool that provided British news and information to hundreds of millions of people around the globe. This money largely dried up as part of George Osborne’s austerity measures in 2010, when the bill for World Service operations was loaded on to domestic licence fee payers.
Since then the BBC has had to go cap-in-hand to the government to seek extra funding to support specific World Service projects, with ministers providing around £400m in additional cash since 2016. However, there are doubts about how long these deals will continue. Earlier this year the BBC had to ask ministers for an emergency £4m to keep its operations in Ukraine and Russia on air.
According to a BBC spokesperson, the UK Foreign Office was consulted regarding the most recent cuts, and no country would completely lose access to World Service programming because digital operations would continue in all languages.
A total of 226 jobs will be lost in the UK and 156 abroad. The BBC claims that despite the funding reductions, the World Service still has a weekly audience of about 364 million listeners.
Gujarati, Somali, and Urdu television news will no longer be broadcast, and Igbo, Indonesian, and Yoruba language services will now only be available online.
The BBC will also change its focus from supplying news updates to foreign broadcasters to trying to persuade viewers to use the BBC’s own media and website.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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