All entries for Wednesday 17 October 2007

BBC Job Cuts.

BBC management are planning to enforce 2,000 compulsory redundancies, this is equivalent to cutting the BBC workforce by 10%. The cuts are necessary because of a distinct fall in planned future government funding. Anger amongst the BBC workers (including Jeremy Paxman, as it seems that many of the cuts will be in the News departments) has led to many to imply that future strike action is very likely.

The classic debate is will these cuts improve efficiency sufficiently enough to justify the fall in quality. Naturally the BBC journalist has cried that the sky is falling and that the quality of BBC programming will fall dramatically. However the management seems to be planning to synthesize the News radio, television, and internet departments, thus this gives them a way to argue that actually the cuts will be on useless management and duplicative journalists; hence quality will not be damaged.

But (putting my conspiracy hat on) what has led to the government cutting expenditure so much? One would imagine that efficiency improvements would be done naturally; it wouldn’t require the government to enforce it. Could it be in order to appease Rupurt Murdoch? Gordon Brown would remember Murdoch’s responsibility in causing Labour to lose the 1992 election, could this be an attempt to buy Murdoch’s support…

: 17 Oct 2007 11:32 |  Tags: BBC Politics |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem