Cellphones force BBC to slash 1 000 jobs

The BBC is making big changes to its structure, cutting more than 1,000 jobs, and stripping out layers of management because of a £150 million shortfall in its licence fee income as more people watch programmes online. “In some places there are now ten layers of people and management and this will be cut to a maximum of seven in the future”.

“A simpler, leaner BBC is the right thing to do and it can also help us meet the financial challenges we face”, said Tony Hall, BBC Director-General, in a statement.

“We’ve already considerably cut the prices of operating the BBC, however in occasions of very robust decisions we have to concentrate on what actually issues – delivering excellent programmes and content material for all our audiences”. Meanwhile, competitors have further squeezed BBC’s market share, Hall said in a speech previous year, citing mergers and acquisitions by global conglomerates Warner Brothers, Viacom and 21st Century Fox.

Ofcom’s public service broadcasting review has also been published today and claims just 50 percent of viewing among 16-24 year olds is through live television despite 79 percent of people believing public service broadcasters (PSBs) like the BBC and Channel 4 deliver on their objective.

“The licence fee income in 2016/17 is now forecast to be £150 million less than it was expected to be in 2011”.

Paul McManus, Scottish organiser of Bectu, said: “Until more detailed work is done we do not know the full impact to our members in Scotland”.

To begin with, the BBC will combine its technology teams across its Digital, Engineering and Worldwide divisions. The current Royal Charter and Agreement came into force in 2006 and are due to expire in December 2016.

The regulator said PSBs make a significant contribution to content creation in the United Kingdom, spending £2 billion excluding sport each year compared to £250 million by non-PSBs.

The Conservative Government is set to unveil a green paper on the BBC charter renewal in coming weeks.

He said the organization faced a “difficult choice”, because of the challenging economic environment, the BBC reported.

The BBC said this demonstrated a need for the licence fee to be “modernised” to cover digital services, and added that the funding gap meant there would be a reduction of more than 1,000 posts as a result.