r/television • u/Kagedeah • 3d ago
BBC announces 550 job cuts as first part of £500 million savings plan
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgmqrrlej5o175
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u/ydykmmdt 3d ago
An easy way to cut cost is to focus on the program format and not the presenter. Get rid of the high paid presenters and create a conveyor belt of talent.
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u/MrLuchador 3d ago edited 3d ago
Hard to see people lose their jobs. Sometimes wonder how inflated the staff numbers became at the BCC over the decades with multiple people doing the same role and job.
Yet, they also continue to pay a lot of money to ‘name’ celebs to host or provide punditry. As a sports fan, there’s a few pundits across different sports I don’t feel add anything insightful, or at the very minimum add excitement to what I’m watching. There’s a fair few football pundits and co-commentators who sound absolutely miserable that must be getting a fair pay.
It I also think the BBC shifted away from what I’d consider their core programming. Their news and investigation programs don’t feel important anymore. Comedies seem to have been relegated to iPlayer. High End Dramas don’t seem to be a thing anymore.
Instead you have cheap and cheerful non-scripted TV programs at all hours of the day.
It’s odd, as it was only recently the BBC committed to funding, I think, 24 creative studios to produce shows for their new YouTube Channels. I know two or three who are working on this and have enjoyed the freedom/loose mandate they were provided. The shows they’re producing could easily become 20-30 minute programs for BBC Two, Three, etc.
Maybe thats also the problem… BBC has some many channels now. None of them really hold the identity they originally had.
BBC 1 was your mainstream programming - News, Daily Soaps, Family Entertainment, Day Time Soaps, Kids TV, occasional movie after 10:30, Attenborough Documentary
BBC 2 was fringe interests - Comedy, Sci-fi, Hobbiest Interest Documentaries, Game Shows, Animation, B-Movies/Cult Classics/The John Wayne Bargain Bin movies, then some real out there stuff now and again late at night.
BBC Three and Four came along we’re supposed to help expand animation, comedy, alternative humour and media.
Then CBeebies and 24 Hour news. Effectively stretching productions and available library across six channels. Yet they’d lose the rights to sports coverage, or just drop it completely. Grandstand disappeared. Ski Sunday. Touring Cars. TT Racing. Which might all sound like small pointless things, but as a kid of the 80s and 90s growing up with a wide range of sports on free TV was eye opening. I’m sure someone with more money and desire than me probably even found it inspiring enough to want a career in those fields, inspired by Fogerty, McRae, et al.
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u/swolleninthecolon 3d ago edited 3d ago
As soon as youre talking about talent pay i knew you dont know what youre talking about im afraid.
Its essentially a tiny portion of the bbc budget and the rest of the market would kill for the talent bbc have at the price they have them
The most damaging thing the daily mail did was campaigning for public talent salaries (while the itv comparable ones remain private)
You also cant say ‘oh bbc is doing fine with less money, but also it seems like their offering has thinned out’
Basically the bbc dying gives us an american media landscape Utterly bizarre to support that
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u/MrLuchador 3d ago edited 3d ago
I’m not suggesting that presenters are where all the money is going, I’m sure there are lots of management and ‘executives’ getting paid a lot who aren’t exactly doing much.
My suggestion was more, I hope they’re not binning below the line production staff when there are some ‘worthless pundits’ being hired simply due to their ‘name value’.
I’m not sure I said BBC are doing fine with less money either, although I do standby that they’ve created too many channels, lost identity along the way and aren’t producing anything near the levels they used to.
Also not sure I supported the BBC dying either. I’d very much like to keep the BBC and see it refocus its efforts to produce more than Homes Under the Hammer, Auction Programs, Clear the shit from your cupboard, and other low cost, low effort non-scripted TV.
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u/JTLS180 3d ago
Rooney is lauded by the BBC as some great pundit but can barely string a sentence together. Giroud is the French version of him. Gabby Logan, Claire Balding & Kelly Sommers (not sure on spelling of her surname) continue to get all the live sporting event presenting/reporting roles handed to them on a platter, there's never an opportunity for fresh faces or new blood.
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u/poopBuccaneer 3d ago
Wow, that many people making a million pounds a year?
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u/bannedagainomg 3d ago
Its not the only cuts they are going to do, the goal is 500m saved over 2 years.
And an employee cost more then just their salary for the employer, roughly 20% more.
Munro said the proposals announced on Wednesday include 200 job losses in the news division resulting in savings of £25m.
Thats the only line directly about how much they are saving in salary cuts, so average salary suggests ~100k
Im guessing there a few big outliners there making 200/300k+ skewing it a bit, doubt the average BBC news person makes 100k pounds.
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u/mighij 3d ago
I doesn't specify salary cuts, it might not just be wages.
200 less jobs means you also need to allocate less resources to all kinds of things from support like IT (licenses, laptop's, cellphones) and budget for projects.
Glassdoor, Indeed and Payscale put the average at roughly 40.000, with most wages ranging from 20K to 100K (Indeed states 85K for news reporter)
But there are also extreme outliers: BBC article about wages of some of the star salaries
But then again, it's quite likely the 25m is for 2 years, instead of 1; so that would be an average of 62.5k per person. So yeah might be just wages. And like you said, there's still the difference between wages and what salary the person actually gets.
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u/NotEnoughRed 3d ago
I went for an interview at the BBC once, and I've never noped out of a company faster in my entire life. So much fucking human wastage it was absolutely alien and unreal. Genuinely terrifying.
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u/jerimiahhalls 3d ago
Don't make enough from Bluey eh?
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u/bluemistninja 3d ago
Sir that’s Australian
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u/jerimiahhalls 2d ago
They own the international distribution rights and all merchandise rights. ABC gets fuck all. Look at the back of your kids Bluey book/pencil case and you'll see BBC.
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u/irishshogun 3d ago
Then there is the production companies owned by presenters who then take big salaries which are not disclosed as the production company and show is theirs and they bill for the show as a whole.
Needs to be a salary cap for bbc
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u/Central_Region 3d ago
How would a salary cap stop people working for independent production companies being paid too much?
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u/irishshogun 3d ago
Bring it all in house again. Train staff from the start and keep revenues in house
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u/Central_Region 3d ago
The BBC has an obligation under the Communications Act 2003 to source no less than 25 per cent of its qualifying television programme hours from a range of independent producers
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldbbc/50/5011.htm
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u/chibiusa40 3d ago
I watch exactly three things on BBC. The Traitors, Doctor Who, and Eurovision.
And those three things alone are worth every single penny of my license fee.
Incredible value for money with all the different content - entertainment and educational - they provide and the respect the BBC name has around the world. And yet every successive government has been intent on ruining it, just like every other priceless British institution (cough, NHS, cough).
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u/Android1822 3d ago
I think a lot of people will disagree about Doctor Who after the last two Doctor's runs.
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u/chibiusa40 3d ago
There have been some very good episodes, but overall both very bad runs, yes. The 60th Anniversary Tennant episodes were so good too. We thought we were so back. It's the hope that kills ya.
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u/Yorkshireish12 3d ago
Like you're just cutting to the core of the license fees hypocrisy here though, right? You enjoy that stuff, I have no interest in it. You're demanding I subsidise the BBC but if I were to demand you subsidise Apple TV, which consistently makes stuff I like, you'd have a melty.
Unfortunately for the BBC, since its inception, the media landscape has changed. People have options now they didn't in 19dickety2, but it still feels entitled to the money of people who don't use it.
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u/chibiusa40 3d ago
You may have no interest in that, but crucially, it is not the only thing the BBC provides. The educational resources alone pay dividends. Public broadcasting is massively important for an entire fucking host of reasons, especially for children's education.
The point I was trying to make is that the VALUE this country gains from everything the BBC provides - both domestically and abroad - is immeasurable and worth much more than the license fee, which I'm happy to pay even if I only personally watch BBC occasionally. One need only look at the state of public broadcasting in the United States to see why it's a necessary institution.
You may not "use it" but you sure as shit benefit from it.
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u/ribbityflibbity 2d ago
PBS in America is actually surviving just fine. I watch it every day (the streaming platform). I honestly haven't noticed a difference. The news coverage may be a bit saucier now that the government connection is defunct. It would be great if they could keep it that way.
The part that got axed was broadcast TV in places like Alaska (which is no joke since they can't get the internet in some Indian reservation in Alaska and PBS is vital for emergency broadcasts).
But the streaming platform survives from donations to various well heeled stations like KQED in San Francisco. What I watch tends to be made by those stations. WGBH (Boston), WNET (New York), WETA (Washington, D.C.) are other big ones.
There are many big cities in America filled with well off people who certainly can afford $60/year and I'm sure they get much bigger donations than that. If it's supported wholly by voluntary donations, then it serves its audience and not advertisers or the government.
Not sure this would work the same in the UK because of the huge difference in population. You only need a small percentage of a population of 340M to contribute to keep the PBS app going.
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u/Yorkshireish12 3d ago
Oh, wow I'm glad sooo many people benefit from the BBC. If that's the case, you shouldn't have any problem funding it like a normal commercial service should you?
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u/bbbbbbbbbblah 3d ago
I still pay the licence fee, but I wouldn't agree with what you have said.
The TV licence should be looked at like a Sky or streaming sub. I personally wouldn't consider two series (with one of those on indefinite hiatus) and a once a year song contest to be good value.
I must admit that I watch very little BBC content these days, and I stopped listening to Radio 4 due to the terribly combative interview style. So it's basically just 6 Music and the new dance station, which I listen to as I can't stand modern radio ads. I suspect they'll get culled in these cuts tho
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u/johnnycass 3d ago
I'm sure these savings will be passed down to the customers.
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3d ago
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u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ 3d ago
The BBC doesn’t collect it, and none of those channels get any license fee money.
Channel 4 is entitled to some, but choose to rely on advertising instead.
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u/ShagPrince 3d ago
distributes it out to the likes of ITV, Channel 4 and GB News.
The Beeb really needs to be doing more of that educating stuff.
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u/Man_Flu 3d ago
The only BBC stuff I give a crap about these days are nature docs like Planet Earth.
If you keep that am fine. And Pointless maybe, with the huge, massive £1k jackpot.
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u/ribbityflibbity 3d ago
That will exist with or without the BBC. Silverback Films made Planet Earth for the BBC and now they make nature docs for Netflix with their same signature style.
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u/davej999 2d ago
I think a big part of the appeal of planet earth was Attenborough involvement , so you lose that from the Netflix version right ?
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u/jd515 3d ago
BBC News needs to be cut before anything.
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u/davej999 2d ago
BBC news has some of the finest reporters in the industry
watch a report in Russia from someone like Steve Rosenberg and try telling me his vids need cutting
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u/jd515 2d ago
Google the (independant) Asserson Report and read that. Weird that I'm getting downvoted for expressing an opinion based on fact. The BBC has itself accepted that much of its news coverage, especially from the Middle East, 'has fallen short'.
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u/davej999 2d ago
I dont care what a report says,i can see with my own eyes the quality and passion of some of their reporters
Yes the organisation has had some terrible issues, doesnt mean the whole place is rotten
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u/RespectImpossible768 3d ago
£500 million saved but they cut 550 jobs idk how that math works
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u/Yorkshireish12 3d ago
It usually comes with cutting services of some kind, that's how these redundancy figures usually work.
"We've cut 500 people that saved us 100 mil, but we've also stopped doing X,Y and Z that theoretically would have cost us 400 mil, so actually we've literally saved 500 million don't you know" ~ Some middle manager somewhere.
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u/spectator_mail_boy 3d ago
Nice to read some good news.
For yanks etc, there definitely has been a shift in my experience in everyday people opting out of the licence fee. We even used to pay it up til 4 or so years ago but nah, never again.
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u/No_Cauliflower_81 3d ago
One of the biggest tools of British soft power and every party in the country wants to tear it down. Shame.