Enough is enough
Over 2000 more jobs to go at BBC - this time from production
The news that 2050 additional jobs, this time primarily from the production side, are to go, is a shock. If the BBC is to live up to its programming commitment, the last thing that's needed is fewer production staff. One can hardly disagree with the unions who are calling this the 'worst day in the history of the BBC'.
The BBC is now the only UK broadcaster that cares about regional programming - but 735 jobs are going in the nations and regions. 420 posts are going in news: that'll certainly help News24 do a better job against a Sky News, won't it. And 424 jobs will be lost in factual and learning - the people who made award-winning programmes like Blue Planet. The fact is, landmark programmes like this and Walking with Dinosaurs will become a thing of the past - at least as far as BBC productions are concerned.
So where are all these new, different programmes going to come from that Tessa Jowell has asked for? The only place they can come from is the independent sector - a simple transfer of production funds from inside the Corporation to outside. Why is this a good thing?
Meanwhile, 420 jobs in news will go. Drama, entertainment and children's departments will lose 150 with another 150 going from radio and music. 58 will go from new media: the department has been so conspicuously successful that commercial forces have been up in arms.
One imagines that some at least of this disturbing development is primarily going to affect accounting, with people moving from staff to freelance, and external companies being paid instead of internal departments. But is a wholesale divestment of human resources the way to go about making better programmes? Wouldn't we be better off with a well-resourced BBC, able to produce more of its own programmes rather than less?
The present cuts will 'save' £ 221 million by 2008, which will be 'reinvested' in programmes. How will that be done? Where will the money go? To outside contractors, obviously. Why not keep those productions in house?
Could the money have been saved without cutting jobs? Many would say some, if not all. And why does the money have to be saved in the first place? If anything, the BBC is already under-resourced. To produce the higher-quality programmes that are supposed to be on the cards would have been difficult already. But now, how can it all be achieved?
Mr Thompson has evidently decided - or been ordered - to dramatically slim down the BBC. No doubt there was slack at the administrative and middle-management levels (and some admin jobs are to go in this latest purge) . But is there really so much slack on the production side? It's hard to imagine. Will the BBC be able to make better programmes as a result? That's even harder to imagine.
Having been battered by the government over Hutton, the BBC now seems intent on taking its own life rather than building much-needed strength. First Dyke was inadvisedly forced out and now his successor is draining the lifeblood of the Corporation - its staff.
The BBC needs to retain the capability and the resources to fulfil its public service commitments to the full. How this will be able to be done with such massive cuts in staff - up to one in five jobs will go - remains to be seen.
Mr Thompson has said that the cuts will be "difficult and painful". So why make them? Why are they necessary?
Mrs Thatcher was renowned for deliberately under-funding and fouling up public services until she could point out that they functioned so poorly they should obviously be privatised. Is that's what's going on here? I sincerely hope not.
