BBC News and BBC World presenters are to be made redundant as part of 70 UK job cuts in a plan to create a single, more digitally focused news service.
The corporation, which proposed a merger of its UK and international news channels in May, said the new-look channel would launch next April and be called BBC News.
UK viewers will no longer be given a local news service, including the loss of programs such as Dateline London after 25 years, with the channel featuring a mix of international content as well as “new flagship programs built around senior journalists”.
The plans will see a significant reduction in the number of presenters currently working on the BBC News and BBC World channels, with fewer, higher-profile staff retaining the title of ‘main presenter’, while correspondents will be given opportunity for more airtime.
The BBC’s annual report lists big names including Clive Mirey, Rietta Chakrabarty, Victoria Derbyshire, Ben Brown and Joanna Gosling – who together earn more than £1m for working at the BBC – as BBC News presenters.
A BBC spokesman said the UK operation would see 70 job cuts, while a further 20 on and off-screen roles would be created in Washington. The new channel will broadcast from London during the day and then from Singapore and Washington.
The BBC said UK viewers would continue to receive specific content at certain times of the day and during certain high-profile news stories, and would have domestic-only broadcast production capacity for major UK-specific news events.
“The way audiences consume news is changing,” said Nadja Nielsen, digital director at BBC News. “Our aim is to create the best live video news and breaking news service in the world – on our web pages, our apps, on BBC iPlayer and on our new TV news channel.”
The new channel will remain ad-free in the UK. The BBC’s annual report, published earlier this week, showed the number of staff working in corporate newsrooms is at its lowest level for a decade.
The BBC said the changes would create a “modern, digitally-led and streamlined organization that gets the most value from the license fee and delivers more for audiences”.
The BBC’s news and current affairs operations, which have an annual budget of £314m, have been at the center of several rounds of significant cuts in recent years as the corporation sought savings to balance a decline in real-terms funding following the settlement of licensing deals. fees with the government.
Earlier this year, the government imposed a two-year freeze on the annual license fee of £159 until 2024, which the BBC says will mean it needs to find another £285 million in annual savings. However, Tim Davey, the director-general of the BBC, is looking to make £500m of cuts to existing TV and radio services to invest in digital-only initiatives.
Davey, who took over from Lord Tony Hall as chief executive in September 2020, has led cuts of around 1,200 jobs so far and said around 1,000 more will be lost over the next few years.
Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, is set to launch a consultation on the future of the license fee as a funding mechanism for the corporation after the BBC’s current royal charter ends in 2027.
Dorris called the license fee “outdated” and “discriminatory” because all households pay the same amount, regardless of income. She pointed to “fairer” models used in other countries, such as Germany, involving tying it to council tax. Other alternatives are a voluntary subscription model like Netflix uses, allowing advertising, or through a general broadband tax.
The BBC will now begin consultations with affected staff and unions, while Ofcom, Britain’s media regulator, may seek to examine plans to fundamentally change the two existing news services.
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