Senior BBC figures want the Corporation’s new director-general to cut entire channels as part of a drive to save £500 million over the next two years.
Insiders are urging Matt Brittin, a former Google executive who takes over next month, to resist the temptation to ‘salami slice’ BBC departments and channels to achieve the drastic cuts.
They want the BBC to scrap existing services including the BBC News Channel, Radios 1 and 2 and the youth channel BBC Three.
One leading BBC insider said: ‘If you salami slice the BBC, you will end up with c**p and a situation where everything is done badly. In the view of a lot of people inside the BBC, managers have got to cut specific services.’
The latest round of cuts are among the deepest in the Corporation’s recent history and were announced to staff on Wednesday by interim director-general Rhodri Talfan Davies.
They will result in the loss of around 2,000 jobs, roughly 10 per cent of the workforce.
It is all in response to a drastic and ongoing fall in the number of households paying the £180-a-year licence fee. Millions of viewers have abandoned the BBC for streaming services, with only 80 per cent of households now paying the fee.
Mr Davies said some savings would be met by cutting spending on management consultants, and by fewer BBC staff attending conferences, awards ceremonies and other events.
Matt Brittin, a former Google executive, is set to take charge at the BBC next month
Some insiders within the Corporation have urged the incoming director-general to make bold cuts in an effort to save £500million over the next two years
But some BBC insiders think the new director-general should axe entire channels they fear don’t add to its reputation.
The BBC News Channel, which is regularly beaten by GB News in the ratings, is believed to be particularly vulnerable.
The source said: ‘I think they will get rid of the news channel. It’s a complete dog’s breakfast. It doesn’t know whether it’s trying to appeal to the world or to the people of Cleethorpes.
‘In the modern era if something big happens and people want to look at pictures, it’s all online.
‘The only place anyone watches the BBC News Channel is an airport, and even then they don’t have the sound on – that is a view widely felt within the BBC.’
The insider said BBC Three was the Corporation’s most expensive channel in terms of cost per viewer and that Radios 1 and 2 were merely duplicating a service already provided by the commercial sector.
A source said: ‘The argument has always been that if you have a licence fee you have to appeal to everyone, and that is why you do Strictly and EastEnders and Radio 2. There is a more sophisticated argument that we just don’t need to do things that are done perfectly well in the commercial sector.’
