Media Chronicle
“La Beeb” at the time of savings
BBC premises in London (illustrative image).
AP - Frank Augstein
By: Amaury de Rochegonde Follow
2 mins
The BBC is facing a drastic savings plan and the obligation to take a radical digital shift.
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Imagine that there was only one channel in place of France 24 and France Info, that France 4 and Arte were no longer available on television, but only on the Internet, and that RFI could no longer be captured in foreign languages and on short waves.
This is, roughly speaking, what is happening to the BBC, which announced on Thursday the elimination of 1,000 jobs out of a total of 22,000 employees, with a radical plan at stake to save up to £500 million a year.
1,000 jobs which are added to the 1,200 already eliminated in 18 months.
Among the notable changes to the perimeter of the "Beeb", as said, we first find the merger of BBC News and BBC World News, the news channels in the United Kingdom and outside the United Kingdom.
There is also the removal of linear broadcasts of CBBC, the children's channel, and BBC4, the cultural channel, whose content will switch online.
Finally, "last but not least", there is the announced shutdown of certain BBC programs in foreign languages, which will also migrate to the Internet, and the end of long-wave (AM) radio broadcasting, but this remains subject to consultation with Her Majesty's Maritime Services, as it is customary for Royal Navy submariners to tune in to longwave BBC Radio 4 to check on all is well ashore.
Forced Digital Mutation
But in fact, why such a plan?
The BBC is facing a two-year license fee freeze, at a time when inflation has never been so high for forty years.
So decided the government of Boris Johnson and in particular his Secretary of State for Culture, Nadine Dorries, who is known to be hostile to public broadcasting.
There is therefore only what falls within the legitimate and laudable objectives of the government, such as succeeding in the digital transformation of the BBC, three-quarters of whose audiences will have to be done via the iPlayer platform.
And then there is also what almost reveals ideology: the BCC has an inconvenient independence, its mode of financing protects it from power, so let's review its financing by fees in five and a half years.
Because some conservatives do not forgive the BBC for its anti-Brexit attitude.
Nadine Dorries, herself, wants to put a scalpel to public service missions and see if impartiality is well respected or if the BBC is not a reflection of the London elites.
She therefore wants a quarter of the recruitment of the "Beeb" to be done in popular circles and that the majority of programs are produced outside the capital.
So that the "Beeb" is, in short, a little less with London.
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