BBC Chief Seeks Additional Savings

LONDON: Unveiling a consultation with BBC staff on how the pubcaster can deliver the highest-quality content from now through the end of the Charter in 2017, Mark Thompson, director-general, today announced a target of 20 percent additional savings to cope with the challenges of its frozen license fee.

The BBC’s license fee has been frozen at £145.50 till April 2017. Thompson is seeking 20 percent savings from 2013 to April 2017; 16 percent savings will balance income and expenditure and fund new services. and 4 percent will give flexibility to invest back into new content and innovation priorities. The corporation has already reduced overheads from 24 percent of expenses in 1999 to 12 percent today; the goal is to reach 9 percent or below by 2017. With these cuts, BBC will be able to maintain its pledge, made in March 2010, to spent 90 percent of the license fee on making and distributing content.

"The BBC is being realistic, taking prompt action to make sure it meets future funding limits, while continuing to aim to devote 90 percent of spending on content and getting it to the public," said Thompson. "Rather than imposing these efficiency savings and reductions in a top-down manner, we are asking people who work at the front line to say how these can best be achieved. The tough, but realistic, settlement we achieved gives us certainty of funding for six years. However, the BBC is not immune to the economic climate and it will require tough decisions to achieve these savings."

The BBC will consult with staff on how to deliver these savings will still putting quality first. Formal recommendations will be put to the BBC Trust this summer.

In other BBC news, the BBC Trust has provisionally concluded that the pubcaster’s content should be made available on-demand to Freeview, Freesat, Sky and Virgin, among other platforms in the U.K., via the iPlayer—not on a program-by-program basis. BBC Trustee Diane Coyle, who has led the review of syndication policy, said, "As the number of platforms and the popularity of on-demand TV grows, ensuring that licence fee payers have convenient access to all the BBC’s services on demand is vital to the BBC’s ability to fulfil its public purposes. Since the iPlayer first launched in 2007, watching programs this way has become a routine part of many people’s viewing habits. But we know that audiences get the most out of BBC programs when they access them in a context that is consistent, familiar, distinctive and free to air, like the iPlayer. Our provisional conclusions reflect the importance of delivering programmes in this trusted public space. The BBC must continue to deliver what licence fee payers want while also delivering value for money and protecting the BBC’s brand. We’re now seeking views on these proposed changes to the syndication policy to help the BBC meet that challenge in an on-demand world."