British Pubcasters Cut Program Spending

LONDON: Public service broadcasters (PSBs) in the U.K. have reduced their annual spending on first-run original programming by £384 million ($595 million) in the last five years, according to new figures from Ofcom.

The media regulator’s annual review shows that in 2012, the total spend by PSBs in the U.K. was £2.54 billion ($3.94 billion). This is down 13 percent from the 2007 spend.

BBC One reduced its spending in the five-year period by 7 percent, to £797 million ($1.23 billion). BBC Two lowered spending by 28 percent, to £286 million ($443 million). The total reduction for the BBC, including BBC Digital, was 14 percent, to £1.296 billion ($2.01 billion). 

ITV lowered its spending by 13 percent in the last five years, to £756 million ($1.17 billion). Channel 4 also had a 13-percent reduction in the same period, having spent £385 million ($597 million) in 2012. Channel 5 lowered spending by only 4 percent, to £100 million ($155 million).

The biggest cuts were to arts and classical music programming; spending on this genre dropped by 42 percent since 2007. There’s been a 22-percent reduction in the spending on factual programs, and a 29-percent reduction for drama and soaps. Entertainment and comedy only took a hit of 6 percent in the same period. What was healthy, however, was feature films. Spending by PSBs on first-run originated feature films was up 93 percent from 2007 to 2012.