en BBC Radio Blog Feed The BBC Radio team explain their decisions, highlight changes and share news from all of BBC radio. Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:37:15 +0000 Zend_Feed_Writer 2 (http://framework.zend.com) https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio Painful day for BBC World Service Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:37:15 +0000 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio/entries/ca7d778e-1027-3a20-9ba7-9c35bdcfd78b https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio/entries/ca7d778e-1027-3a20-9ba7-9c35bdcfd78b Peter Horrocks Peter Horrocks

Editor's note: Peter Horrocks is director of BBC World Service. This blog post, published on the BBC Editors Blog, explains the cuts to the service announced today - SB

It's been a painful day for the BBC World Service and the 180 million audiences around the world. This morning I announced a fundamental restructure to the BBC World Service in order to meet the 16% savings target required by the UK government's Spending Review last October.

At the moment BBC WS is funded by Grant-in-Aid provided by the government.

BBC WS will be funded by the licence fee from April 2014.

Over the next three years, we will have to make to an annual saving of £46m by April 2014.

In all the changes announced today, the aim has been to protect the WS, its quality and reputation and, where possible, our footprint.

Continue reading this blog post and leave a comment on the BBC Editors Blog...

]]> 0 Sir Michael Lyons on the new licence fee settlement Fri, 22 Oct 2010 12:50:00 +0000 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio/entries/f01c775d-b9a4-323b-afd9-d6ca5df5e4bc https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio/entries/f01c775d-b9a4-323b-afd9-d6ca5df5e4bc Roger Bolton Roger Bolton



http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006slnx

In this week's edition of the BBC's in-house newspaper 'Ariel', the main feature is about the heavy workload the BBC's chief operating officer, Caroline Thomson, now has as a result of the recent cull of executive board members. One of her three main responsibilities, it said, was preparing for the renegotiation of the licence fee which was expected to start in 2011 and take a considerable amount of time.

Well hardly had the paper hit the Corporation's corridors than her load suddenly got considerably lighter. On Wednesday the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the licence fee would be frozen for six years. The negotiations were over before they had started.

The deal, which means a 16% cut in the BBC's income, was hammered out in an extraordinary last-minute negotiation, so last-minute that no-one told the Board of S4C, the Welsh language television broadcaster, that the BBC was taking it over. The S4C Chairman is now talking of going to judicial review.

The licence fee-payer is now to pay for the BBC World Service and BBC Monitoring as well as for some local initiatives which are dear to the heart of the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt. In the view of some the BBC's independence has been revealed as a mirage since the Corporation has been treated like a Government department caught up in a spending - or rather a cutting - round.

I went to see the Chairman of the BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons, shortly after the Chancellor had made his Commons speech. Some BBC executives were shell-shocked by the announcements but Sir Michael was determined to put a positive face on the settlement, perhaps because, as a former council leader, he was well aware of the scale of the cuts which had just been imposed on local authorities.

Here is an extended version of my Feedback interview:

Do you think listeners should be consulted or are you happy for the decisions to be made on your behalf?

Roger Bolton is presenter of Feedback

  • Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with Feedback, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
  • Feedback is now on Twitter. Follow @BBCFeedback.
  • Steve Hewlett also interviewed Sir Michael Lyons on this week's Media Show.
  • The picture shows Sir Michael Lyons, Chair of the BBC Trust.
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