BBC World Service to cut 650 jobs, five language services

BBC World Service to cut 650 jobs, five language services

2011-01-27 07:05:02 GMT+7 (ICT)

LONDON (BNO NEWS) -- The BBC World Service announced on Wednesday that it will cut 650 jobs out of 2,400 and close five of the 32 language services as a result of government funding cuts, the BBC reported.

About 30 million people, out of the current 180 million, will lose the service as a result of the cuts. The BBC said two-thirds of jobs to be cut will go in the first 12 months.

The five foreign-language services to be shut down are: Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, English for the Caribbean and Portuguese for Africa. This change aims to save £46 million ($73 million) a year.

Radio programming will be axed in seven languages: Azeri (the official language of Azerbaijan), Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Spanish for Cuba, Turkish, Vietnamese and Ukrainian. In March 2011, short-wave transmission will cease in Hindi, Indonesian, Kyrgyz, Nepali, Swahili and the Great Lakes service (for Rwanda and Burundi).

Instead there will be more focus on online, mobile and TV content distribution in these languages. "It is simply that there is a need to make savings due to the scale of the cuts to the BBC World Service's grant-in-aid funding from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office," BBC global news director Peter Horrocks explained about the cuts.

Last October the government announced the BBC would take over the cost of the World Service from the Foreign Office from 2014. In a written statement to MPs, Foreign Secretary William Hague said the World Service had a "viable and promising future," but was "not immune from public spending constraints."

"These ferocious cuts to a valued national service are ultimately the responsibility of the coalition government, whose policies are destroying quality public services in the UK," Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), said. The NUJ is planning to hold a demonstration outside the World Service headquarters in central London on Wednesday.

The service, which started broadcasting in 1932, currently costs £272 million ($431 million) a year and has an audience of 241 million worldwide across radio, television and online.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2011-01-27