Pesanti tagli al BBC World Service, onde corte quasi off

Mezzo migliaio di posti di lavoro tagliati. Cinque servizi (e lingue) chiusi: albanese, macedone, serbo, portoghese per l'Africa, inglese per i Caraibi. Altri sette servizi tra cui il vietnamita o il mandarino (ma il cantonese rimane) chiudono le emissioni radiofoniche per focalizzarsi su tv, mobile (mobile?) e online (a parte il russo che via Internet verrà diffuso in audio)… Spegnimento delle onde medie (gli storici 648 kHz per l'Europa occidentale finiscono a marzo) e drammatica riduzione delle onde corte che spegneranno tra marzo 2011 e 2014. Dovrebbe restare qualcosa in somalo e burmese, a parte le emissioni in inglese che però già oggi non sono più rivolte verso l'Europa.

Noi appassionati di ascolto internazionale, sulle onde corte, della radio ce lo aspettavamo ma la prima impressione dopo il comunicato stampa relativo alle misure di contenimento dei costi per il BBC World Service è quella di un servizio avviato al totale smantellamento. Certamente è finito un modello che ha retto per circa mezzo secolo. Le antenne dei servizi in onde corte delle grandi democrazie occidentali e più in generale delle potenze mondiali e regionali rappresentavano un'intera strategia diplomatica, erano la voce ufficiale e multilingue delle grandi amministrazioni, facevano informazione e promozione turistica, promuovevano l'export. Nei lunghi anni della Guerra Fredda molte di queste antenne svolgevano un ruolo fondamentale di supplenza, andavano a riempire vuoti di informazione e critica interna, cercavano - come si dice oggi - di esportare democrazia, ma per davvero. E a parte qualche eccesso retorico non lasciavano sul terreno una sola vittima.

Oggi per fare le stesse cose ci sono altri modi, c'è Internet, c'è la televisione satellitare, i ripetitori locali in FM. Personalmente dubito che l'insieme di queste alternative consentano gli stessi livelli di efficienza rispetto a una intelligente rete di ripetitori in onde corte di media potenza sparsi per il globo, magari associati all'uso di efficienti ed economicissimi ricevitori di concezione moderna. Ma la mia idea non è condivisa dagli amministratori che hanno deciso il taglio di risorse al BBC World Service, destinato a partire dal 2014 a sopravvivere solo con le provvigioni ricavate dal canone televisivo e privato quindi del budget sostanzioso che arrivava dal Foreign Office. Se la radio non serve più per fare diplomazia, dev'essere stato il ragionamento, tanto vale spegnerla. Ma spegnere la radio non è anche un po' oscurare una parte del nostro e dell'altrui cervello?

World Service changes

26 January 2011

The BBC is today announcing large scale and significant changes to BBC World Service. These changes have been fully considered and approved by the BBC Trust.

As part of the new licence fee settlement agreed with the Government last autumn, the World Service will be funded from the licence fee from 2014. This was agreed on the basis that there are valuable synergies between the World Service and the rest of the BBC and the fact that it helps to deliver the BBC's public purposes.

In the period up to 2014 the World Service continues to be funded by the Government through a grant from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Today's announcement reflects the financial settlement reached with the Government as part of the recent Comprehensive Spending Review, which sees the level of Government funding available for the World Service reduced by 16 per cent. The revised strategy for the World Service will see the closure of five language services and changes to many parts of the World Service's operation. The Trust believes that, although difficult, these changes are necessary in light of the funding situation.

Under the terms of the Agreement that the BBC has with the Government, the closure of the language services was jointly approved by the BBC Trust and the Foreign Secretary. Exceptionally the BBC Trust has agreed to release a limited amount of licence fee funding over the next two years to meet the restructuring costs that will help ensure a smooth transition over to the BBC in 2014. This will require a change to the BBC Agreement and the Trust is now working with the Government to bring this into effect.

BBC Trust Chairman Sir Michael Lyons said:

"Today is a difficult day for the World Service, which we want to ensure continues to be the most authoritative, quality broadcaster of news and information around the world. But we have no choice other than to live within the reduced Government grant. Our aim is to help the World Service continue to support the BBC's international role by ensuring it adapts to the changing needs of its audience within a more constrained public spending environment. As part of that the Trust has approved the closure of five language services."

BBC World Service cuts language services and radio broadcasts to meet tough Spending Review settlement

Date: 26.01.2011

BBC World Service gave details of its response to a cut to its Grant-in-Aid funding from the UK's Foreign & Commonwealth Office today.

BBC World Service is to carry out a fundamental restructure in order to meet the 16 per cent savings target required by the Government's Spending Review of 20 October last year.

To ensure the 16 per cent target is achieved and other unavoidable cost increases are met BBC World Service is announcing cash savings of 20 per cent over the next three years. This amounts to an annual saving of £46m by April 2014, when Grant-in-Aid funding comes to an end as BBC World Service transfers to television licence fee funding, agreed as part of the domestic BBC's licence fee settlement announced on the same day.

In the first year, starting in April 2011, the international broadcaster will be making savings of £19m on this year's operating expenditure of £236.7m (2010/11).

The changes include:

• five full language service closures;
• the end of radio programmes in seven languages, focusing those services on online and new media content and distribution;
• a phased reduction from most short wave and medium wave distribution of remaining radio services.

BBC Global News Director Peter Horrocks said: "This is a painful day for BBC World Service and the 180 million people around the world who rely on the BBC's global news services every week. We are making cuts in services that we would rather not be making. But the scale of the cut in BBC World Service's Grant-in-Aid funding is such that we couldn't cope with this by efficiencies alone.

"What won't change is the BBC's aim to continue to be the world's best known and most trusted provider of high quality impartial and editorially independent international news. We will continue to bring the BBC's expertise, perspectives and content to the largest worldwide audience, which will reflect well on Britain and its people."

BBC World Service also plans spending reductions and efficiencies across the board, targeted in particular in support areas where there will be average cuts of 33 per cent.

BBC World Service also expects to generate additional savings from the new ways of working after the move to the BBC's London headquarters at Broadcasting House in 2012, and also by the transfer of BBC World Service to television licence fee funding in April 2014.

Under these proposals 480 posts are expected to close over the next year.

By the time the BBC World Service moves in to the licence fee in 2014/15 we anticipate the number of proposed closures to reach 650. Some of these closures may be offset by new posts being created during this period.

It is expected that audiences will fall by more than 30 million from the current weekly audience of 180 million as a result of the changes this year.

The changes have been approved by the BBC Trust, the BBC Executive and, in relation to closure of services, The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, William Hague, as he is required to do under the terms of the BBC's agreement with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The changes in detail are:

Full language service closures

There will be the complete closure of five language services – Albanian, Macedonian, Portuguese for Africa and Serbian languages; as well as the English for the Caribbean regional service.

End of radio programming

BBC World Service will cease all radio programming – focusing instead, as appropriate, on online, mobile and television content and distribution – in the following languages: Azeri, Mandarin Chinese (note that Cantonese radio programming continues), Russian (save for some programmes which will be distributed online only), Spanish for Cuba, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Ukrainian.

Reductions in short wave and medium wave radio distribution

There will be a phased reduction in medium wave and short wave throughout the period.

English language short wave and medium wave broadcasts to Russia and the Former Soviet Union are planned to end in March 2011. The 648 medium wave service covering Western Europe and south-east England will end in March 2011. Listeners in the UK can continue to listen on DAB, digital television and online. Those in Europe can continue to listen online or direct to home free-to-air satellite via Hotbird and UK Astra. By March 2014, short wave broadcasts of the English service could be reduced to two hours per day in Africa and Asia.

BBC World Service will cease all short wave distribution of its radio content in March 2011 in: Hindi, Indonesian, Kyrgyz, Nepali, Swahili and the Great Lakes service (for Rwanda and Burundi). These radio services will continue to be available for audiences by other means of distribution such as FM radio (direct broadcasts and via partners); online; mobiles and other new media devices.

Short wave broadcasts in remaining languages other than English are expected to end by March 2014 with the exception of a small number of "lifeline" services such as Burmese and Somali.

English language programmes

There will be a new schedule for World Service English language programming – a focus on four daily news titles (BBC Newshour, BBC World Today, BBC World Briefing, and BBC World Have Your Say); and a new morning programme for Africa. There will be a new daily edition of From Our Own Correspondent; and an expansion of the interactive World Have Your Say programme.

There will be a reduction from seven to five daily pre-recorded "non-news" programmes on the English service. This includes the loss of one of the four weekly documentary strands. Some programmes will be shortened. Titles such as Politics UK, Europe Today, World Of Music, Something Understood, Letter From…, and Crossing Continents will all close. There will also be the loss of some correspondent posts.

Audience reduction

Audiences will fall by more than 30 million as a result of the changes announced on 26 January 2011. Investments in new services are planned in order to offset further net audience losses resulting from additional savings in the 2012-14 period.

Professional Services

There will be a substantial reduction in an already tight overhead budget. Teams in Finance, HR, Business Development, Strategy, Marketing and other administrative operations will face cuts averaging 33 per cent.

Job losses

Under these proposals 480 posts would be declared redundant; of these 26 posts are currently unfilled vacancies. BBC World Service is proposing to open 21 new posts. Therefore the net impact of these proposed changes could result in up to 433 posts being closed this financial year against a total staff number of 2400.

By the time the BBC World Service moves in to the licence fee in 2014/15 we anticipate the number of proposed closures to reach up to 650. Some of these closures may be offset by new posts being created during this period.

Notes

BBC World Service is currently an international multimedia broadcaster delivering 32 language and regional services, including: Albanian, Arabic, Azeri, Bengali, Burmese, Cantonese, English, English for Africa, English for the Caribbean, French for Africa, Hausa, Hindi, Indonesian, Kinyarwanda/Kirundi, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mandarin, Nepali, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese for Africa, Portuguese for Brazil, Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Somali, Spanish for Latin America, Swahili, Tamil, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, and Vietnamese.

It uses multiple platforms to reach its weekly audience of 180 million globally, including shortwave, AM, FM, digital satellite and cable channels. Its news sites, which received 7.5 million weekly visitors in November 2010, include audio and video content and offer opportunities to join the global debate. It has around 2,000 partner radio stations which take BBC content, and numerous partnerships supplying content to mobile phones and other wireless handheld devices. For more information, visit bbcworldservice.com. For a weekly alert about BBC World Service programmes, sign up for the BBC World Agenda e-guide at bbcworldservice.com/eguide.

BBC World Service is part of BBC Global News. BBC Global News brings together BBC World Service – funded by Grant-in-Aid by the UK Government; the commercially funded BBC World News television channel and the BBC's international facing online news services in English; BBC Monitoring – which is funded by stakeholders led by the Cabinet Office, and a range of public and private clients; and BBC World Service Trust – the BBC's international development charity which uses donor funding. No licence fee funds are currently used in any of these operations.

BBC World Service Press Office