BBC News Savings Plans

We will be closing some linear programmes and making fewer editions of others

• On Radio 4, we will close these programmes during the next year: The World Tonight, the Midnight News, Money Box Live, AntiSocial, The Law Show and Crossing Continents. From April, weeknight audiences at 2200 will hear a domestic bulletin followed by a simulcast of our World Service programme, Newshour, running in a new time slot. This will cover the global news agenda for both the World Service and Radio 4 audiences, but also continue to feature major UK news stories.

• On the BBC World Service,The Inquiry, The Conversation and The Fifth Floor will also close by the end of the year.

• On BBC One, we will stop making the Sunday morning edition of BBC Breakfast from September this year. We will simulcast the BBC News Channel instead. 

• Also from this September we are moving Friday’s edition of Newsnight to a peak-time slot on BBC Two, building on the success of its refreshed format.
  
  
• 5 Live Weekend Breakfast will become a two-hour programme from April.

Bringing together production teams

• We propose to bring together the production teams of Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg and Newsnight. This won’t change the format of the existing programmes, but the combined team will have an enhanced focus on digital and social audiences.

• We are proposing to bring News Streaming into the team which makes the News at Six and Ten, ensuring the news bulletins – among the most-watched news programmes on BBC iPlayer – continue to evolve with a digital focus.

• We're also proposing to share some TV production at weekends across the News Channel and BBC One bulletins.

• We will build further on the News Channel’s audience growth outside the UK by tailoring its agenda more to an international focus. It will of course continue to reflect UK stories which are of interest to the rest of the world. These changes will allow us to pursue opportunities to raise more revenue from the News Channel’s global footprint.

We will review senior on-air roles

• Our news presenters have a unique relationship with our audiences. However, given the savings we need to make across the whole of BBC News, we are carrying out a review of our chief presenter roles. This is designed to ensure we have the right number of presenters, deployed as flexibly and efficiently as possible, to balance audience needs with best value for money. Similarly, we are reviewing the on-air editor roles in News Content. 

• From September, the Today programme will have a roster of four permanent presenters rather than five and will move to a single anchor format on Saturdays.

Changing the way we work to prioritise digital content

• In line with our refocused digital priorities, we are proposing to reduce the number of correspondents, producers, and reporters working on linear output within our Story Teams.

• We will be making greater use of mobile technology, meaning we’ll be using fewer crews to film stories.

Reviews and other changes

• We’re reviewing our planning and commissioning processes, to increase impact and reduce duplication.

• We’re working with Nations to minimise duplication between their teams and network news.
  
  
• In our new partnership with the Met Office, BBC Weather will be working more closely with colleagues across the BBC to be more local and digitally focussed. We will also explore closer collaboration between BBC Weather and our story team covering Climate and Science.

Working more globally

• The three-year financial settlement for the BBC World Service from the FCDO has given our Global department greater certainty over its funding, but we still need to make savings to operate within our available budget.
  
  
• We will be restructuring some of our services in Africa. We plan to close a small number of roles in Europe, removing vacant positions and again removing duplication.

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