Are the World Service cuts being reconsidered? (Including revised dates)
Three weeks ago today, severe cuts were announced to the World Service which included the closure of five language services and the removal of radio services for huge swathes of the world, along with the closure of most short wave transmitters. The cuts mean that the predominant broadcast medium will become the internet for the audience which remains – conservative estimates put the immediate drop in audience figures at 30million, or around 11% of the total.
The cuts were announced in the week when the uprising in Egypt started, and the government blocked internet access across the country. Last week, the BBC Persian TV service was jammed (as it is regularly) as a response to the rolling coverage of the protests in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in the middle-east.
Then, half-way through Radio 4’s PM programme on 11th February, Eddie mair teased us by suggesting the cuts by be reconsidered by William Hague – but giving no further information (Play audio to the right):
Then today, Peter Horrocks sent an all-staff email confirming the dates of closures of the services:
- 25th Feb: Portuguese for Africa and Serbian services close; Mundo (Spanish for South America) service ceases radio transmissions.
- 28th Feb: Albanian service closes.
- 4th Mar: Macedonian service closes.
- 25th Mar: Carribbean service closes; Chinese service ceases radio transmissions; Short Wave transmissions in Indonesian and Azeri stop broadcasting.
- 26th Mar: Vietnamese service ceases radio transmissions; Medium Wave radio services in Russian cease broadcasting.
- 27th Mar: Short wave transmissions in Indonesian, Kyrgyz, Nepali, Swahili, Kinyarwandan (African Great Lakes region) and Hindi; European short wave English-language transmission on 648Khz ceases; Medium Wave radio services in Russian cease broadcasting.
(Amended following a correction email sent on 18th February – Russian SW transmissions cease one day earlier than originally announced; Indonesian SW ceases two days earlier than planned; and the decision to cease Short Wave transmissions to The Great Lakes has been reversed “to maintain the service to the refugee audience in displaced persons camps in the DR Congo and elsewhere which does not have access to our FM distribution”.)
I don’t know about other staff, but I was shocked with the speed of closures: the first one will happen in 9 days from today – just 30 days after the announcements were made.
Of course this causes issues with the notice period of 6 months required for staff being made redundant, to cover both consultation and the contractual notice. The solution comes in a separate paragraph of Peter’s email (my emphasis):
I want to reiterate what I said in January that the decision to close services was the hardest part of the Spending Review process and I want to thank staff from these services for the quality of their work, their commitment to audiences and for the impact they have had in the countries they have broadcast in. Although these services will be stopping transmission, members of staff from these services will still be in employment until at least 1 August, unless they have requested to leave earlier.
So, the BBC will keep paying staff but will remove their jobs, in effect leaving them with nothing to do. Some staff could temporarily transfer from radio to, say, online teams – but this doesn’t apply to the five closures, which will be left with absolutely no presence or representation – even online – from the World Service. I guess some of these could move to work in the English-language parts of the operation, but this too is facing cuts in budgets and staff.
This could be the strongest sign yet that there may be further negotiations and these cuts could be reversed. It makes no sense to shut services but retain staff on full pay. There may be a small cost associated with keeping programmes broadcasting – telephone calls, contributor fees, the cost of distribution – but this is small fry compared to the value of keeping programmes broadcasting until the notice period is up. The studios will sit empty and unused, in effect actually costing the BBC in terms of lost productivity. (I was once told that every dustbin-sized section of floor space at Bush House costs the BBC £1 a year. Multiply this by four blocks, each of 10 floors, and the actual footprint of the building size, this must equal tens of millions of pounds a year, especially given Bush House’s location).
Peter happily signs off his email with this:
I will be out of the country from tomorrow [17th February] until Tuesday 2 March.
By the time he returns, three services will have closed entirely, another will be web-only, and a further service will have two days left.
Happy holidays?
