The first cut is the deepest

It's going to be hard to keep a perspective on figures coming out of the BBC World Service today, especially with a headline that 650 posts are to close, and 480 of those will go this year. Boss Peter Horrocks, clearly emotional in announcing the cuts, came as close as possible to saying that the Foreign Office was saying one thing about protecting the service, whilst doing another.

Five services stop completely; another seven, including Russian, lose their radio output, but stay as online/mobile offerings. Short-wave transmissions to China stop, as do some to Africa.


It is worth looking back a little.  In 2001, the FCO grant-in-aid to the World Service was around £200m. The radio audience claimed was 153 million worldwide.  The following year direct shortwave transmissions to Europe, North America, Australasia and the Caribbean were dropped. By 2009/10, World Service annual income had grown to around £270m; the radio audience was still around 150m but the trend was sharply down; but WS investment in online and tv output allowed it to claim a multimedia audience of around 180m.  The forecast impact of these cuts is to reduce that multimedia audience to 150m. 

I'm told the cuts are even-handed between the language services and the English output, at least in terms of cuts to headcount, but as yet don't have the detail.