Halfway house

Some worrying sums from BBC Director of News Fran Unsworth, on £80m savings required in her division (including apparently the done and dusted World Tonight/Newshour merger), in an interview for the Royal Television Society magazine.

“We’ve done half of it; we’ve got to find another £40m,” she says. “Not all in this year, but we might do it all in this year – we’re not sure. Certainly, a big chunk of it will hit the budget by April 2020.

“I think [viewers] will see it this time. We are looking at our whole operating model: is there anything we can do… through further efficiency… [through] more sharing of material across the board? But that’s always a difficult thing to achieve in the BBC, because we’ve got a lot of services – they all like to do their own thing.

“Actually, when we look across the piece, we think we could make the material go further across outlets. We’ll have something on that by June. I think there will be further programme announcements, too, probably. We’re not sure what they are yet… none of them have been signed off.”

And yet another News boss on the side of Newsnight: she says it's "on fine form… doubling its audience” under new editor Esme Wren. Show us the figures, Fran.