Thousands to lose jobs in BBC bid to save $860m

LONDON: One in seven jobs will be slashed at the British Broadcasting Corporation as the world's biggest public broadcaster sheds 3780 staff in a cost-cutting drive.

BBC, which employs more than 27,000 people in Britain and around the world, said it would slash 2050 posts, after 1730 job losses confirmed earlier this month, in what it termed its "toughest period" in memory.

The cuts would bring savings of pound stg. 355million ($860million) a year to reinvest in programs -- pound stg. 35million more than first targeted by the BBC in December. The figure amounts to 880 more job cuts than the 2900 the BBC announced when it disclosed a massive reorganisation and modernisation overhaul in December.

Among the redundancies announced yesterday would be 420 posts in news, 66 in sport, 150 in drama, entertainment and children's programs, 735 in the regions, 58 in new media and 424 in factual and learning.

BBC director Mark Thompson told staff the cuts were "a difficult and painful process, but necessary". "This is all money we plan to spend on programs and content, both to improve the services we deliver to audiences right now and to build strong BBC services in the future," he said. "We are going through the toughest period any of us can remember."

The broadcaster said the elimination of 3780 jobs amounted to 19per cent of the workforce in Britain, or almost 14per cent of the corporation's staff worldwide.

The BBC -- which draws most of its pound stg. 2.8billion annual revenue from a yearly licence fee of pound stg. 121 levied on all British homes with a television set -- suffered a deficit of pound stg. 249million in the fiscal year 2003-04. Planned changes will mean the news departments will need to do some things differently and in many areas will have less money to spend, an internal memo said.

Despite the cuts, about pound stg. 1million will be spent next year on creating an investigations unit in Manchester, northwest England, and a new fund to enhance the coverage of major stories.

Journalists who will be leaving because of the cuts were told they had done nothing wrong.

"All of you have contributed to our success over the years. However, in a rapidly moving media industry, change is inevitable, though none of us underestimate how painful it can be," the memo said.

Union leaders will meet later this week to decide how to respond to the cuts, but have already warned they will ballot staff for industrial action if there are any compulsory redundancies.

Luke Crawley, an official with the broadcasting workers' union Bectu, was shocked by the announcement. "This is the worst day in the BBC's history," he said.