BBC News and Current Affairs cuts

[aeolium]

An intemperate insider comments on the latest wave of BBC cuts in news and current affairs programmes in this NS article:

http://www.newstatesman.com/media-mole/2014/07/barmy-bbc-cuts-panorama-reporters-go-crap-bbc-buzzfeed-stays

To the list of BBC departments that should be cut instead of news and current affairs I would add the one devoted to producing tiresome TV and radio trails which now infest BBC broadcasting.

It's sad to see a formerly well-respected institution lose its way like this, and there's no doubt that Hall has been handed a poisoned legacy by his immediate predecessors, but you might have hoped he would have had the courage to stand up to protect serious and valuable broadcasting rather than the trivial and ephemeral.

[french frank]

You do wonder where the BBC's priorities now lie when they cut the news department so savagely.

Then there was the fiasco of 'saving money' by cutting messageboards, and promptly setting up Facebook and Twitter accounts: they may be 'free' but the time of the Radio 3 staff who maintain them isn't free. Perhaps they could do it with fewer people and redeploy the staff on something useful (keeping the R3 website in a decent state, for example). Fb and Twitter are only alternative forms of programme trails, but they still make the programme trails as well.