Former BBC news chief Roger Mosey has warned against a cost-cutting merger of the BBC News channel with its global service, BBC World News, dubbing it a “needless act of self-harm”.
Mosey said a combined offering would risk UK viewers missing out on important domestic stories and “massively reduce the quality of the service that we’ve become used to”.
Writing in the Radio Times, Mosey said viewers were already confused by a partial merger of the two channels outside of peak time, with audiences down as much as 10% for those timeslots.
The BBC is considering replacing the two existing services with a single 24-hour news channel as part of plans to save £80m in BBC News, as the corporation as a whole looks to save an estimated £800m by 2021-22 following last year’s funding settlement with the government.
“If you know there’s a big story happening in the UK and you want to check the latest at 9pm on the BBC News Channel, it’s puzzling to find that it’s often not in the headlines,” said Mosey, the BBC’s former head of TV News and ex-2012 Olympics supremo.
“Similarly, if you want to watch the bulletin at midnight, it’s surprising to find that it’s co-presented from Singapore as a breakfast show for the Far East.
“This is on top of the spreading across the schedule of some curious half-hour programmes that seem to be targeted at people in hotel rooms in Nairobi.”
Mosey said “hammering” the two channels together at first “seems like a nifty option. But in reality it would massively reduce the quality of the service that we’ve become used to.
“If a more internationally facing channel sounds attractive, wait until it provides scant coverage of flooding in Cumbria, underplays a post-referendum political earthquake at Westminster or ignores a sporting triumph for a home nation at the Euros or Olympics.
“These aren’t of interest to the global, commercial audience being sought by World News. And already UK viewers are drifting away from the international hours that have sneaked into the news channel’s evening schedule, with some figures reportedly down 10% or more.”
Of the shift to on-demand viewing and online news, Mosey said it would be “daft to be overly reverential about a tailored online experience for individuals, when the BBC’s great strength is its ability to unite the people of Britain with broadcasting moments that we share together.
“That includes television news. Millions of people turn instinctively to the BBC News Channel when there’s a big breaking story. Those viewers want to be guided by presenters they trust, such as Emily Maitlis and Simon McCoy. They want the main stories put in order by an intelligent editor, rather than thrown at them randomly by social media.”
Mosey, now the master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, added: “Obviously, the BBC can’t provide everything that everyone wants at a time when money is tight.
“But a high-quality continuous television news and analysis service targeted at the UK is a reasonable expectation from the licence fee, especially in these challenging times. To weaken it deliberately would be a needless act of self-harm.”
The BBC has also looked at a potential merger of BBC Radio 5 Live with local radio as part of its BBC News cost-saving proposals.
The BBC News channel costs £63m a year, but much of its news gathering is used elsewhere in the BBC. Newsgathering in total is the biggest single cost in the whole department.
Radio 5 Live employs fewer people but has a similar annual budget – £66m – because of the high cost of sports rights.
