THE BBC has "evaded tough decisions" and been "badly managed", broadcaster Stuart Cosgrove has said, after the corporation announced plans for sweeping cuts which will hit Scotland.
New director-general Matt Brittin has informed staff that up to 2000 jobs will be cut in the coming months to deliver £500 million of savings across the BBC – with a quarter of these set to come from the corporation's "news and nations" divisions.
In an email to staff just weeks after his appointment, the former Google executive said he wanted to provide "clarity" on his plans to make savings within the corporation.
He said the scale of savings "requires tough choices", with all parts of the BBC set to face cuts.
Further information on the changes will be revealed later in the year, but Brittin said his first cuts would come from the "News, Nations and Content" division, which includes BBC Scotland.
As well as cuts to jobs, Brittin said that commissioning spend across the division would be slashed by tens of millions of pounds.
Reacting to the news on The National podcast Cosgrove, who presents football show Off the Ball with Tam Cowan, said: "The BBC have, maybe, in the past, evaded the tough decisions."
Asked to expand on what the corporation could've done to avoid cuts of this scale, he went on: "I think one of the things I’d say, and it makes me hugely unpopular when I say this within the BBC, is that they’re not well managed. I don’t think it’s an organisation that’s had dynamic management."
Cosgrove, who used to work on Channel 4 as controller of arts and entertainment and then as head of programmes, spoke about how the model there was largely focused on a small core team of staff and other content was commissioned from independent suppliers.
He suggested the BBC have not looked broadly enough at different ways of creating content.
"The BBC have always protected their in-house staff even when the model itself is now looking creaky and quite old fashioned," he said.
BBC staff had been advised in April that the corporation faced its largest downsizing in two decades.
For BBC Scotland, the news comes after major controversy surrounding its decision to cancel several radio shows.
Tens of thousands of people signed a petition to reinstate The Iain Anderson Show, described as a "cultural lifeline" for Scottish music and culture.
Brittin added that he also expects 700 jobs to be cut in the BBC's corporate division.
Asked whether he had fears for BBC Scotland content and news coverage going forward, Cosgrove said the problems with the latter went deeper than just staffing issues.
"I feel the news service has suffered from another problem which is I don’t think is necessarily to do with staffing, it’s to do with editorial leadership," he said.
"Whether the BBC like it or not, Scotland now has a very long settled period for the constitutional issue – whether it should be independent or part of a union with the other nations of the issue – and when you look at that debate, frequently it’s 50% plus for independence. That is not reflected in the BBC’s output.
"Great news leadership would say 'let’s reflect the views of the country we live in, not the one we wish we lived in' and 'let’s not necessarily allow London to tell us what our news agenda is because the news agenda is to do with what Scottish licence fee payers pay'.
"It’s been something that has angered many generations of people and I think it’s actually gone too far now."
Speaking about people who refuse to pay the licence fee in Scotland, he said: "They don’t want to pay a licence fee for news coverage that doesn’t fairly reflect Scotland and I think the BBC have shot themselves in the foot with all of that."
In response to the announcement, the head of media and entertainment union Bectu, Philippa Childs, said it is “far from ideal” that the cuts are taking place at the same time as the BBC’s charter renewal.
She said that while cuts were “expected”, they would “still be devastating for the workforce and to the BBC as a whole”.
The BBC was approached by The National for further comment but did not provide one.
