Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1180
- 1185)
WEDNESDAY 5 DECEMBER 2007
Ms Jenny Abramsky, Mr Mark Damazer and Mr Stephen
Mitchell
Q1180 Chairman:
Following up on Lady Bonham-Carter's question, I would like to
get it straight. You are currently spending £41 million on
radio journalism.
Mr Mitchell: Will you bear with me on the BBC's
budgetary processes? I pulled this together yesterday. This excludes
some factors. For instance, we share access to a common base of
news gathering which are the foreign correspondents, the bureaux
and everything. They work for everyone. That figure is not in
here. What I am trying to do is identify discrete, identifiable
radio journalism across the licence fee—
Q1181 Chairman:
But that would include the numbers who are employed and the running
costs?
Mr Mitchell: Indeed.
Q1182 Chairman:
Next year, you will be spending £42 million?
Mr Mitchell: Yes.1[1]
Q1183 Chairman:
What I was not quite clear on from your reply to Lady Bonham-Carter
was, how many journalists are you going to lose over, say, the
next five years?
Mr Mitchell: I think that the net result after
five years will probably go down from the domestic headcount I
gave you earlier which was about 542 to about 504 over five years.
Q1184 Chairman:
So, you are losing about 40 journalists in five years?
Mr Mitchell: Yes.
Q1185 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
On the matter on the duplication point, you are confident that
the individual programmes will be able to retain their own identities
and I am not here talking about the news bulletins?
Mr Mitchell: I am absolutely passionate that
the best way to make radio journalistic programmes—and our
team is a dedicated team—is to understand the slot in the
day and to understand the audience and, under this scheme, we
will keep those teams intact.
Ms Abramsky: I think it is partly the recognition
that we needed to do that which is one of the reasons why the
efficiencies that are being imposed on radio is at a different
level than across television.
Chairman: We could obviously go on all
morning on this but we have one of your competitors eagerly waiting
and patiently waiting to give evidence, so I think we had better
draw this to an end. There may be one or two points that we want
to follow up on what you have said and perhaps we could come back
into contact with you on that. Thank you very much. That was a
very informative session and we are very grateful to you for coming.
1 1 Postscript added by witness: £42 million is
made up of approx £12 million on tailored core news services
for Radios 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5 Live, 6 music and Asian Network +
£30 million on programmes such as Today, 5 Live or Newsbeat
on Radio 1. Back
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