Washington, January 26: The BBC announced that it would close down five foreign language services including Albanian, Macedonian, Portuguese for Africa and Serbian; as well as the English for the Caribbean regional service, and shortwave radio broadcasts as part of the overhaul.
The World Service is facing a 16 percent budget cut between now and 2014, imposed as part of the government’s comprehensive spending review.
“These closures are not a reflection on the performance of individual services or programs. It is simply that there is a need to make savings due to the scale of the cuts to the BBC World Service’s Grant-in-Aid funding from the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office and we need to focus our efforts in the languages where there is the greatest need and where we have the strongest impact”, said Peter Horrocks, the BBC’s global news director.
The number of job cuts unveiled by the BBC this week has increased to 1,000 after BBC Online announced 350 cuts on Monday.
The National Union of Journalists has called on Members of the Parliament (MPs) to conduct an urgent review of the changes, saying that it would do “irreparable damage” to the World Service.
“What will be announced … is nothing short of a tragedy,” said a union official, expressing hope that the MPs will fully support to stop “this act of vandalism”.
“The World Service as we know it today will not exist in a few months, let alone a few years. It really will be the worst day in the history of the World Service”, said one World Service staffer.
—-Agencies