Who will be exterminated as the Beeb slices back?

Mark Thompson is opposed to across-the-board cuts as he tries to cope with his £2bn shortfall. But the BBC Trust may have other ideas, says Tim Luckhurst
Published: 24 June 2007
Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, had a tricky time on Wednesday. He met the BBC Trust, the corporation's governing body, to discuss how to cut expenditure by £2bn without compromising the quality of the BBC's output.
Thompson presented the BBC Trust with a "menu of options" on how to refashion the corporation in light of its lower-than-expected licence fee. Forced to face the future with £2bn less than he wanted, he invited trustees to choose from a set of unpleasant possibilities.
Ostensibly, these include cutting entire services, making thousands more staff redundant, slashing expenditure on lowbrow daytime television shows and slicing budgets across the corporation. Headline proposals include merging the six and 10 o'clock news on BBC 1 with the rolling news channel BBC News 24, and making fewer hours of original dramas like Dr Who, Torchwood and Hustle.
Sources close to Thompson explain that what the Trust chooses to allow will become "the six-year plan for the BBC" and define the pros- pects for licence-fee renewal in 2013. They fear that if money is not used to maximum effect, the fragmentation of audiences promoted by multi-channel digital broadcasting may push viewer share below the level required to justify a compulsory universal fee.
Thompson hinted at his own preferences when he appeared before the House of Lords communications committee on 13 June. He said he was opposed to a crude budget cut applied uniformly across departments: "You don't want a single salami-sliced percentage of targets."
The BBC has cut overheads by 8.5 per cent per annum in recent years. Some 3,800 staff have been made redundant and nearly 7,000 have left in total. Now Thompson is determined to slow the exodus. He told the committee: "I don't believe over the next six years we'll be talking about reductions of that scale."
The DG and his team have set themselves the priority of maintaining quality. A source explains: "At the top end of the TV market - things like original drama and important outside broadcasts - we may have to do fewer things better." The same logic applies to news where the BBC is determined to protect agenda-setting shows such as Newsnight and Radio 4's Today, but prepared to "stop some things" in less prestigious areas.
A senior insider says: "The DG thinks there are basically three types of television: top end, niche and a big swathe of programmes that are neither." The suggestion is that the third category, including chat shows, quizzes and imports, face the biggest spending cuts if Thompson gets his way. But will he?
Sir Michael Lyons, the chairman of the BBC Trust, which replaced the board of governors in January, was not the BBC's preferred candidate for the job. His closeness to government - he has carried out three reviews for Gordon Brown - comes with a total lack of broadcast experience. Now he and his fellow trustees hold the BBC's future in their hands.
They cannot be expected simply to endorse the DG's strategy, because the Trust is much more than the old BBC governors with a new name. The usual role of the governors was to defend BBC management against criticism from government, press and public. The trustees are required to act as the "eyes, ears and views of the licence fee payer".
Part of their remit is to ensure the BBC remains a strong, mass-audience broadcaster, producing programmes that appeal to every type of licence payer. But they are also part of a new system of oversight that gives media regulator Ofcom power over the BBC. The idea is that Ofcom protects the market, preventing the corporation from trampling on commercial rivals, while the Trust defends the public interest.
Thompson believes the corporation can benefit from this twin-track system. Commercial broadcasters are no longer prepared to treat it as a benign fixture on the British landscape, and competition for audiences has never been more ferocious. Against this background, he says, tough, transparent scrutiny offers better protection than the previous cosy arrangement.
But if the system is right in principle, it is much harder to manage. Senior BBC sources say a DG approaching the governors on the subject of tough budgetary constraints would have expected them to back him. Thompson approached Wednesday's meeting with different assumptions and objectives. He had to find out what the Trust would accept before committing to firm proposals. "We need to know we are not going down a route the Trust will not contemplate," explains a well-placed source.
In its first six months, the Trust has done plenty to justify such caution. In March it suspended the free online-education service BBC Jam. Last month it expressed concern about two editions of Panorama - investigations into scientology and the health effects of wireless technology. Thompson sent tapes of both programmes to trustees for their further consideration.
"The director-general has to be a bit more of a game player under this structure," says Professor Steven Barnett of Westminster University. "At the same time, the Trust still needs to prove that it is not just a rubber stamp. Between them they are working out a modus operandi."
The Trustees are not simply deciding the nature of their relationship with BBC management. They must also determine their interpretation of the role entrusted to them by Parliament. What does defending the public interest mean when budgets must be cut? Clearly, trustees must help the BBC to live within its means, but should they also play an active part in highlighting the consequences?
Barnett believes the Trust must decide whether it is possible for the BBC to continue as a strong mass-audience broadcaster with the budget it has received. "Part of this is a bedding-in process," he explains "But it is not an ideal time for tension between the Trust and the DG."
Sir Michael will scrutinise Thompson's menu of options over the summer, leaving BBC staff to wait until September to learn the true scale of job losses. Among suggestions to emerge from BBC heads of department are scaling back foreign news bureaux and the complete integration of television, radio and online journalism.
These department chiefs were asked to think radically before submitting their proposals to Thompson's interim report to the trustees. Many have done so in the expectation that the BBC tradition of diluting bold ideas remains intact. Concern is growing that the trustees may adopt a more robust approach, accepting changes that their predecessors would have deemed unacceptable and perhaps even urging Thompson to go further.