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| Home Front: Economy |
| BBC shuts websites to assist charter renewal pitch |
| 2004-12-25 |
| The BBC is closing a string of successful websites, in order to reinvest the money in projects that have a clearer public service focus. It will announce today that its network of sites, which are hugely successful but continually provoke complaints from commercial rivals, will be slimmed down to help make the case for charter renewal. In an interview with the Guardian, the BBC director of new media and technology, Ashley Highfield, said that he was planning to save £6m, a tenth of the corporation's annual online spend, by closing sites that cost too much and aped commercial rivals; there are likely to be consequent job losses. Among site closed will be one devoted to US sport, and one on local history deemed poor value for money. A cult TV and film site devoted to shows such as The Simpsons and Buffy will be pruned to concentrate on upcoming BBC shows like Dr Who. And the funding for the wide-ranging BBC Lifestyle site, which covers everything from parenting to antiques, will also be cut substantially. On its network of local Where I Live sites, the BBC will promise to reduce duplication and work more closely with online rivals such as regional newspapers. "In order to free up the required funding we must start to behave more like television and radio, decommissioning sites or cutting back on funding, or even archiving them as circumstances change," said Mr Highfield, whose new media department was one of those recently earmarked by the director general, Mark Thompson, to move to Manchester... |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |