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Britain
BBC takes over World Service funding
2010-10-22
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] The BBC warned of "difficult choices" ahead after the government confirmed today that the broadcaster will take over the funding of the World Service from the foreign ministry.

Finance minister George Osborne said the BBC would pay for the World Service and the BBC unit monitoring foreign media, plus part-fund the Welsh-language channel S4C. The moves will save the government 340 million pounds (539 million dollars) a year by 2014-2015.
I seem to recall that's functionally a 16% cut in BBC funding, if one includes the previous budgets of the absorbed units, for the same amount of work. No doubt it was explained to the BBC that they would be able to cut overlapping overhead.
In return, the BBC licence fee, which every British householder must pay to watch television and listen to radio, will be frozen for six years at 145.50 pounds (Sh18,000) a year.

Until now, the World Service has been funded by the Foreign Office because of its role as a provider of predominantly radio news in English and 31 languages around the world.

Mr Osborne, said: "This deal helps almost every family and is equivalent to a 16 per cent saving in the BBC budget over the period, similar to the savings in other major cultural institutions."

He added: "The BBC also agreed to reduce its online spend and make no further encroachments into local media markets."

BBC director-general Mark Thompson hailed the freezing of the licence fee as a "realistic deal in exceptional circumstances." Broadcasting workers' union Bectu accused the corporation of "throwing in the towel" by agreeing to the deal, having already voiced fears of a fresh round of job cuts as a result of the decision to freeze the licence fee.
Posted by:Fred

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