BBC plans to scale back website and radio stations

By Neil Midgley Published: 7:30AM GMT twenty-seven February 2010

In a inform to be published subsequent week, director-general Mark Thompson will introduce that the digital air wave stations 6 Music and Asian Network should be closed. He will additionally contend that half of the pages on the BBC website should be abolished, with the websites bill of �112million a year being cut by twenty-five per cent. Spending on American imports will additionally be cut by twenty-five per cent, and spending on sports rights will be capped.

The moves come after a array of ban reports on wicked BBC spending. This week, the National Audit Office called for a "change of culture" at the BBC as it disclosed that the corporations �1billion-plus refurbishment of Broadcasting House in executive London will be delivered 4 years late and �110million over budget. Last month, the NAO used identical diction about the BBCs government of the budgets for coverage of large events such as the Olympic Games and the Glastonbury song festival, observant that the house indispensable to "adopt a some-more one after another approach".

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The new proposals will be seen as an try on the piece of Mr Thompson and BBC authority Sir Michael Lyons to spike the guns of any incoming Conservative government, that will be tempted to cut the BBCs funding. The shade enlightenment secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has pronounced that it will be "very formidable to ask for an enlarge in the looseness fee" when the stream six-year allotment ends in 2013.

The inform is the perfection of extreme discuss inside of the BBC about the spending priorities. One comparison programme-maker pronounced that "we need to stop spending income on ourselves, on projects similar to Broadcasting House and the move to Salford, and outlay some-more on content".

But yesterday [Fri] a BBC source validated the corporations joining to the web presence, but focusing on key paper areas such as news. "The destiny of the BBC is really most around digital and online, and this doesnt vigilance a shelter from that," pronounced the source. "What it does meant is a really difficult see at the stream activities and interlude you do a little things that are not core to the BBCs mission. It could be pronounced that a thousand flowering plants have bloomed online, so right away we right away need to be difficult with the gardening."

Mr Thompson will contend that the reforms will concede �600million a year of the BBCs �3.6billion looseness price income to be diverted to "higher peculiarity programming", such as British humerous entertainment and drama, news, and childrens programmes.

The BBC Trust will control a conference on the inform prior to commendatory the changes, that are expected not to take full outcome until the center of subsequent year.