The BBC announced a plan of up to 2,000 redundancies to cut its budget

The redundancies, announced during a call with staff, are the biggest in more than a decade at the BBC. They aim to cut the annual budget, which amounts to $677 million (£500 million), by 10%.

Davies explained that the reductions are due to inflation, pressures on license fees and commercial revenues, and a turbulent global economy.

The BBC said earlier this year that it was facing “substantial financial pressures” and wanted to cut about a tenth of its budget by 2029. most of the cuts will be carried out in the next fiscal year, which begins on April 1, 2027.

“I know this creates real uncertainty, but we wanted to be transparent about the challenge,” interim CEO Rhodri Talfan Davies said in an email to staff.

On its website, the BBC estimated that the redundancies will be “between 1,800 and 2,000 – or at least one in ten jobs.” They estimate that the full-time workforce currently amounts to 21,500 employees.

“For the public, the task ahead of us over the next three or four months is to find a way to make those changes without damaging the services that we know are vital to the BBC across radio, television and the internet,” Davies said in an interview with BBC Radio 4.

Philippa Childs, union president broadcasting, described the cuts as “devastating for the staff and for the BBC as a whole.” He said employees are under “considerable pressure” from previous waves of layoffs and called for a change in financing methods so that the chain does not face “gradual agony.”

For her part, the UK’s Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, Lisa Nandy, said: “The BBC, like every institution, every part of government, is having to make difficult decisions. That is something the BBC management takes very seriously, including exploring commercial options plus other ways to increase revenue.”

The cuts were announced as former Google executive Matt Brittin is expected to arrive as CEO next month.

Brittin will fill the vacancy left after Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness resigned over misleading editing of a documentary about US President Donald Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, before his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington.

Trump sued the BBC for $10 billion for defamation.

The BBC is a much loved and often criticized cultural institution, financed by an annual license feewhich recently rose to £180 ($244), paid for by all UK households that watch live TV or any BBC content.

Opponents of the canon, including rival commercial broadcasters, have become louder in an era of digital streaming, when many people no longer own televisions or follow traditional television schedules.

The centre-left Labor government has pledged to ensure the BBC has “sustainable and fair” funding, but has not ruled out replacing the license fee with another funding model.

The BBC was founded in 1922 as a radio service to “inform, educate and entertain”. It currently operates 15 national and regional television channels in the United Kingdom, several international channels, 10 national radio stations, dozens of local radio stations, the World Service radio service with global reach and extensive digital production, including the iPlayer streaming service.