The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is itself not immune from the current downturn and has announced the need to cut four posts, as part of plans to save the union £500,000 a year.
National broadcasting organiser, Paul McLaughlin, will take voluntary redundancy, and be replaced by Sue Harris, who currently handles the magazines, books and PR sectors.
One admin position in Ireland is to go and the role of research and information organiser.
Further to news that a staff ballot among NUJ members at ITV would be held after the announcement of 1,000 job losses, the NUJ has issued this release:
“An NUJ strike ballot at ITV Regional News has been called off after union members voted to accept a new agreement with the company over planned cutbacks.
“The new agreement includes further incentives for those people choosing to take voluntary redundancy, as well as a commitment to push back the threat of compulsory redundancies to at least the end of January. This should allow time for further talks in the hope that the number of compulsory redundancies can be pushed down to zero,” the release said.
“There are still concerns around the massive cuts that are being proposed”, said NUJ Broadcasting Organiser Paul McLaughlin, “but we now have an agreement that allows the space for further talks to continue. We also continue to press our case with Ofcom to protect regional news on ITV.”
The BBC’s executive directors’ pay rose by £708,000 in 2007/8 with pay for the 10 directors totalling £4,960,000, according to figures from the corporation’s annual report.
Jana Bennett, director of BBC Vision, received a bonus of £41,000, while outgoing director of Future Media & Technology Ashley Highfield received £34,000. Director general Mark Thompson rejected the offer of an annual bonus.
Both the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and BECTU have challenged the rises in light of 2,500 proposed job cuts at the corporation announced in October.
“Management should have the decency to show restraint at a time when so many BBC staff are under huge pressures following major cutbacks. This announcement will only serve to disillusion staff further,” Paul McLaughlin, NUJ broadcasting organiser, said in a statement from the union.
Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, reiterated the need to improve the management structure of bbc.co.uk before approving further investment. In May the site’s management was blamed for losing ‘effective control’ after a £36 million overspend.
More figures from the report:
BBC Worldwide
Analysis of BBC Worldwide (part of the annual report and separate reviews released) emphasised the importance of online in growing its global audience. The service’s online audience rose 34 per cent year-on-year. However, the review highlighted the failure of Spanish-language site BBC Mundo to meet the demands of increased internet access.
The launch of BBC Arabic came in for particular praise in the review, creating ‘trimedia’ BBC coverage in Arabic:
“With the launch of BBC Arabic television, our multimedia strategy took a giant step forward. That moment in March 2008 marked the successful culmination of a four-year journey to secure funding and deliver a high-quality television service in a vital region of the world.”
Online revenues accounted for 2.7 per cent of total sales for BBC Worldwide in 2007/8 – rising from 1.1 per cent previously, the report said. The creation of bbc.com and syndication deals with YouTube and iTunes were cited as key revenue drivers for the service.