The leaks were right – the BBC’s website, along with the corporation’s once-grand multiplatform outlook, is about to get a lot smaller, in a radical retreat from several areas of media.
Putting Quality First, a strategic review drawn up to redirect £600 million a year and compete less with commercial operators, proposes cutting the corporation’s annual online budget and staff by 25 percent by 2013 – amongst many downsizing measures.
BBC Online will undergo a “full rationalisation” that will see it focus only on “quality” content (so what was it doing before??) and that allied to broadcast output. There will also be more links to commercial operators’ sites – a pledge that has already been stated and restated over the years.
Here are online highlights cribbed direct from the full review…
Many of the sites the BBC wants to close … have already been closed…
Some sites that are currently live will be closed, such as /celebdaq, /sportdaq, /naturestop40, /lastmillionaire, /jamiekane, /bbcpartners, /openweekend, /actingup, /amiafreak
- A number of sites that have already been