David Morrissey may not be in the ’s management chain, but his name now sits in the same story as 550 job cuts: the corporation has begun the first stage of a £500m savings plan that will run over the next two years. For staff in news, radio and TV, the announcement turns a broad efficiency drive into a set of real timetable changes.
550 jobs are going in the first wave, with 200 of those in the news division, where the savings are expected to reach £25m. Matt Brittin said the cuts are part of a wider reduction of around 1,800 to 2,000 jobs, and in an email to staff he said: “The scale of savings requires tough choices, careful work and won't all be ready at once.”
Jonathan Munro’s news changes
Jonathan Munro set out the sharpest changes inside News: The World Tonight is set to end, and the number of permanent Today presenters will fall from five to four from September. Amol Rajan is due to leave then, and One’s Breakfast will no longer be shown on Sunday morning, with viewers on Sunday morning seeing the News Channel instead.
Several other programmes are also on the way out over the next year, including Midnight News, Money Box Live, AntiSocial, The Law Show and Crossing Continents. On the World Service, The Inquiry, The Conversation and The Fifth Floor will end, while weeknight audiences on Radio 4 will hear a domestic bulletin at 22:00 followed by a simulcast of Newshour in a new slot from April.
One and Radio 4
Some TV production at weekends will be shared across the News Channel and One bulletins, and there will be a review of the chief news presenter roles to balance audience needs with best value for money. The production teams behind Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg and Newsnight will merge, which points to a less duplicated news operation rather than a straight across-the-board cut.
5 Live Weekend Breakfast will become a two-hour programme, another sign that the is trimming live output rather than only cancelling individual titles. That is the practical shape of this round: fewer presenters, fewer separate production teams and more shared output across services that used to run in parallel.
Philippa Childs and 2027
Philippa Childs said the timing was “far from ideal” because the is cutting jobs at the same time as charter renewal, and she said she was not sure how informed decisions could be made when the will be “in a substantially diminished place at the end of the process than the beginning.” That friction matters because the next round of savings will be set out in the months ahead, including in corporate divisions where about 700 roles are expected to close.
This is the part staff will read first: the is not just shaving costs, it is rewriting how news and radio are staffed, presented and shared before the current charter expires in 2027.
