BBC mulls laying off 1,000 employees

London, July 2: The BBC said on Thursday that it plans to cut 1,000 jobs, including management positions, in the light of a 150-million pound ($234 million) deficit in subscription revenues, Efe news agency reported.

BBC Director-General Tony Hall announced the measures to his staff at a meeting at the headquarters here, in which he said that many people no longer pay the fee to finance the BBC chain because they did not watch live television broadcasts.

In addition to the abolition of managerial posts at different levels of the station, other divisions will also be reduced.

Hall defended the move to "meet the financial challenges we face" and insisted that the goal was to provide viewers with quality programmes.

He added that the plan aimed to make the BBC "simpler" and "leaner".

Hall explained that income from the licence fee paid by viewers to watch the BBC would bring in about 150 million pounds less from 2016-17 than what was estimated back in 2011.

The reason for the drop, Hall found, was that people were increasingly using mobile internet for information, while fewer and fewer households actually owned a television.

IANS