CBBC, BBC Four and Radio 4 Extra will close and become online-only services, the corporation said, as part of plans to shut down TV and radio channels to focus on streaming services.
The director general of the BBC, Tim Davie, made the announcement on Thursday, in response to the decision by culture secretary Nadine Dorries to freeze the license fee by £ 159 over the next two years.
He added that many of the World Service’s foreign language services will only go online, while the current UK-focused BBC News channel will merge with BBC World to form a single global television news service.
Radio 4’s longwave service, known as the traditional home of Test Match Special and shipping forecast, will lose its dedicated programming before it closes completely.
There will also be cuts to local television and radio services in England, although the BBC insisted that the general budget for local journalism be maintained, with redistributed spending on hiring journalists to produce online content.
The vast majority of BBC spending is focused on its traditional television and radio channels as the audience shifts online.
The BBC says about 1,000 jobs will be lost at the station in the coming years, with the latest announcement of years of layoffs and cuts.
Davie told staff they had to accept the need to move away from traditional TV and radio channels and invest in programs made specifically for services such as iPlayer and BBC Sounds.
He said: “This is our time to build a digital BBC first. Something genuinely new, a Reithian organization for the digital age, a positive force for the UK and the world. To do that, we need to evolve faster and accept the big changes in the market around us. “
Freezing the license fee requires the BBC to find £ 285 million in annual savings. Instead, Davie has decided to go far beyond what is necessary and reduce the budget for existing television and radio services by £ 500 million, investing the extra savings in new digital-only services.
Many of the ads are likely to face strong opposition from viewers, staff, and politicians. Davie has experience with this, having announced plans in 2010 to shut down 6Music and Asian Network radio stations, only to back down in the face of public opposition.
Changes in World Service may be of particular concern to the government, which sees it as a key tool of British soft power abroad. However, ministers failed to fund World Service as part of a series of funding cuts imposed on the BBC by successive Conservative-led governments, making it difficult for ministers to tune out closures.
Among other closures, shutting down BBC Four and making its content only iPlayer could face strong opposition from its loyal audience. In recent years it has been essentially a file-only channel, but its diet of vintage architecture programs and old episodes of Top of the Pops has surpassed the youth-focused BBC Three, which was only relaunched as on the canal a few months ago. .
The merger of the corporation’s two current television news channels is also likely to result in a reduction in the amount of content focused on the UK.
CBBC television ratings have been severely affected as primary school-age children move to streaming services such as YouTube. There are no plans to shut down the CBeebies TV service, which is aimed at preschoolers.
Local radio stations will share more programs, while some local television news bulletins, including those produced in Oxford and Cambridge, will be shut down.
Several million Britons, often the elderly and the poor, do not have access to the internet, while many more do not have the home broadband needed to access streaming services. These groups could be the hardest hit by the cuts in traditional BBC radio or television services.
The closure of Radio 4’s longwave service was last suggested in 2011, although in the end the BBC did not close it. The decision to end the service, which for many is synonymous with comments of cricket during the hot summer days, could also cause problems in the UK’s nuclear weapons program. It has long been speculated, although the Ministry of Defense recently declined to comment on the veracity of the claim, that the UK submarine fleet regularly checks to see if it can receive Radio 4’s longwave output. , as a sign that the nation is still functioning.