Big cuts are to be announced today at the BBC. They didn't get quite the increase in the licence fee that they were hoping for, so lots of jobs need to be lost. Which is a shame. Obviously £3 billion a year doesn't go far, especially when you have Jonathan Ross's salary to pay. But where are these swingeing cuts to be made? How can the BBC "secure maximum value out of every licence fee"? Here are some obvious suggestions...
• More repeats. • You know that BBC radio station you never listen to? The one with the presenter you really can't stand? They could switch that off. Send the mouthy bastard to the job centre. • The new Blue Peter stick insect needs a name. The phone vote for that should raise thousands (and then we'll call her Sticky anyway) • How about paving over the Blue Peter Garden and building a block of flats on the site instead? I mean, they only use it on screen for three minutes a month. • The BBC's just a bunch of liberal leftie pinkos, spouting their biased Marxist propaganda across the global airwaves. So we should save money by sacking any employee who's ever voted Labour (and, to be on the safe side, Liberal Democrat). That should make the whole organisation a lot less biased, don't you think? And cheaper. • Is it too late to rebrand "Children In Need" as "DG In Need"? • Don't show the new series of Doctor Who on BBC1 - release it as an exclusive box set. 10 million viewers @ £49.99 each - that should stuff Auntie Beeb's coffers. • Would introducing 8 minutes of adverts every hour [The new Argos Christmas catalogue, out today!!!] really be so intrusive? And it would make the programmes 13% shorter too, which could only save money. • They should switch off those analogue transmitters in Whitehaven and then never switch the digital signal back on again. • More repeats. • Who needs daytime telly? Replace it with the test card (at least until I retire, and then they can bring it back). • BBC3's a bit rubbish, isn't it? Let's trim it down a bit, say to BBC2.6 • Do you know how much money is spent on the BBC World Service every year? And most of its listeners aren't even British taxpayers! • If those TV licence detector vans actually worked, then maybe the rest of us law-abiding citizens wouldn't have to pay so much. (I mean, 37p a day for all those BBC services, it's both criminal and extortionate) • They should do a lot more of those property shows - you know, the ones where some stuck-up posh tart takes a run-down villa in Putney and sells it for a million three weeks later. The BBC could make a fortune from that. • Sack the bloke whose job it is to remove random letters from all Ceefax pages. Sack him now. • Does it really take two newsreaders to read the news? Surely one should be enough. They should get that Moira Stuart back - she's capable, she's authoritative, and she's cheap. • Here's an interesting idea sent in by a Mr R Murdoch. Scrap all BBC services and give the entire licence fee money to Sky TV instead, and then we can all watch lots of lovely American mini-series and endless repeats of The Simpsons. • Sell off Television Centre, sack lots of journalists and stick adverts on the BBC website (ah, hang on on, that's actually going to happen...) • More repeats.
