Ken McQuarrie's announcement to BBC Scotland staff on budget cuts in full

Ken McQuarrie has addressed staff at BBC Scotland following the budget cuts announced by the organisation, which will mean a 16% budget reduction in Scotland.

As a result, between 100 and 120 members of staff will leave by 2016/17.

Here is his announcement to staff in full:

BBC Scotland’s aim remains to provide high quality and distinctive programmes, content and services that reflect the interests of audiences in Scotland. This is our core public purpose – to capture key cultural moments for our nation, to cover Scottish news and politics, to make content which is distinctively Scottish and which cannot be found on the network.

We do have to take some tough decisions on our spend on services and content for audiences in Scotland and there will be some reduction but we will safeguard the output which is most valued by our audiences and which best fulfils our role as Scotland’s national public service broadcaster.

This means that:-

-    We will protect our spend on peak time audiences and we will cut back content of lesser value or lower impact to our audiences. So the bulk of the reduction in programmes will happen off peak.

-    we will focus on high quality content which meets the 5 editorial priorities set out in the Putting Quality First strategy – Best Journalism in the world; Inspiring knowledge, culture and music; Ambitious UK drama and comedy; Outstanding Children’s content; Events that bring communities and the nation together

-    we will prioritise content and services which are distinctive and which no one else provides

Under DQF, we will also continue the story of TV network growth in Scotland. PQ will be firmly established as one of the BBC’s five creative UK hubs and BBC Scotland will make even more network TV content for UK-wide audiences. We are already ahead of the NSR target set for 2012 and indeed are on course to achieve early the target which was set for 2016. We could well exceed it by the end of the Charter period. 

In addition, the BBC’s TV proposals assume that more of our TV opts will transmit on the networks. For network radio, there is a commitment to sharing more content, such as drama and features, while online, the nations’ templates will integrate our web content into the BBC’s network sites. Read More

(Source : The DRUM, UK)