It's all getting a bit casual with figures. Danny Cohen, Director of Television, has just told Richard Bacon on 5Live that BBC3's spend on "origination" will fall from £53m to £30m when it moves online in Autumn 2015. That looks like a saving of £23m, not £50m. £30m content spend is higher than the figure of £25m in the press release.
And, said Danny, the alternative to the BBC3 plan was cutting 20 to 25% of other channels budgets. Hold it there. Last year BBC1 spent £1,129.2m on content. To make a saving of £50m (claimed by the BBC3 announcement) you'd have to cut it by 4.4% - and touch nothing else. In the next seven days, I'd happily manage without DIY SOS, Holiday Hit Squad, Holby City, (Mc)Waterloo Road (down to 3.2m last night) and anything with antiques in it, for repeats of Sgt Bilko, Blake's Seven, and the odd Marx Brothers film. Would that be a nosedive in quality ?
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