The BBC has published its annual plan, showing that while overall content spend for 26/ 27 is up, original commissioning hours will be down.
Total content spend for this year will be up by £180m, to £2.7 bn. Commissioned hours in factual and comedy are down by a total of 40 hours year on year, the decrease ascribed to “increasing costs.”
The report warns that there will need to be ongoing cost-cutting by the Corporation, with a target of a further 10% reduction in the total cost base “to secure our future.” There is an increased focus on digital activities.
The report continues: “While we will seek efficiency savings where we can, it is also the case that cuts of this magnitude will require us to make difficult decisions about content and services in the future.”
Commitment to Entertainment and Drama is consistent with previous years, with Entertainment and Factual Entertainment now accounting for 800 first run programming hours – 30 more than all factual genres combined. Drama represents 300 hours.
BBC Commitment to publishing/ broadcasting estimated hours of first-run commissioning hours across BBC iPlayer and channels, by genre
Comedy
90 hours of first-run Comedy programming across BBC iPlayer and channels (10 hours lower than last year due to increasing costs).
Documentaries and Specialist Factual
220 hours (20 hours lower than last year due to increasing costs).
Science and Natural History
140 hours (10 hours lower than last year due to
increasing costs).History
40 hours, in line with last year.
Arts & Music
220 hours (55 hours lower than last year as there is no
Glastonbury Festival this year).Religion
70 hours, in line with last year.
Drama
300 hours, in line with last year.
Factual Entertainment and Entertainment
800 hours, in line with last year.
Pippa Considine
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