Instead of depending on show cuts, the BBC should achieve more efficiency savings, according to the director of the public spending watchdog.
In reaction to this year’s two-year license fee freeze, the broadcaster’s director-general declined to rule out the axing of BBC2, BBC4, or Radio 5 Live.
However, in front of his peers yesterday, National Audit Office comptroller and auditor general Gareth Davies said he would’strongly oppose’ the notion that there are no more efficiency savings.
He told the Lords’ communications and technology committee that it was “extremely unlikely” that a company the size of the BBC would run out of ways to improve productivity.
Mr Davies said the NAO’s examination at the organisation revealed’still duplication,’ pointing to the fact that three teams dealt with advertising revenue from the United States.
Baroness Harding, a Tory peer, asked if the BBC could maintain or improve the proportion of cost reductions resulting from efficiencies.
‘We would strongly oppose the idea that there are none left or that they are extremely difficult to obtain,’ Mr Davies added. I believe there are still some significant potential.’
‘There is still duplication in some of the BBC institutions,’ he continued. The advertising revenue from the United States is handled by three teams.’
In a recent talk BBC director-general Tim Davie said the corporation would look to ‘find other efficiencies to protect what you get for your licence fee’. But he added it was ‘beginning to run out of road’.
After January’s licence fee deal, he suggested cuts to shows and services were ‘inevitable’.
He said the settlement ‘will affect our frontline output’ and when it came to cuts ‘everything’s on the agenda’.
During the hearing Louise Bladen, director of NAO, talked about rising costs for the BBC.
She said it had claimed that if its sports pundits worked for a commercial organisation ‘they would be earning four to seven times more’.