28-04-2022, 11:55 AM
We're in danger of going down the "make cuts to what I don't use" route again.
Budgets and spending are a complicated thing and sometimes these cost saving exercises end up spending money in order to save money. There is also often money there for some things which has never been there for others - for example it's been suggested time and time again the money couldn't be justified to give Breakfast a set worthy of the nations number one breakfast show but then they manage to fund a new studio in a third party space for Morning Live, when previously it had come from a set owned by the BBC which is dormant in the mornings. Other things are counter intuitive such as it often being more cost effective to produce and present sports coverage on location than back in the UK studios - though of course covid and remote working has skewed the balance a bit in that rergard and I'd be surprised if the World Cup didn't largely come from Salford.
Sometimes too the solution to saving cash can be the polar opposite for two things - for example in terms of cutting programme content in some scenarios shows with fairly lengthy runs could probably see their number of new episodes a year cut by as much as half and get away with it, but in other circumstances actually extending the run of certain shows may fill the hours cheaper than others. Flog It was mentioned earlier which exists quite nicely in repeat mode on BBC2 at the moment (always like how every day has a completely different BBC Studios endcap!) but actually commissioning another run of 60 odd new episodes could extend the life of those repeats a couple of years longer.
Budgets and spending are a complicated thing and sometimes these cost saving exercises end up spending money in order to save money. There is also often money there for some things which has never been there for others - for example it's been suggested time and time again the money couldn't be justified to give Breakfast a set worthy of the nations number one breakfast show but then they manage to fund a new studio in a third party space for Morning Live, when previously it had come from a set owned by the BBC which is dormant in the mornings. Other things are counter intuitive such as it often being more cost effective to produce and present sports coverage on location than back in the UK studios - though of course covid and remote working has skewed the balance a bit in that rergard and I'd be surprised if the World Cup didn't largely come from Salford.
Sometimes too the solution to saving cash can be the polar opposite for two things - for example in terms of cutting programme content in some scenarios shows with fairly lengthy runs could probably see their number of new episodes a year cut by as much as half and get away with it, but in other circumstances actually extending the run of certain shows may fill the hours cheaper than others. Flog It was mentioned earlier which exists quite nicely in repeat mode on BBC2 at the moment (always like how every day has a completely different BBC Studios endcap!) but actually commissioning another run of 60 odd new episodes could extend the life of those repeats a couple of years longer.
@Brekkietweets