Layoffs To Come In BBC Kids Departments
EXCLUSIVE: Around 25 layoffs are incoming in the BBC Children’s & Education department, while the BBC Studios Kids & Family team has seen a similar number depart since December.
The decisions have been made independently of each other, we understand, and a voluntary redundancy process will now commence within Children’s & Education. Staff were informed yesterday afternoon by email and affected staff were spoken with individually.
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BBC Children’s hits include the likes of Hey Duggee, Oliver Twist adaptation Dodger (pictured) and Blue Peter.
Following an 18-month review that has just concluded, the circa-25 layoffs will be within the presentation sub-division, which promotes kids content via links and resources, and the educational production sub-division, which will see a senior leader restructure.
BBC Children’s & Education, which is based in Salford and runs channels CBBC and CBeebies along with online content and educational resources, is preparing to take the older-skewing CBBC channel online only, a decision that has proved controversial.
The Children’s & Education layoffs follow a number of senior commissioner departments including the likes of Hugh Lawton and Michael Towner. They also come following a review of Children’s & Education’s commissioning practices after a two-year period of sweeping change under Director Patricia Hidalgo, who used to run Turner EMEA Kids.
Redundancies have become the reality at the BBC in recent times, with the news team particularly hard hit, as the corporation battles to make savings and is impacted by the UK government’s freezing of the annual licence fee.
A BBC spokesman said: “The BBC is creating a modern, digital-led and streamlined organisation that drives the most value from the licence fee and delivers more for audiences. To deliver our creative ambitions for Children’s & Education, we have to make difficult decisions to ensure we have the right structure and the ability to focus on the content that has the highest impact.”
Kids & Family feels the pinch
Meanwhile, the BBC Studios Kids & Family division has seen a similar number of redundancies following an August restructure.
The majority of these redundancies have been voluntary since December but a small number are currently going through a consultation process.
BBC Studios Kids & Family used to fall within the public service division but was moved to Studios last year and given the greenlight to make TV shows for third party networks for the first time, in a bid to be more commercial.
That restructure saw the team divided into five pillars: Business, Commercial, Development, Production and Content Strategy.
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