Repeats account for almost a third of BBC One output, watchdog finds

Repeats comprise almost a third of output on the BBC’s flagship television channel as a funding squeeze forces deeper cuts to programming budgets and exacerbates pandemic-induced disruption, the public spending watchdog has found.

The proportion of reruns on BBC One’s schedule has risen more than a fifth over four years and BBC Two is even more reliant on them, accounting for almost two-thirds of its programming hours in the year to April, according to a report by the National Audit Office.

While the recent preponderance of repeats was explained in part by coronavirus restrictions that held up filming, the NAO warned that the corporation was resorting to more “audience-facing” measures to reduce its expenditure by about £1bn a year.

The NAO report, published on Friday, comes as protracted talks drag on between Tim Davie, BBC director-general, and UK government ministers over the publicly owned broadcaster’s forthcoming funding settlement.

Belt tightening has increasingly come at the expense of content

The BBC is braced for a below-inflation increase in the licence fee, levied at £159 per household watching terrestrial television or the BBC’s iPlayer streaming service, over the next six-year term. The broadcaster’s income from TV licences has declined about 8 per cent in real terms over the past four years to £3.75bn — in part because the rise of rival streaming services means fewer people require one.

The two sides are still haggling over important details. But whatever the outcome, the corporation is “likely to need to make considerable further savings” in coming years, said Gareth Davies, head of the NAO.

The corporation has sought to avoid direct cuts to programming by prioritising “productivity” improvements, but the watchdog said it now had less scope to do so.

About 40 per cent of the savings the BBC is set to make this year are expected to come from cuts to “content and the scope of services”, the NAO report said — citing the BBC. This is an increase from 28 per cent under a previous cost cutting regime in the five years to 2017.

Meg Hillier, chair of the House of Commons’ public accounts committee, said that the corporation’s “belt tightening has increasingly come at the expense of content”.

News and current affairs is one department targeted for cuts. Newsnight’s budget has been trimmed, parliamentary coverage reined in and some programmes, including The Andrew Neil Show, have been cancelled.

The division, whose director Fran Unsworth is due to leave at the end of next month, announced plans last year to cut 520 permanent positions, equivalent to about 9 per cent of its workforce.

Still, the watchdog also found that despite a recent salary freeze, the corporation’s staffing costs have declined less than 2 per cent in real terms over the past four years.

The corporation has made about 1,800 employees redundant, at a cost of £180m, yet it has also recruited more than 1,100 staff as part of an expansion of the World Service, funded by the Foreign Office.

The NAO was critical in some respects of how the BBC had dealt with the pressures. It said a “top-down” approach to savings targets may have contributed to staff shortages during the so-called pingdemic last summer, which caused local breakfast news bulletins in some areas to be cancelled.

Overall, the NAO said the corporation was on track to deliver its planned savings, although among a handful of recommendations it called on the corporation to gather more data on the impact of the cost cuts.

Across its three television stations, which include BBC Four, repeats as a percentage of programming hours rose from 49 per cent to 56 per cent in the past four years. The corporation has said it intends to reduce the repeats on BBC One to pre-Covid-19 levels.

The BBC said: “We will continue to focus on modernising, improving efficiency and prioritising spending on a range of high-quality content to ensure value for money for all licence fee payers.”