BBC to end radio broadcasts in Azeri to save costs
BAKU – The BBC’s radio programming in Azerbaijani will end as part of the cost saving plans, along with broadcasts in six other languages, the BBC’s Azerbaijani Service reported.
Instead there will be more focus on online, mobile and TV content distribution in these languages, which also include Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Spanish for Cuba, Turkish, Vietnamese and Ukrainian.
The BBC has confirmed plans to close five of its 32 World Service language services. The Macedonian, Albanian and Serbian services will be axed, as will English for the Caribbean and Portuguese for Africa, in a bid to save £46m a year.
Staff have been informed that up to 650 jobs will be lost from a workforce of 2,400 over the next three years.
The World Service will also cease short-wave transmission of six more services in March 2011 - Hindi, Indonesian, Kyrgyz, Nepali, Swahili and the Great Lakes service (for Rwanda and Burundi).
Audiences are estimated to fall by more than 30 million, from 180 million to 150 million a week.
The service, which started broadcasting in 1932, currently costs £272m a year and has an audience of 241 million worldwide across radio, television and online.
Last October the government announced the BBC would take over the cost of the World Service from the British Foreign Office from 2014.
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