Supplementary written evidence from BBC World Service

1) Breakdown of Redundancies by Grade

TOTAL GRADES LEAVERS

3 1

3/4

4 25

5 9

5/7 3

6 23

7 141

7L

8 31

8/9 14

9 20

10 12

11 7

SM 8

TOTAL 294

These figures do not include redeployments (61), natural wastage (28) and international post closures (78).

2) Staff Numbers and Staff Costs

a) Salaries and Wages costs

The £4.1m reduction between 2009/10 and 2010/11, was made up of three main factors, only one of which results from changes in headcount. On the non-headcount changes, allowances and overtime payments were reduced, but the bigger factor was that as well as saving around £0.7m by not paying bonuses for the 10/11 financial year, the decision not to pay bonuses for 09/10 was made after the 09/10 accounts were finalised, which meant that the 09/10 bonus accrual was released in the 10/11 accounts, leaving a £1.4m difference between the two years.

The remaining £2.2m reduction in the paybill resulted from savings for the final year of the 2007 CSR—posts were held vacant in anticipation of savings to be announced in 2011—and transfers of staff to other divisions (who move off the World Service payroll).

BBC WS Salaries & wages £m Comment Salaries & wages in 2009/10 Annual Review 67.5 Salaries & wages in 2010/11 Annual Review 63.4 Difference 4.1

Made up of:

Fall in allowances & overtime costs 0.56 No impact on headcount

Bonus accrual made in 09/10 but released in 10/11 1.37 No impact on headcount Some headcount Variances on basic pay costs 2.22 relationship

4.15

b) Headcount Movement

The £2.2m reduction outlined above did not lead to a net reduction in the annual average staff number because of two offsetting factors: 63 freelancers based overseas were reclassified as staff in December 2009. This had 4 months of effect in 2009/10 but the full 12 months in 2010/11. The treatment of their costs did not change as a result of this, but the headcount increased by 42 as a result. This was the classification difference referred to at the Committee hearing. Some posts which had been vacant in 09/10 (with work done by overtime or agency staff) were filled in 10/11, leading to higher staff headcount.

3) Salaries for Entry Level Staff

World Service has not been taking on many new staff in the last year, but starting levels recorded for new joiners over the last two years are as follows:

Year Role Basic Total 2011 Assistant Content Producer £27k £30k Producer £30k £34k Broadcast Journalist £28k £32k 2010 Trainee Producer £22k £26k Broadcast Assistant £18k £22k Broadcast Assistant £21k £25k Researcher/Programme Assistant £20k £24k

4) Redundancy Terms

The BBC’s standard terms for redundancy are: one month’s pay for each year of service, capped at 24 months. Therefore, anyone with 24 years service or more, will get 2 years pay as their redundancy payment. These terms are currently under review. The payments to the two individuals are made up of the redundancy, calculated on this formula, plus pension augmentation (see below), again calculated on a standard formula, plus notice payments. All are in line with standard terms and conditions which are applied to all BBC members of staff in redundancy.

Pension Augmentation for redundancy leavers prior to March 31st 2011: Ordinarily, pensions are reduced by an early payment reduction if they are paid before normal pension age (the size of the deduction depends on each individual’s circumstances). However, prior to March 31st 2011, when an Old or New Benefits member of the BBC Pension Scheme left the BBC at the instance of the employer e.g. redundancy, if they were age 55 or over and had at least two years’ pensionable service, the BBC could award an immediate unreduced pension at its discretion. The cost paid into the BBC Pension Scheme by the business to cover the reductions was known as Pension Augmentation. This no longer applies as of March 31st 2011.

5) Audience Increases and Decreases (all figures are weekly reach)

Service 2010 2011 Notes World Service 180m 166m Overall numbers are down. The 2010 Spending Review settlement meant that cuts have been made to services, languages and platforms. Where services have closed, wholly or in part, their audiences have not been counted in this year’s global estimate. This has resulted in a loss of 16.8m weekly, mainly radio listeners. There have been increases in some other countries, meaning that overall the global audience estimate for World Service has decreased by 14.1m. Had audiences affected by service cuts not been removed, the overall audience estimate would have increased this year to around 184m. The calculation included the following Service Closures cuts: Portuguese (Africa) AM cessation Caribbean Swahili SW Serbian Nepali SW Albanian Indonesian SW Macedonian English SW to Russia and MW 648 Cuts to Broadcast hours on SW Kyrgyz Hindi SW End of radio Arabic SW Russian Ukrainian Mandarin Chinese Turkish Azeri Vietnamese Spanish

Total service estimate across all markets Areas of growth 2010 2011 Nigeria updated (only North measured): Hausa audiences Hausa Service 19.9m 23.1m recovered from decrease in 2010. USA: new carriage for BBC World Service content via partners helped increase audiences to 9.9m, up 2.6m. English Service 39.3m 43.2m (Radio) Canada: increased to 1.7m for any BBC World Service content online and on radio in English. (No previous radio estimate). Bangladesh: broadcasts via the partners network replaced declining short wave audiences and also drove Bangla Service 8.2m 9.1m FM audience growth; overall weekly reach up 300,000. On (Radio) FM partners weekly reach was up 1.6m, reflecting the growing importance of FM. Iraq: estimate increased from 3.8m to 4.2m mainly due to Arabic Service (TV) 11.6m 13.5m increases for BBC Arabic television. Also worth noting that we picked up a Persian TV audience in Iraq too.

Decline (outside of service cuts) Persian Service 8.0m 4.8m Afghanistan: overall listening to (any language) BBC radio (Radio across all was down by 3.6m to 6.2m (2006 vs 2010 fieldwork). markets) Biggest declines for Persian radio in Afghanistan – down from 7.0m to 3.9m weekly. More detail: All international broadcasters in Afghanistan saw declines. More people have access to consistent electricity especially affluent, Persian/Dari speakers. Local stations are also doing well. The research highlighted some important changes to the landscape: 1. The launch of Tolo TV’s news channel indicates that commercial players are keen and ready to enter the market. 2. Investment in media has resulted in the growth in FM audiences, especially for local station Arman FM. 3. The sheer rapidity of change inside Afghanistan represents a significant challenge. The BBC continues to provide an essential news service and heavily influence the media scene. BBC Persian TV has picked up an audience of 0.6m. 4. With the growth in outlets observers have noted a rise in self-censorship among the national broadcasters. Urdu Service 10.2m 6.9m Pakistan: Urdu short wave audiences have decreased (Radio across all from 5.1m to 1.6m since the last survey in 2008. Pashto markets) audiences in Pakistan actually saw increase. More detail: Declines were among the SW audiences with some increases among BBC MW and FM partner audiences. SW reach declined in all regions surveyed apart from Balochistan. Other key findings: 1. BBC is the third largest radio station in Pakistan after Radio Pakistan and 101FM. 2. Pakistan is a TV market, Aaj TV and APNA all performing strongly. 3. Internet remains nascent, nationally 3% of adults claimed to be using the web weekly. 4. Listening via mobile phones was highlighted as important trend, including listening to BBC via FM on mobiles.

6) Competitor Information - Focus on Al Jazeera

Availability Al Jazeera Arabic is widely available on TV, online, mobile, social media, throughout the world. Al Jazeera Arabic has a suite of channels from children’s channels to sports networks in Arabic. They had the 2010 World Cup rights in the Middle East.

Currently Al Jazeera is available in English, online and on TV offering news and current affairs. They are continuing to grow their distribution and face significant challenges, mainly due to negative reputation gained in the past.

Al Jazeera has voiced ambitious plans for expansion across the ―Global South‖ this is reflected in its editorial agenda on both news channels as well as in its bureau roll out and investment. These include:

Al Jazeera Balkans launched on 11th November 2011, promoting itself as the only ―regional‖ broadcaster in the area. Al Jazeera plans to launch a TV channel in Swahili for East Africa, in Turkish in 2012 Aggressive expansion planned in India via distribution deals.

Sean Powers, an associate professor of communications at Georgia State University in the United States, who has written extensively on Al Jazeera, says the network openly seeks to tap into Muslim-majority countries and markets it believes are hungry for a news agenda that is better tailored to their interests.

In this way, he says, ―Al Jazeera’s current expansion plans make good business sense. But at the same time, Powers acknowledges that in the long term, Al Jazeera is eager to tug the geopolitical centre of gravity away from Europe - and closer to the Arab World.‖ Source: http://bit.ly/vSTiLl Editorial Al Jazeera Arabic editorial positioning has remained since launch ―The opinion and the other opinion‖. The editorial style is ―impassioned‖, reflecting the Arabic audience preferences. During the Arab Uprisings they have focussed on providing rolling news and specific content on the ―revolutions‖.

Al Jazeera English has taken a different approach. Their stated mission is ―to provide independent, impartial news for an international audience and to offer a voice to a diversity of perspectives from under-reported regions‖. (Source: http://bit.ly/rSvCb1)

They have been focussing on promoting their presenters (including David Frost and Rageh Omar). They are considered to be confident and very competent in their delivery. Al Jazeera offer a range of current affairs alongside news including documentaries, Listening Post and Witness. Arab Al Jazeera has been criticised by some commentators for its initially ―muted‖ coverage Uprising of protests in Bahrain. (Source: BBC Monitoring)

During the Uprisings Al Jazeera launched a channel called Al Jazeera Mubashir (Live) which streams live feeds from across the region alongside comments, SMS and so on from the audience. Anecdotal evidence suggests it was popular especially on Fridays. This was alongside a series of programmes endeavouring to ―own‖ the revolution.

The ―Arab Uprising‖ has seen Al Jazeera footage used across news networks globally. Reputation Arabic: Whilst Al Jazeera is widely watched, it is not uniformly regarded, for example in Saudi Arabia, recent data indicates that Al Arabiya is the most trusted regional Arabic TV news channel.

English: Al Jazeera is still considered a little ―renegade‖ but indications are that it appeals to left leaning, worldly, well educated audiences who are open and seek out news from another perspective. Its audiences may feel the Western broadcasters are limited in the range of news and voices offered.

16 December 2011