BBC blues

This is not a happy time for the BBC. The scandals about fakery in programme-making have diminished its reputation for integrity. Now the news that the Director General, Mark Thompson, proposes to make cuts of some six per cent a year over five years, meaning nearly 3,000 redundancies, has upset the Corporation's workforce, from Jeremy Paxman, Newsnight presenter, to middle managers who are threatening strikes. But cuts are an inevitable consequence of a below-inflation licence fee increase. What matters is not that economies are made but where they fall. And it would appear that the Director General may make them in the wrong places.

Few licence-fee payers would mind very much if BBC3 or BBC4 were scrapped in their entirety. Even fewer would care if the Corporation were to abandon its highly political plans to move part of its operations to the north of England. As for a cull of middle-managers, it could be made without a significant impact on the BBC's core function.

But it seems that the burden of the economies are to fall on factual programming. Some of these programmes are admittedly of mixed quality but they include Panorama and Horizon, as well as TV news bulletins, which, at their best, justify the licence fee. Mr Thompson has made much of his wish to increase the quality and originality of BBC programming. It will be hard for him to do so if his budget cuts fall on those programmes which actually fulfil the BBC's remit as a public service broadcaster.