BBC faces major cutbacks after over-spending

The BBC’s extensive coverage of the trapped Chilean miners came at price as the BBC World Service now has to cut back spending on other world news stories. The cut backs will affect the coverage of the UN climate change talks in Cancun, Mexico, the NATO summit in Lisbon, the G20 meeting and the Oscars.

The information was released after an internal staff memo was leaked to Damian Carrington, head of environment at The Guardian. The memo, sent by Jon Williams, BBC World News editor, was originally intended for BBC staff.

Outlining the fact that cuts need to be made to compensate for overspending in Chile earlier this year it warned: “The financial situation is serious: we are currently £67k beyond our agreed overspend of £500k - newsgathering's costs for Chile will exceed £100,000.”

The memo goes on to outline the consequences, one of which is changes in plans for coverage of the UN climate talks.

“This afternoon, in discussion with the programmes and the newsroom, we agreed:

'We will scale back the editor deployments to the G20 - so either Robert (Peston) or Nick (Robinson), not both. We'll reduce the Lisbon Nato summit - so no Washington and much reduced ambition.

'Cancun climate summit would not be a live "event" - one single correspondent. We should investigate world news contracting out the resourcing of Davos - so no [newsgathering] organization. The Oscars will be a breakfast event - newsgathering will be bureau and ENG [England] based'."

In his blog, Carrington accused the BBC of abandoning an important issue: “Certainly the political momentum has gone out of the climate talks after the Copenhagen debacle, which saw 120 world leaders turning up to sign a treaty which had yet to be negotiated.

"But sending just one correspondent to Mexico seems very underweight for one of the world's biggest newsgathering organisations. Shame on them.”

BBC World News, however, has praised its Chilean miners story for reaching out to the public and amassing a new audience. A recent statement described the positive impact the story had on ratings: “On Wednesday 14 October, the incredible story around the rescue of the Chilean miners was viewed by four million users on BBC.com.

"This figure is one million more than the average day in October, and the highest since the website refresh in July this year.”

The BBC has already come under increased scrutiny from the new government over its market domination and license fee policy. Inferior coverage of the Cancun climate change talks and other events could lead to more pressure being applied by their opponents.