BBC confirms first cutback plans

Mr Thompson announced the plans to senior staff on Thursday

The BBC has announced its first round of savings will release £139m a year by 2008 to reinvest in programmes.

The changes to the BBC's professional services divisions will result in the loss of 980 jobs through a combination of redundancy and staff turnover.

A further 750 posts will be outsourced, resulting in 1,730 job losses in total - a 46% reduction in headcount.

Overall cost savings across the BBC are expected to reach £355m - £35m more than the original £320m target.

The professional services divisions include the following departments: Strategy and Distribution; Policy and Legal; Finance, Property and Business Affairs; BBC People (human resources); and Marketing, Communication and Audiences.

"In December I talked about the creative prize for the BBC and our audiences," director general Mark Thompson said on Thursday.

"But the cost is nothing short of transformation," he added.

'Challenging future'

"We have made a strong start, showing we are serious about change and ensuring we are maximising the value of our income for audiences' benefit.

"We need to make the BBC a simpler, more agile operation, ready to take the creative lead in a very different, very challenging digital future."

Savings will be ploughed into BBC programmes and content

Mr Thompson told senior staff that the BBC governors had endorsed the plans.

However, he said they would hold off giving their final approval until their meeting next week, when they would consider these and further savings plans from the content and output divisions as a whole.

The BBC said the savings were necessary to ensure it could "meet rapidly changing audience expectations by developing a bold content strategy, transforming itself into a state-of-the-art digital broadcaster and becoming much simpler in its operations and business processes".

The technology union Bectu said in a statement: "Many of the departments affected are crucial to the smooth and safe running of the BBC."