04-11-2023, 09:06 PM
(04-11-2023, 08:20 PM)Stockland Hillman Wrote: £8m? Katie Searl, the former BBC politics head said in the Telegraph the budget was £13m for an average of 300k viewers (21 September)I believe that £13m figure was the budget before a prior round of cuts. £8m is the current budget.
For context, The Times reported STV News at 6 had a Scotland wide average reach of 382k. I guarantee you it doesn't have a £13m or an £8m budget for the entire news operation, let alone one show.
I would be very surprised if the figure for the STV News operation was substantially lower. The average BBC English region's TV operation costs around £5-8m and STV News' reported budget c2008 (when they were seeking licence subsidy) was around £7m with inflation of 40% since (with TV news costs having inflated above average). And, again, them having a similar budget wouldn't really surprise me given investigative and foreign reporting, a declining though still present part of Newsnight's remit, are more expensive than standard news reporting.