18-04-2023, 10:26 PM
(18-04-2023, 10:21 PM)DTV Wrote:From double headed presentation to a radio phone in. Times have definitely changed.(18-04-2023, 09:41 PM)lepeterrr Wrote: I'd be intrigued to know how much money this has actually saved, given for example they are paying presenters like Martine etc still, despite her not being on air currently.In terms of licence money, the plans were quoted as saving £25m (about 40-50% of the previous News channel budget). Presenters do cost, but the handful who appear to be in some sort of limbo wouldn't really make up that much of the budget - Croxall and McVeigh are both below £150k in salary terms. Most of the cuts will have come from wider behind-the-scenes production costs, elimination of remaining duplication and reductions to newsgathering.
I think the tendency to overegg the importance of presenters in budgetary terms were part of the reason that the News channel were able to remain relatively unscathed in cuts for so long - cutting things like double-headed presentation was a very visible cut, but actually saved little money - allowing the channel to appear to be doing its bit, while not really sacrificing much.