[TheMike]

I don’t think this has been posted already. 


https://rxtvinfo.com/2023/viewers-unhappy-at-bbc-news-channel-changes/

The part I found interesting was the last paragraph:
 


Do we know how true that is?  It would seem very wrong if UK license fee money was being spent to expand the North American news division especially as the UK is now getting much less UK focused content. 


There is a second article which seems to suggest that the BBC is focused on increasing in presence in the US. 

https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/broadcast/bbc-news-us-culture-wars/

It would explain why more and more it feels like the channels intended audience is a US audience and who so many of the talking heads are from the US. 

It feels very much like the UK viewer is going to be the one who looses out in this situation as we are told we want to access news via live pages and US audience have a channel more geared to them.

IF that is true, then I think it is appalling. I suppose the official line given would be something along the lines of 'increased funding for our US newsroom means better reporting on the US, which is particularly important in the run-up to the presidential election, and benefits our audiences in the UK'. I do kind of get their thinking - if this gamble works, it could turn out very lucrative, and may hopefully have the side-effect of giving the domestic news operation more money to play with. But - it looks tremendously bad for the BBC to be cutting jobs here and effectively giving them to a load of people Stateside. If the usual suspects get wind of this I can see it possibly becoming a minor scandal. It is a gamble - either it will work really well and make a lot of money, or it will backfire tremendously.

It is true, and the linked to Press Gazette article has BBC News Digital Director Naja Nielsen justifying it as follows:

“In terms of how that is benefiting the UK licence fee payers… what we do outside Britain in English is something we monetise and then we drive on commercial terms. And that means that if we grow in America, we can also grow our commercial return that we then can reinvest back into journalism.”