[DTV]

And if the five affected staff members won’t take pay cuts or demotions, as Deadline suggests is the case, it’s either a costly redundancy package with the associated bad PR, or finding the budget and role for them to be redeployed to equivalent positions in the BBC.

No easy answers, I suspect.

It doesn't seem especially difficult. Either they'll be appointed as presenter-reporters (with salary raised for others, which'll likely be less than £100k, so meaningless in budgetary terms), they'll create a staff presenter role (there is clearly already a third option (Bundock), but they can also claim they need to revise initial plans for the channel), or they'll be made redundant (will cost a bit, but a drop in the ocean of wider BBC News redundancies).

They won't be promoted to chief presenters, as the BBC has found they were not unlawfully denied the positions and therefore will not be compelled to give them salary-doubling roles or compensation. As ever, the concern over the budgetary impact of presenter salaries is overdone - giving the few already appointed presenter-reporters a few extra k is basically a rounding error in financial terms and likely offset by a reduction in freelance expenditure.