[DTV]

What's been the amount of cuts to Entertainment compared to News in the last 13 years?

It's hard to say because what and how this kind of information is reported by the BBC is inconsistent over the years, but there have been clear cuts to all entertainment genres. This is apparent in terms of cuts to amounts commissioned for TV - from 2007 to 2023, first-run drama hours have fallen from ~650 to ~400; first-run children's programming has halved from ~900 hours to ~450; with first-run arts and music output collapsing from over 550 hours to just 250. Other studies have found that comedy output has fallen by around 40% in the last decade, with a recent report showing that radio drama output had fallen by 50% since 2017 alone.

By contrast, although certain BBC News budgets have fallen, network news budgets have alternated between being ringfenced and gaining extra investment, while the BBC News channel budget managed to increase in real terms from 2012 to 2022. News output has remained steady, while BBC One and Two current affairs output fell by 25% from 2007 to 2023.