Tim Davie has just finished addressing BBC staff before whom he announced plans to have the majority of network BBC TV broadcast from outside of London, as well as increasing the target from the current 50% to at least 60% of commission by spend to be made across the UK. The briefing didn’t get off to a great start as the BBC stream broke such was the clamour by staff to tune in…

There are big shakeups for the BBC’s core news programmes coming, with the Today Programme to be co-presented outside of London for 100 episodes per year, and the PM Programme and Newsnight to be regularly presented outside London. Newsbeat, Asian Network and the BBC News Data teams will be based in Birmingham from September.

Despite 1000 new jobs outside of London, only one of the news board – the senior leadership team made up of 8 people – will be based outside of London. Naturally, Tim Davie has stipulated he’s remaining in London as he has to “negotiate the licence fee”. 

The announcements – covering broadcast, audio, news, children and engineering – will amount to an extra £700 million in spending by the BBC outside London by 2027/28, with Davie claiming this will bring economic benefits of over £850 million.

Other announcements included:

• 100 new scripted titles over the next three years that will “portray lives of people outside of London, for the nations”, including two long-running dramas – one from the north, one from the nations.
• 50% of radio music spend to be outside of London, up from 40% today
  • Each network radio controller to have a commissioner outside London.
  • Radio 3 and 6 outside of London.
  • Asian network brought into one base in Birmingham
• Audio science unit in Cardiff, Concert orchestra outside M25.

According to Guido’s mole, Davie “finished telling everyone they’re going to be leaving the BBC/moving across the country, then he plays the trailer for the latest Line of Duty episode”…