BBC ponders cuts after £700,000 outlay on EastEnders episode

The move, which would affect the schedule between 10.35pm and 6am, is one of the ideas suggested by the corporation’s staff in an internal review revealed yesterday ahead of a report by the National Audit Office into the way the corporation manages the costs of continuing drama.

The NAO said corporation chiefs earmarked an extra half a million pounds – over and above normal costs – to fund the 25th anniversary programme of EastEnders and will spend nearly £7m on cast this year.

It found the cost of six key dramas, including EastEnders and Casualty, has reduced by a fifth in real terms over the past eight years but with audiences declining, however, the cost per viewer for the six programmes had actually risen by almost nine per cent in real terms over the same period.

The NAO concluded that a lack of formal objectives for the dramas meant it was unable to say whether the BBC was delivering good value but it had taken “important steps” towards achieving value for money with cost-savings.

The report details how the cost per viewer for EastEnders is a third of that for Casualty, which is its most expensive drama in the report at 9.4p per viewer. EastEnders – the cheapest – costs just 3.5p.

Director General Mark Thompson said the BBC was looking to see if there was a case for investing less in off-peak programming and more on peak-time shows.

Asked if overnight programming could disappear altogether, he said: “Obviously that’s one theoretical possibility or you might do something else, you might put something else on.”

He added: “In a sense, it’s more of a question it seems to me of how much money, how much of the licence fee, should you direct to this part of the schedule given the people available to view?

“Why is the money where it is? Is there a way of filling this part of the schedule for less money?”

The BBC committed itself to saving billions of pounds from its budget when it launched the process, called Putting Quality First, last year.

Other ideas, which the BBC described as “common emerging themes” from the process include repeating its popular shows like the drama South Riding on different channels in the same week.

Mr Thompson said he had not made any judgments yet on the responses to what he described as a “set of open questions” and admitted some of the ideas would not “fly”. But he said it was unlikely there would be proposals for the complete closure of services.

Recent speculation suggested the corporation is considering cuts to its local radio output and replacing BBC2 daytime shows with news.