Dear Director-General Tim Davie,

BBC’s plans for new TV news channel

I am writing regarding the BBC’s plans for a new TV news channel BBC News which is expected to launch in April 2023. I am extremely concerned by the planned change which will lead to the closure of the BBC News Channel and BBC World News.

The current BBC News Channel is the engine of the newsroomand very successful with 12 million monthly viewers comfortably beating its main competitor Sky News. It generates huge amounts of UK interview, video and audio content that’s used by other BBC news outlets (TV bulletins, radio, online). Without the domestic channel, that content will not exist, and those services will be worse off in their own coverage of important issues.

I firmly believe that the BBC cannot serve international and UK audiences with one joint channel which I think will lead to coverage of UK stories being drastically diminished. The current news channels serve different purposes, one is for an UK audience and the other is for global viewers. For example, recent news stories such as cost-of-living crisis and UK heatwave will not be featured in the same adequate detail in the future as they won’t matter to viewers in Brussels or New York.

The bar will be much higher for UK issues or breaking news to make it on air when they are competing with foreign stories. Therefore, I would like to know what steps you are taking to protect UK news coverage on the new TV news channel?

There is a risk MPs will also lose an important space on national TV in which they can discuss matters that are important to their constituents and scrutinise the Government on domestic policy issues. Moreover, I have also been informed that BBC editorial decision-making will become concentrated in a much smaller senior group, which could also have implications for transparency and impartiality.

Finally, I am also concerned about the impact of the plans on jobs with reports stating that UK-based BBC staff will lose their positions because of the creation of the new TV news channel. If the changes do go ahead, I would like to when you plan to undertake an assessment to measure the impact of the changes after the launch of the new TV new channel.

Given the above concerns, I urge you to reconsider your plans regarding the new TV news channel and think about alternative ways to save costs without sacrificing UK news output.

Yours sincerely,

Marsha de Cordova MP