Newsnight: BBC News chief says Newsnight cuts reflect changing audience habits

The CEO of BBC News has said a savings plan which will lead to more than 30 job closures at Newsnight reflects changing audience habits.

Deborah Turness said bosses had “listened to the audience” who said they “value Newsnight as a brand”.

“This is a discerning audience, and they are looking for added value,” she continued, “but they’re listening to podcasts, their habits have changed.”

Past and present Newsnight staff have criticised the proposed changes.

However, media commentator Matt Deegan said Newsnight “made less and less sense” as a proposition, noting that the programme had a large number of staff but was attracting much smaller audiences in the digital age.

Turness told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “This is an opportunity to actually adapt and evolve the Newsnight offer to match where the audience have now gone.”

She said some of the impactful stories Newsnight produce were “sitting in a unit which is at the edge of BBC News, not at the centre”.

“We need to pull that journalism, that effort, that talent, that endeavour, to the core.”

As a result, she said, a new BBC Investigations unit was being set up so that the corporation’s best journalism will have higher impact across a larger number of programmes.

Turness used a story about NHS whistleblowers, which aired on Newsnight on Wednesday evening, as an example of a story which had not been picked up by other outlets such as the Today programme.

However, the BBC Two programme’s investigations editor Joe Pike had discussed the story on Today earlier that morning, at 0645.

Turness said Newsnight’s audience recognised and used Newsnight most as a source of “added-value conversation, consequential interviews and debate and discussion.”

“It’s high-fibre premium quality conversation and analysis, and that’s what the audience want,” she said.

“They [the audience] don’t actually give Newsnight credit for the investigative content. And they actually also find it off-putting when sometimes, on a big news day, they’re coming to Newsnight and finding similar content that they could have seen on the News at Ten for example.”

She added: “We are following the audience in preserving and protecting the Newsnight brand, and repositioning it for the future.”

But Dame Joan Bakewell said: “Ah Newsnight! I was one of an army of journalists who ploughed its fields: great days… but nothing lasts for ever!”