The team that powers the BBC’s online services, including the iPlayer streamer and its Bitesize apps, is the latest to get caught up in the pubcaster’s aggressive cost-cutting. 

More than 80 employees from the BBC Product Group have been notified that they’re “at risk of redundancy”—a UK term for a formal notice that a job is at risk and a redundancy process has started. The pubcaster is aiming to reduce the number of managers who help the engineering teams behind these key BBC products handle workload forecasting and delivery.  

The BBC is taking a page from the playbook of the Silicon Valley Product Group, a company that trains businesses on this slimmer model for running teams. SVPG trained the Beeb on shifting to a model without delivery managers, a BBC spokesperson tells Kidscreen. 

This source also said the cuts are important to save money. “BBC Product Group delivers world-class digital products and services to millions of people, including BBC iPlayer, Sounds, Sport and News. These proposed changes are about ensuring we respond to the challenges of increased global competition, changing audience behavior, digital disruption and the increasing costs required to deliver value for all audiences.”

Given that kids & family audiences stream programming like Bluey, Hey Duggee and Horrible Histories through iPlayer, many companies in the kids industry likely have first-hand knowledge of the contributions of the iPlayer product team. 

In the last five years, the BBC has eliminated nearly 2,000 roles (or 10% of its workforce), and more reductions are on the way. The pubcaster is aiming to shed another 500 public-service positions by the end of March, and says the planned layoffs will make the BBC more competitive in the global market while keeping costs down. Last year, 11 positions from BBC Children’s & Education were cut as part of this push to improve the bottom line. 

Image courtesy of Alexander Svensson.