Choral cull

The Myerscough report about the future funding of the BBC, entitled Delivering Quality First, is another classic in the long-running serial about how everything will be much better once the Corporation has made further cuts to its staff and programming. This one, which follows on from another published what seems like just the other day, is the direct result of the BBC having acquiesced in freezing the licence fee until 2017 while taking on new costs, such as the World Service and the switchover to digital services. Two thousand jobs must go and this time the funding of the Performing Groups — the five full-time orchestras and the BBC Singers — is not protected.

The report does not say who should suffer what, but comes to the conclusion that none of the Performing Groups should be cut completely and speculates about what percentage of their funding could go without hobbling them completely; 20 per cent was found to be too steep, leaving 10 per cent as the obvious benchmark. However, what has become apparent in recent days is that the 10 per cent is not to be shared out equally: the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic will take single-figure cuts, while the BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Singers will take cuts much greater than 10 per cent. In the case of the Singers this translates into a loss of four posts (on top of two sacrificed only a few months ago after the last round of cuts), taking the staff membership of the group down from 24 to 18 voices.