BBC terminates English language Caribbean Service

The popular British Broadcasting Caribbean (BBC) English language Caribbean Service is to be closed.{{more}}

The announcement was made earlier this week by the BBC, which said it had to make savings after its government support was cut.

Last October, the government announced the BBC would take over the cost of the World Service from the Foreign Office.

The service, which started broadcasting in 1932, currently costs £272m a year, and has an audience of 241 million worldwide across radio, television and online.

It is thought that about 650 jobs will be lost from a workforce of some 2,400.

In addition to the English for Caribbean service, the Macedonian, Albanian and Serbian services will be axed, as will Portuguese for Africa, in a bid to save £46m a year.

It is understood that two-thirds of the jobs will go in the first 12 months.

Meanwhile, the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM) has said it is saddened by the announcement by the BBC that its popular Caribbean Service is to be closed.

The ACM paid tribute to “the West Indian men and women and their British counterparts who strove for more than 40 years, and more recently, in more than 15 years of unbroken service to present a balanced, comprehensive and intelligent picture of life in the Caribbean. The Caribbean Service has also been an invaluable source of insightful analyses and commentaries on the effect of world economics and politics on the region,” a release said.

Special honour was paid to the contribution of the late Hugh Crosskill, who as editor of the modern Caribbean Service, shaped the unit into a significant source of regional radio news.

“We pay special tribute to the fine work of his long-standing successor, Debbie Ransome, a veteran journalist who increased the Caribbean Service’s output and made it an essential part of radio listening diets across the region,” the release said.

The ACM has also called on the Caribbean Media Corporation and the Caribbean Broadcasting Union, whose mandates and functions mirror that of the Caribbean Service, to move immediately to create a viable alternative.

“The CMC, especially, which has inherited the Caribbean News Agency (CANA), a trusted and independent organisation that gave so many of the BBC Caribbean staff their start, must now seize the opportunity to ensure that the region does not skip a beat in making the transition from a London-based Caribbean news organisation to a Caribbean-based news agency.”