Hundreds of BBC jobs may go in Dyke shake-up

Jane Robins,Media Correspondent
Friday 17 March 2000 01:00 GMT
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Greg Dyke's imminent restructuring of the BBC will cost hundreds of management jobs, and develop a much flatter structure for the corporation.

Mr Dyke, the new director general, is expected to get rid of an entire layer of higher management, and produce a structure that will bring creative departments much closer to him, BBC insiders said.

The move is still being discussed, and will be finalised within two to three weeks. It will overturn a huge and elaborate management structure built up by Mr Dyke's predecessor Sir John Birt.

Much attention has been focused on the proposed merger of the policy and planning directorate - known inside the BBC as "the thought police" - with the huge corporate affairs department.

Most senior executives at the BBC still do not know what will happen to them under the new structure. However, Mark Thompson, the head of regions, is tipped as the plum director of television post. There is also much discussion over the future role of Alan Yentob, the director of television. There is, according to insiders, no obvious place for him at top management levels under the new plan - and he is seen as best placed in a creative rather than an administrative position.

There is speculation that Nick Elliott, currently the head of drama at ITV, will be brought in to sort out a BBC area perceived as in need of remedial treatment.

Some departments of the corporation are already flattening their structures in readiness for the new Dyke era. At news and current affairs, for instance, a layer of "super-editors" has been abolished, and a marketing and research department scrapped as a separate entity.

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