BBC cuts Food and Newsbeat sites to save £15 million

The BBC has announced plans to close a string of sites and services including BBC Food, which hosts more than 11,000 recipes. The decision, which has triggered a large public outcry, is part of the broadcaster's pledge to make its programming, apps and news coverage more "distinctive." It follows criticism from the UK government that the BBC is trying to do too much with the licence fee, replicating and potentially suffocating services provided by other companies. Shuttering the sites will also save the BBC £15 million (roughly $21.7 million) in running costs.

The broadcaster says BBC Food will be "archived or mothballed" in the next 12 months, in a manner similar "to other old BBC sites." Notably, the recipes themselves will still be available -- provided you know the exact URL. So while the BBC Food homepage will disappear, along with the prospect of any new recipe additions, the old entries will live on.

Once the BBC Food website has been removed, it'll be much harder for people to discover new recipes -- at the moment, for instance, you can use a search box on the homepage to filter by your favourite ingredient(s), chef or TV show. What's not clear, for now, is how the closure will affect the searchability of recipes in Google. Many Brits stumble upon the BBC's recipes by punching their favourite meal into a search engine. Depending on the BBC's approach, this might still be possible after the closure.

BBC Good Food, which is run by BBC Worldwide as a separate website and magazine, won't be affected by the BBC's decision, however.

Other BBC services are also facing the chop. The broadcaster will close the youth-focused Newsbeat website and app, funnelling its output through the broader BBC News platform instead. Likewise, the BBC's dedicated Travel site and app will be absorbed by BBC News. Other casualties include the science and curiosity-based iWonder site, the online BBC News Magazine, and local news index web pages. In a further bid to cut costs, the organisation will be reducing "digital radio and music social media activity," as well as additional content "not core to (these) services."

James Harding, Director of BBC News and Current Affairs said: "We are going to focus our energy on these six areas: BBC News; iPlay and BBC Bitesize; BBC iPlayer and BBC iPlayer Radio; BBC Sport; the Ideas Service; and BBC Live. We will stop doing some things where we're duplicating our work, for example on food, and scale back services, such as travel, where there are bigger, better-resourced services in the market."

The decision to remove such a wide range of services is bound to attract some criticism. But many would argue that the broadcaster has little choice. The government is currently drafting the next BBC Charter, which will govern the broadcaster's services and programming for the next 10 (possibly 11) years. The document could have deep, long-lasting ramifications, which is why the BBC has offered its new, "distinctive" vision to politicians. If it's seen to be playing ball, the hope is that the government will be more lenient in the final version of the BBC Charter.

The BBC is already struggling with extensive funding cuts -- that's why BBC Three has moved online and why it abandoned live Formula 1 coverage. Today's announcements are, ultimately, just another example of cost cutting and shedding what it considers to be its most expendable services.