AUSTERITY AND THE BBC'S WORLD SERVICE

My local NPR station carries the BBC's World Service from Midnight to 5 or 6 AM and I often listen.   Over the past few weeks, I've heard of cutbacks to the service because of the government's austerity measures and sometimes it seems these cutbacks deeply hurt the service which began in 1932.  Some of the services being cut have been around for 50-60-70 years.

BBC World Service cuts outlined to staff
26 January 2011 Last updated at 08:18 ET
BBC NEWS

The BBC has confirmed plans to close five of its 32 World Service language services.

Staff have been informed that up to 650 jobs will be lost from a workforce of 2,400 over the next three years.

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

Radio programming in seven languages - Azeri (the official language of Azerbaijan), Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Spanish for Cuba, Turkish, Vietnamese and Ukrainian - will end as part of the plans.

The World Service will also cease short-wave transmission of six more services in March 2011 - Hindi, Indonesian, Kyrgyz, Nepali, Swahili and the Great Lakes service (for Rwanda and Burundi).