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The BBC2 show presented by Victoria Derbyshire has landed countless exclusive interviews
The BBC’s award-winning Victoria Derbyshire Show is coming off air, the BBC media editor has learned.
Amol Rajan said the cost of running the show on a linear channel “when savings are needed” had been “deemed too high”.
On Wednesday the Times reported that BBC News would need to find £80m of cuts over the next four years.
The broadcaster is due to make an announcement about its news operation next week.
The news comes two days after Tony Hall announced his resignation as the BBC’s director general.
Louisa Compton, who edited the Victoria Derbyshire Show when it was first launched, said the decision was “madness”.
The BBC has declined to comment.
In 2017 the show won a Bafta for its news coverage of footballers’ abuse.
Derbyshire herself has won and been nominated for several awards for presenting the show.
When Victoria Derbyshire proposed a TV version of her Radio 5 Live Show to former BBC News boss James Harding, he gave her the green light within days.
BBC News has a big problem in connecting with some licence fee payers away from big cities and from poorer backgrounds – or, in the jargon, “underserved audiences”.
For Harding and BBC News, Derbyshire – and the show’s first editor, Louisa Compton (now at Channel 4) – were the solution to a big problem.
It worked – online.
Derbyshire’s programme was highly effective in reaching those people, through original journalism, investigations and scoops of a kind that the BBC generally struggles to do. But on linear TV channels it failed to garner a sufficiently big audience to justify its cost.
First it was chopped from two hours to one. Now it is gone.
BBC News is looking to make big savings and re-organise its structure so that digital journalism is prioritised.