The Stage

Channel 4 to axe further 50 jobs

Published Thursday 18 December 2008 at 14:55 by Matthew Hemley

Channel 4 has announced it is to axe a further 50 jobs as it prepares for a worsening advertising market in 2009.

The 50 job cuts are in addition to the already-announced 150 redundancies that form part of the broadcaster’s plans to save £100 million over the next two years.

A spokesman for Channel 4 said the additional 50 job cuts were being made now to prevent the broadcaster having to conduct another round of redundancies in the new year.

“We’ve deliberately gone further than we initially envisaged. It’s a prudent measure based on our expectation that the advertising market might get worse. We don’t want to have to come back to staff in the short to medium term to do another round of redundancies,” he said.

Channel 4 has already accepted between 100 and 110 voluntary redundancies, and had made more than 50 compulsory redundancies this week.

It is understood the other job cuts have come from closing ventures such as 4Radio.

The broadcaster will start the new year with between 750 and 800 employees, its lowest staff count since 1998.

Those who have taken voluntary redundancy include comedy commissioning editor Caroline Leddy.