BBC drops 11,000 recipes as it plans to axe food website
Updated : 16:02
The BBC is set to drop 11,163 online recipes as part of plans to axe its food website to save £15m a year.
Website BBC Food will close and its recipes will be archived. The broadcaster’s Newsbeat and Travel websites will also be cut.
The cost-cutting exercise comes amid government pressure to reduce non-essential services to justify continued state funding.
The BBC said it will place recipes from TV shows online for 30 days after transmission and its plans will not affect commercial services such as BBC Good Food.
However, the broadcaster admitted that archived recipes won't be linked or optimised so will be hard to find online.
A handful of recipes may move over to the Good Food website but the BBC said a final decision on where content will be placed will be made over the next 12 months.
The company also announced that it was considering merging the News Channel with the BBC’s international 24-hour television news services.
James Harding, head of BBC news, said: "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."