In Britain the BBC is to cut 1,000 jobs because of a shortfall in its licence fee income.

The director-general Tony Hall says the corporation has a stg£150m (€211m) hole in licence fee funding.

The downturn is being blamed on the increasing number of people saying they do not watch live television, and therefore do not need to pay the licence fee.

The jobs are mostly going in professional and support areas.

The BBC says "layers of management" will be removed, and the number of divisions will be reduced to create a simpler organisation.

It says this will save around stg£50m (€70m), but that there are more cuts to come.

Mr Hall says: "Before we do anything else that affects our programmes and services, we have to make sure were running the place as effectively [and] as simply as possible."

Luke Crawley is assistant general-secretary of the media union BECTU.

He is hopeful that many of the job losses will be in management.