BBC Trust to carry out wide-ranging reviews

The BBC Trust, the UK public broadcaster’s governing body, is to carry out reviews of BBC News and BBC One, Two, Three and Four in 2013, in what it says will be two of the largest scale assessments of BBC services it has conducted so far.

The reviews are being conducted as part of the Trust’s rolling programme of service reviews.  Under the Charter the Trust is required to review each BBC service at least once every five years.

The review of BBC network news services will cover BBC News Channel, BBC Parliament, the national news bulletins on BBC TV and radio, daily news programmes such as the Today Programme and Newsnight, and the BBC News website.

The review of TV services, led by David Liddiment, is expected to begin in the spring, with the review of BBC News, led by Richard Ayre, expected to begin in summer. Terms of reference for the reviews will be published and extensive public consultations will be held for both reviews to ensure the Trust has a full range of evidence on which to form its conclusions.  The reviews will complete in spring and summer 2014.