Chile miners coverage blows BBC budget

[dutchman]

The BBC has spent so much money covering the rescue of the trapped Chile miners that other events such as the G20 and the Oscars could be affected, it has emerged.



In a leaked internal memo, BBC world news editor Jon Williams revealed that reporting for the dramatic San José rescue will cost in excess of £100,000.

The memo warned colleagues about "the scale of ambition for the Chilean mine rescue - and some of the consequences for other events in the coming months".

Williams wrote: "The financial situation is serious. We are currently £67,000 beyond our agreed overspend of £500,000; newsgathering's costs for Chile will exceed £100,000."

The overspend is expected to affect coverage of the forthcoming NATO summit in Lisbon, the Cancun climate summit and the Davos World Economic Forum.

The corporation may also struggle to send both political editor Nick Robinson and business editor Robert Peston to the G20 summit in Seoul next month. Coverage of the Oscars in February could further be shunted to "a breakfast event", the memo suggests.

However, Williams yesterday defended the budget blowout, arguing that the Chilean miners' rescue was a story where the "audience valued the investment".

Williams said that more than 6.8 million viewers watched the BBC News channel coverage of all 33 miners being freed, marking its third-best day ever for viewing figures, behind two days after May's general election.

More than 8m people watched the BBC's online coverage of the miners' escape, while Williams said that news coverage on BBC One enjoyed "significantly bigger audiences than normal".

"More than 3,000 of you emailed to praise the coverage - others used Twitter or our Have Your Say page to send us messages," Williams wrote on the BBC Editors Blog.

"Thank you. We don't always get it right. When we do - and when it strikes a chord - it's great to know."

A BBC spokeswoman added: "Clearly when a major unforeseen story happens, especially in a remote location, we have to be responsible and look at how this affects our longer term plans.

"We will continue to cover all the other major stories coming up such as G20, Cancun, Lisbon etc but we are constantly reviewing how to provide the best coverage for our audiences with the resources we have."