The Chairman of the BBC, Lord Dratten, has refused to rule out the possibility that in order for them to reduce the BBC's overall running costs by 20% without having to impact on the BBC's Hindi, Arabic, and Somali World Service broadcasts could mean them having to take BBC1 and BBC2 off-air for much of the week.
However, although Mr Dratten admitted the high cost of producing programs for their two main channels means they will have to look at them closely when deciding where to make the now essential cuts, he stressed that apart from their sports programs no final decision had yet been taken on where the cuts would have to be be made.
In an effort to avoid the need to reduce live coverage of sporting events at week-ends on BBC's 1 and 2 Mr Dratten said it had already been decided that from this autumn they will only be televising the less popular sports in Britain like competitive rowing matches between the various universities.
Acknowledging that the loss of all the BBC's football coverage would disappoint many of their loyal viewers Mr Dratten pointed out that by promoting the less expensive to broadcast sports such as competitive rowing matches would in turn increase the popularity of those sports throughout Britain.
"Given time" said the BBC chairman,"I believe competitive rowing as a spectator sport could become even more popular than football. That won't happen overnight of course, so from autumn we'll be showing our football fans a variety of test cards for them to stare at depicting all their favourite premier league stars."
In closing Mr Dratten went on to enthusiastically explain how teams higher up in the premier league would receive proportionately more televised test card time than the teams lower down.
