The UK's Guardian newspaper reported on Wednesday 4th February that the financial news organisation, Bloomberg, is to shut down its foreign-language television channels, and to cut its english language channels to effectively, a single global station.  The cutbacks signal the first round of big redundancies since the company was founded by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 1981.

In this article, I'm going to take a look at the effects of the cutbacks, who it affects, and what you can expect from a single bloomberg television output.

The Bloomberg television channels, which are broadcast in countries around the world, with many of them in local languages, currently lose in the region of $20m per year, although until recently, Bloomberg have been happy to cover the cost because the channels proved a useful source of advertising for its financial information terminals.

With any cutbacks, comes job losses, and Bloomberg is no exception.  In the US, around 100 staff will be let go, whilst in the UK, 80-90 jobs are expected to be lost from its London multimedia office, with upto 40% of its broadcasting staff being shown the door.  The London office is responsible for the five european Bloomberg TV channels, in the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Spain. All of these channels will close and be replaced by a pan-european Bloomberg offering, similar to that already offered by CNBC.  Jobs are also to be lost from the radio output in London.

The situation is also similar in the far east, with around 40 jobs goin in the Asia Pacific region, 15 of which will be lost in the Japan bureau.  Again, as with Europe, all the individual Bloomberg television streams will be closed, and will be replaced by one Asia Pacific channel, again echoeing that of CNBC. 

Andrew Lack, the chief executive of Bloomberg's multimedia division said;

"Wherever they are, day and night, Bloomberg TV viewers will see Bloomberg reporters covering the markets, business news, geopolitics and all the world's economies," said Lack.

"Teams of Bloomberg beat reporters will deliver real-time reports from every major financial centre – in the US, Asia and Europe - as the news happens, with insight not available on any other television network.

"We will continue to produce all of our own programming, using our local news presence and our global reach."

He also went on tto say that the global english language service would make better use of the resources of Bloomberg and eliminate duplicative reporting.  He added that at weekends, the current arts and entertainment programming would be replaced with more news and analytical programming focusing on the markets and politics.

So, as I've mentioned above, it appears that Bloomberg is aligning its television offerings worldwide with those of CNBC, with an Asia Pacific operation, a European operation, and an American operation.  With all the talk from Andrew Lack of a single global channel, I can only assume that there will be effectively one channel, with programming provided from each of the strands when their markets are open, and possibly sharing the airtime when market trading times overlap.  There is of course the option of blatently stealing ideas from their competitor CNBC, and producing linked programming from two or three locations at the same time.

I've also heard through sources, that the programming on the service will be overhauled to become more appealing, not only to the trader and professional investor, but also to the smaller investor, and home viewer.  It sounds as if Bloomberg's TV offering is looking to challenge more for audience share against its competitors worldwide including CNBC, Fox Business, Sky News Business Channel and BNN in Canada.

The staff who are unfortunately going to lose their jobs, are being treated very well by Bloomberg, with generous redundancy packages and benefits.  Changes on-screen are not expected straight away whilst the consultation period takes place and a new management structure is formed.

World Business News will monitor the situation, and bring you all the latest developments as they happen.

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