At the end of a week that began with
Adrian Chiles defecting to ITV
, the BBC is axing Working Lunch, the BBC2 business news programme on which he first came to prominence.
Working Lunch, which has been a fixture of BBC2's lunchtime schedule since 1994, is being axed in a cost-cutting move that will see it replaced by GMT, a BBC World News Channel current affairs programme anchored by
George Alagiah
.
GMT is already broadcast each weekday between midday and 1pm GMT. Working Lunch goes out on BBC2 over 30 minutes from 12.30pm.
The BBC said it will showcase some of the best BBC journalism from around the world and will have a "strong business focus".
A BBC spokesman said: "It's always sad when a programme reaches the end of its life cycle, but our business coverage has never been about one programme. The cancellation of Working Lunch will deliver cost savings for BBC News, much of which will be recycled back into programme-making."
Working Lunch will come off air when its current run ends in July this year. The show's audience has suffered a steady decline from an average audience of 450,000 in 2002 to below 300,000 this year.
A relaunch in October 2008 failed to reverse the trend and the BBC has given up trying to revive it.
Chiles was a co-presenter the show for more than 12 years from its inception and left in early 2007.
Declan Curry, the former business reporter of BBC Breakfast, anchored the revamped show from 2008. The programme took a summer break for the first time last year.
In an email to staff announcing the demise of Working Lunch today
, the BBC's head of newsgathering, Fran Unsworth, conceded the decision would save money but added that some of those savings will be used to launch new business programmes.
"Some of these savings will be coming back into the Business Unit to enable us to launch new Weekend Business programming on Radio 5Live and the News Channel" she wrote.
She described the decision as "very difficult" and praised the programme's team for working "so creatively and passionately".
Unsworth said of GMT: "The international edition is already a cornerstone of the BBC's international output and we will be bringing a UK focused edition to BBC2. We have reassured the Working Lunch team that while we can't give guarantees, we are confident we will be able to redeploy most, if not all, of those working on the programme."
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