The World Service can survive these cuts

Today will be a painful day for the BBC and for the millions of people around the globe who value the World Service. This morning, we are announcing a series of cuts that have been made necessary by last autumn's Comprehensive Spending Review. We will do our best to minimise the consequences, but they will inevitably have a significant impact on the audiences who use and rely upon the relevant services, as well as on those of our colleagues who work on them. We understand the broader economic and fiscal context that has led to the reduction in the funding of the World Service, but these are still cuts that we would prefer not to have to make.

The cuts have nothing to do with the licence fee settlement which was reached between the BBC and the Government in the autumn. Under that settlement, responsibility for funding the World Service will transfer to the licence fee in 2014. But for the next three years, the BBC World Service will be funded, as it has been for decades, by a "grant-in-aid" from the Foreign Office. It is this grant which is being cut.

And so today we are announcing the closure of some foreign language services in their entirety, the reduction of others to a web presence alone, as well as significant cuts to the English language radio service – both reductions in programmes and in distribution.

The World Service is rightly considered a jewel in the crown of the United Kingdom. For generations, it has been a source of news, unvarnished and unbiased, to listeners in democracies and in dictatorships alike. For those who lived behind the Iron Curtain or who live today under other repressive regimes it has been a beacon of light – a source of truth and impartial analysis in a sea of propaganda and censorship.

In 2011, the BBC has other important global news services which are funded not through grant-in-aid, but commercially. BBC World News and bbc.com each have audiences of many tens of millions, audiences which are growing rapidly around the world. Though their funding model is commercial, they share the same public service objectives and values that inspired the founders of the World Service back in the 1930s.

But the World Service still has a unique and precious role within the family of BBC international services. It still broadcasts the English language World Service on the radio around the clock and around the world, as well as offering numerous foreign language services on the radio, the web and – since the launch of the BBC Arabic and BBC Persian TV services – on television, too.

The World Service is one of the leanest parts of the whole BBC. It has been cutting costs and meeting tough efficiency targets for years. That is why the cuts and the impact on jobs at the World Service are so deep.

What can the Licence Fee and the rest of the BBC do to help? Our governing body, the BBC Trust, has agreed to use some Licence Fee funds before 2014 to mitigate the impact of the CSR cuts – some £20 million to support the World Service's restructuring costs and additional funds to offset pension deficit repayments. Co-siting of the World Service alongside our domestic news operations in the new Broadcasting House should help us identify fresh efficiencies and make the grant-in-aid go further. And, once full Licence Fee funding for the World Service begins in three years' time, we hope to increase funding once again – although we will not be able to return it to pre-CSR levels.

All of that still leaves us with some difficult choices. The pattern of news consumption is changing around the world. Shortwave radio is in steep decline almost everywhere – already, FM rebroadcast is critical for reaching audiences in many countries. Use of TV, the web and mobile phones are on the rise almost everywhere. In some countries, where once the BBC World Service was a lifeline, free indigenous media makes our role less critical. Elsewhere, jamming or changing media use leaves some BBC services with marginal audiences.

We have borne all these factors in mind as we have decided on our priorities. The changes we are announcing today are consistent with our long-range international goals and strategy – although the scale of the reduction in funding means that in many cases we are withdrawing services and distribution much more rapidly than we or our existing audiences would wish.

Supporters of the international role of the BBC should not despair. Our global TV and online presence is growing, and in many parts of the world the BBC is a more influential and widely heard voice today than at any point in our history. Across the globe, the audiences which will be lost to the BBC because of today's announcements may be made up by new TV and web audiences. From 2014 onwards, the licence fee should provide more secure and more politically independent funding for the World Service, while closer integration with our home news services should drive even better value.

But for all that, we should not underestimate the scale of the impact of today's announcements, both for the hard-working and totally committed teams who deliver the World Service day in and day out and on the audiences they serve.

Mark Thompson is director-general of the BBC