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The BBC “made efforts” to find “excellent other opportunities” for departing anchor Mishal Husain, according to a senior BBC News boss.
Husain revealed yesterday she is exiting the Today Program after 11 years and will join Bloomberg to host a weekend interview series.
Speaking at the annual VLV conference, Jonathan Munro said Husain’s gruelling early morning schedule had contributed to her decision and the BBC is sad to lose her.
“I have never worked on a breakfast show and from time to time people say, ‘Look I want to do something else’ and that’s understandable,” he said. “When people do that we make efforts to see if we can find excellent other opportunities but of course they will look outside. There are times when the best thing for everyone is to wish people the very best of luck as they move on and use the opportunity to bring someone else in.”
Munro hinted strongly that Bloomberg is offering a heftier wage packet than the BBC. Last year, she was one of the news team’s biggest earners with between £340,000 ($430,000) and £344,999. Her departure comes amid a spate of presenter exits including the likes of top earners Gary Lineker and Zoe Ball, although neither are leaving the BBC entirely.
Munro said he will be “very sorry to see” Husain go early next year and had worked closely with her during her 25-year tenure with the national broadcaster.
China and Russia outspending UK by billions
Elsewhere in a wide-ranging session, Munro spotlighted the immense challenge the UK pubcaster faces as he placed an enormous figure on how much Russia and China are investing on “global media outreach.”
The exec, who runs the BBC World Service, said China and Russia are spending a combined £8B on international news at present, whereas the World Service spends around £400M per year.
The majority of the spend is China’s, Munro posited, at around £5B to £6B, with Russia making up another circa-£2B and others such as Iran and Turkey now “more proactive in this space.”
“This means that if you go to countries in Sub Saharan Africa the mainstream media is either a Russian-sponsored news outlet or Chinese-sponsored, or both,” he told today’s conference.
Munro floated the dangers of Russia and China spending so much. He said a number of BBC News journalists in Nigeria were recently poached by Russian outlet Sputnik, while these outlets broadcast unchallenged propaganda on stories such as the recent walkie talkie explosions in Beirut.
World Service boost
With the BBC World Service’s funding having made headlines of late, Munro revealed that the government will increase its investment in the service by around £33M this year.
It was agreed in parliament yesterday, Munro said, that the government will spend £137M on the World Service, representing around one third of its overall budget compared to one quarter last year. The settlement only lasts a year and will almost bring the BBC up to the next charter in 2027.
In the future, Munro said he hopes the government will pick up the whole tab and he rejected the notion that this would impact the World Service’s independence.
“With caveats we think that would be a better outcome,” he said, pointing out that the World Service has only been funded by the license fee for the past decade.
While not announced by chancellor Rachel Reeves during her budget speech last month, the small print in the UK’s budget document said: “In 2025-26, the settlement provides an increase in funding to the BBC World Service, protecting existing foreign language service provision and its mission to deliver globally trusted media, in support of the UK’s global presence and soft power.”
BBC Director General Tim Davie had been pushing for more government funding for the World Service for a good while. Without more investment, he recently warned that Russia and China will fill gaps vacated by the near-100-year-old World Service.
Today, Munro praised the World Service for being a “main delivery point of soft power” for the government.
