Mark Thompson, the BBC director general, has warned the unions that management did not have much scope to negotiate in attempting to overhaul the corporation's pension scheme to try to plug a deficit that could be as much as £2bn.
The review was partly prompted by Channel 4's calls for public funding to plug a deficit it sees developing to as much as £150m a year by 2012, as advertisers flock to more purely entertainment shows.
Earlier today Thompson warned staff that BBC management did not have much scope to negotiate in attempting to overhaul the corporation's pension scheme to try to plug a deficit that could be as much as £2bn.
That was the year Republicans turned former governor Jim Florio's $2.8 billion emergency tax increase -- designed to plug a deficit inherited from his Republican predecessor -- into a gold mine of Republican anti-tax votes.
In an antitax era, the new budget depends in large part on almost $1.5 billion in increased taxes on personal income, corporations and an array of purchases and services, from yachts to inexpensive clothing, to plug a deficit once estimated between $3.2 billion and $3.5 billion.
