Why is the BBC cutting coverage of Edinburgh's festivals?
A dedicated pop-up venue to host live broadcasts and recordings has been dropped, despite thousands of ticket-holders flocking to shows and events over the three-week festival.
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The BBC, which launched its own venue in 2011, will instead use spaces at the Pleasance Courtyard and the EICC for a scaled-down programme.
The BBC had gradually expanded its summer festivals coverage by making some of its best-known Radio Scotland and UK network radio programmes at the pop-up site.
But the cultural celebration appears to have fallen victim to a long-running spending squeeze within the BBC, which has been lobbying for reform of the licence fee ahead of its current charter ending in 2027.
The BBC's income is said to have fallen by around 30 per cent in real terms since 2010 because the licence fee has not been increased in line with inflation.
Director-general Tim Davie, who told the Scottish Parliament in January that the broadcaster was having to operate under 'very tight financial constraints."
The BBC has revealed that it is having to make around £700 million worth of annual savings to balance its books.
Earlier this month Mr Davie made a fresh call for reform of the licence fee and called for an investigation into the impact of what he described as 'begrudging, grinding cuts.'
BBC Scotland has become embroiled in a number of controversies over its output in Scotland, most recently after announcing plans to bring the long-running soap opera River City to an end.
More than 12,000 supporters have backed a petition to save the show, while a politicians joined cast and crew to stage a protest outside the Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood. The BBC said the show, which has been on air since 2002 and is due to end in the autumn of 2026, was no longer offering "value for money."
There was anger last year over a shake-up in Radio Scotland's music programming and its impact on long-running specialist shows on jazz, classical music and piping.
The BBC also came came under fire when it announced that its hour-long news programme The Nine would be scrapped just five years after its launch on a new BBC Scotland channel and replaced with a new early evening show, The Seven, which was launched in January.
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