BBC to Cut Macedonian, Albanian, Serbian Services

The British broadcaster will also cut its English for the Caribbean and Portuguese for Africa, in a bid to save £46 million a year.

Some 650 jobs at the BBC are also expected to be lost from a workforce of about 2,400, and a reduction of programmes in another seven languages is also set to be announced.

The BBC said it was forced to make savings after its government support was cut, but unions called the move "ferocious".

BBC global news director Peter Horrocks said that the decision to close the programmes was "not a reflection on the performance of individual services or programmes". 

"It is simply that there is a need to make savings due to the scale of the cuts to the BBC World Service's grant-in-aid funding from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and we need to focus our efforts in the languages where there is the greatest need and where we have the strongest impact."

According to the broadcaster, the World Service currently costs £272 million a year, and has an audience of 241 million worldwide across radio, television and online.