BBC2 takes a budget reduction for the coming year to pay for sport on BBC1

According to the so-called service licences put forward by the BBC executive and approved by the BBC Trust, BBC2’s budget for the 2016/17 financial year is £406.1m – down from £425.5m for 2015/16. That represents a fall of nearly £20m.

But in case you thought this reflected the latest BBC cost-cutting drives, the Corporation’s main channel BBC1 is getting a budget boost.

This financial year its budget for content spend is £1,174.4m, a increase of more than £63m on last year's content spend of £1,111.2m.

The BBC said that the budgetary changes were largely due to the increased spend on sport content this summer, which includes The Euros 2016 football championship and the Rio Olympics.

A spokesman said that it would be incorrect to suggest that BBC2 was taking a “hit” and said that there was a “very easy explanation” for the changes.

He added: “The change is mainly driven by major sports events. 2015/16 for BBC2 would have included events such as F1, World Athletics and the Open, all of which are not covered in 16/17. So costs associated with those events would no longer come through the BBC2 service licence.

“While 16/17 is a big sports year, the Euros will be exclusively on BBC1 and the Rio Olympics are mainly scheduled between BBC1 and BBC4 with a very small element scheduled for BBC2.

“If the sports costs have varied, they have varied because of what is being shown. It’s a simple reality, and it would be false logic to describe this as in any way a cut.”

A BBC Trust spokeswoman added: "Service licence budgets often vary from year to year depending on a range of factors, like anticipated sporting events which are expensive to cover, or doing more online. The Trust carefully examines the BBC’s budget proposals every year.”