Thompson: BBC Three and Four are safe

Mark Thompson has indicated BBC Three and Four will not be closed - but he added that jobs still have to go at the BBC.

The director-general spoke to corporation in-house magazine Ariel about the necessity of cuts following a "relatively tight" licence fee settlement.

Today's John Humphrys and Panorama reporter John Sweeney have recently said savings should come from axing a digital channel rather than cutting news and current affairs budgets.

But Thompson said "salami slicing" across all departments was preferable. "We wouldn't want to close a complete service," he argued. "Having built up these brands it would be a pretty big step to shut one of them down."

However, he issued a stark warning that things would have to change and more jobs, on top of recent cuts, would have to go: "We do need to do less hours of TV, fewer pages on our website.

"The BBC is changing. It cannot offer people the same levels of job security that it did in the 60s and 70s. Overall, our headcount is going to reduce further."

Also, of plans for the corporation's internet operations, Thompson explained: "We need to reconceive a website that has been brilliant but has grown with a lot of the BBC doing its own thing. It's lots of little websites glued together."

And on the subject of trust and transparent editing he said plans are under way to put sections titled How We Make Television and How We Make Radio on the website.