[Via Telegraph]

The BBC is to give up competing with commercial radio stations for audiences to focus on the threat to its future from music on Spotify and podcasts via Apple.

James Purnell, the BBC’s director of radio, will signal the shift this week by declaring he does not “care” about audience share or beating commercial stations in the battle for listeners.

In a speech seen by The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Purnell will say that the BBC need to change quickly and shift spending away from its traditional broadcast programming to serve younger and more diverse audiences better.

“We need to change faster than we have in the last few years,” the former Labour cabinet minister will say. “We’ll need to change where we allocate our money. We’ll need to change the kind of content we offer. “

BBC radio has been losing ground to commercial broadcasters such as Global, company behind the phone-in station LBC which uses high-profile politicians such as as Nigel Farage and Sadiq Khan as presenters.

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