The Sun and other News International newspapers could outsource part of their TV listings operation to India, as part of the company’s cost-cutting drive.
News International is in talks with PA Solutions – a division of the PA Group, which also owns the Press Association wire service – about outsourcing its centralised listings operation, which supplies TV scheduling information to its four national newspapers and their magazines.
If the move goes ahead, News International could be supplied with listings by staff at PA’s centre based at Howden in Yorkshire and its centres in Mangalore and Pune, which employ 135 staff.
Existing News International staff in the TV listings division have been told they can keep their jobs if they relocate to Howden, one company insider said.
News International and PA Group declined to comment. An official announcement is expected next month.
The publisher of the Sun, News of the World, Times and Sunday Times is cutting costs after falling profits and sluggish advertising revenues.
Talks over outsourcing listings come after the News International group managing director, Clive Milner, ordered the Sun and the News of the World to examine parts of the two paper’s operations that could be merged.
Those plans are now off the table, one source said. “There are no plans to merge subbing operations,” the insider said.
News International editors are back at Wapping today after budget talks in New York with the News Corporation chief executive and chairman, Rupert Murdoch, with staff waiting to hear how many redundancies are going to occur.
It has already emerged that veteran Sunday Times journalists Maurice Chittenden and Gareth Walsh are taking voluntary redundancy.
