Moving The Archers to London will cost more than the £1.5m the BBC would have to spend on a new studio in Birmingham, a cast member has claimed.
Susie Riddell, who plays Tracy Horrobin in Radio 4’s flagship show, said keeping the show in its West Midlands home was “well worth the money”.
She is one of 100 current and previous cast members who signed a letter to Matt Brittin, the BBC’s director-general, urging him to continue recording the show in Birmingham.
It emerged last week that the BBC had scrapped plans for a radio drama studio at its new Birmingham headquarters as part of a £500m cost-cutting drive.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, she said: “If you cut The Archers’ production from Birmingham, you are going to be losing jobs there.
“People are either going to have to be transported to another studio, probably London, from Birmingham. That is going to cost a lot of money. We believe that within about five years, the cost of transporting everybody to make the programme in a different city is going to outweigh that £1.5m.”
She said it was “disingenuous” of the BBC to maintain the show would still be made in Birmingham, if only the production team were to stay in the city, saying: “We think it’s really important that the team stays together.”
She added: “They’ve said that it would cost £1.5m to build this new studio, which is what we were led to believe.
“The last two years we’ve been under the impression that we were moving to this new studio, but [the] likelihood is the only other studio that would be equipped for The Archers is in London, really.
“So that would require moving the production team to the studio every single time we’re recording.
“We have special sets that need to be put up. We have to have different acoustic flooring to be in different places. A dead room, which deadens the sound, so we can sound like we’re outside.
“There is a cost that comes with that – but we feel that £1.5m to be spent on a flagship BBC programme, iconic British institution that is The Archers, listened to by five million people, is well worth the money and hardly makes a dent, sadly, in that £500m deficit the BBC have got to find from somewhere.”
Dame Judi Dench and Felicity Jones, the Oscar-nominated actress, joined Ms Riddell in signing the open letter to Mr Brittin and the BBC, setting out their position.
It said: “The Archers leaving the Midlands is akin to Corrie leaving the North-West, or EastEnders the South-East. It is born of the very fabric of the place, and deserves to stay at home.
“Removing the recording of The Archers from the Midlands and divorcing the production team from the cast will have a tangible impact on the quality of the programme and represents an existential threat to its future.”