The BBC is to cut its workforce by 1,800 and sell Television Centre in London, it confirmed today.
News, TV production and factual programmes will be hardest hit by the cuts in spending, details of which were given to staff at a series of briefings across the country.
About 400 jobs will be cut in the BBC news operations, 600 in the division which makes factual programmes and about 500 across the regions. BBC sport will lose about 20 jobs, and there will be job losses in the corporation's online operations.
All told some 2,500 jobs will be cut, although redeployment and some new posts will offset this meaning the final level of redundancies will be around 1,800.
One union official said he believes the BBC will be sending out thousands of letters to staff tomorrow seeking volunteers for redundancy. The National Union of Journalists and the broadcasting workers union Bectu has warned of industrial action over the job cuts.
Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the NUJ, said after meeting Mr Thompson: "Nothing said today reassures us that the BBC is committed to meaningful negotiations over the changes, and we fail to understand how they can claim to be defending public service broadcasting while making the most savage cuts in core news and current affairs areas."
"Unless the BBC reconsiders its position, strike action looks inevitable," he said.
PA