Mark Thompson, the broadcaster’s director general, told his staff that the changes — which amount to cuts of £670 million or about $1.03 billion a year, or a 20 percent reduction in spending over five years — would lead to a “smaller, radically reshaped BBC.”

But he said that no television or radio stations would be closed down and that some money would be reinvested in new programming and services.

The BBC is financed mostly through a government-approved license fee, paid every year by every household in Britain that owns a television set. The fee brings in about £3.6 billion a year. In the early part of the decade, spending increased annually, allowing the broadcaster to expand its services and introduce new channels.

But after a series of embarrassing episodes, including the disclosure of the huge salaries paid to layers of bureaucrats in the organization, the BBC was forced to curtail its spending. And last year, confronted with a Conservative-led government skeptical of its financing model, the BBC agreed to freeze the license fee at its current rate of £145.60 until 2017.

The steps amounts to a 16 percent cut in income, the BBC says. It has also decided to redirect 4 percent of its current spending elsewhere. Among other things, Mr. Thompson said, it plans to invest more money in dramas and comedies for its flagship channel, BBC 1. Meanwhile, its second channel, BBC 2, will broadcast only reruns in the daytime.

Some of the people faced with losing their jobs might be “retrained and redeployed,” Mr. Thompson said. In addition to the cuts, a further 1,000 employees will be relocated to Salford, near Manchester, where the BBC has moved a portion of its operations.

Unions reacted with dismay, saying that the BBC would lose credibility and audiences if it continued to cut its services.

“They are destroying jobs, and destroying the BBC,” said Gerry Morrissey, general secretary of Bectu, a union that represents technicians.

Mr. Thompson said that after years of budget-slicing, the broadcaster had cut its spending as much as possible and could not sustain another freeze or decrease in the license fee. .

“I don’t think we could do this again,” he said. “Another real terms cut in the license fee would lead to a loss of services, or potentially a diminution of quality, or both.”

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