Central was unopposed in retaining its franchise in 1993, which allowed the company to bid only a token £2,000 a year (just over £5 a day) – though the company stressed the need to cut more jobs to become more cost efficient, as the company had agreed to pay 11% of their annual advertising revenue on top of their winning bid. The station's workforce was reduced to 1500 by 1990 and then to 900 by the start of 1992 – less than half of the payroll Central had employed in 1987.