BBC Four & CBBC to close

[Neil Jones]

I think that BBC Four could be a brilliant archive channel, bear in mind that the BBC had LOADS of stuff from it's archives that they can show.......I mean personally if one day BBC Four only shows old episodes of Tomorrow's World dating back to the early 80s, I wouldn't complain.

It is often tooted that the back archive of the BBC wipes the floor offerings wise with Prime, Netflix and whatever else.

And anyway just because they have it, doesn't mean they can (or should) show it.
They almost certainly have all 20 series of Jim'll Fix It that were made. But for reasons I don't need to go into, it'll never be seen again.

Likewise probably no end of offerings that they have they could show, but can't. It needs to be remembered that it still costs to air old TV shows, even if it was the BBC that made it in the first place. There may be contractual obligations, royalties, other clauses...

Nothing's been confirmed at the moment so I wouldn't worry quite yet, although if it turns out to be the case it will anger a lot of viewers around the country, there are loads of other ways that the BBC can make savings, by axing programmes such as The One Show, The Apprentice and Strictly Come Dancing and bring back back the most important flagship programmes such as Watchdog and Crimewatch which were wrongly axed and shouldn't have been instead of channels which viewers are most passionate about.

Or here's another thought, Close the IPlayer, we already have BritBox so there literally is no point of the corporation to carry on running it's Iplayer service.

I think you'll find viewers are more passionate about the things you want to get shot of. Watchdog and Crimewatch are PSB style shows that work well but most viewers really don't care. All very well appealing for information on a crime in London, but it won't interest anybody watchiing in York. Being a national programme it would only ever focus on appeals of high profile crime. Watchdog isn't the same show it used to be years ago, its just a extended piece of fluffy journalism full of pox vops with an episode of Rogue Traders that was hemmed in years ago and never really seemed to fit.

Oh, and Britbox and iPlayer are not the same thing.