BBC Four & CBBC to close

[BBCMeridian]

It's clear to me that you don't know much about the history of the BBC, before 2002 there was no CBeebies, only Children's BBC so all programmes would air in that strand and had it not been for Greg Dyke and Nigel Pickard it probably would've stayed that way, so on that point AxiosBrit67 is right, merging the two channels is much better than having to close one of them.

Respectfully, this is a different point. You are correct, in the past the BBC served children with a single strand.

It is also true that the audiences are different, with very different content. In the Night Garden is not comparable with Newsround. In the old days Children's BBC would begin with content for the youngest viewers and conclude with content for older children. But that was then.

In the past 20 years the amount of content for both of those discreet audiences has increased. And that content has been much more effectively targeted at the relevant audiences.

My personal experience is that my young children never watch linear Cbeebies. They have their favourite programmes that we use iPlayer to show them. Once, when our internet was down and they did watch the linear channel they couldn't comprehend why they weren't able to choose to put Go Jetters or Octonauts on instead of whatever was being served up at the time.

So yes, there is history. Yes, a linear channel serving two distinct audiences is clearly a compromise. But to suggest these audiences are in any way similar just isn't true.



CBeebies and CBBC serve very different audiences.

So the big question is what's going to happen now? I mean it feels like we're going back to 2011 where all older kids programmes were on BBC One and BBC Two.