BBC Four & CBBC to close

[Newshound47]

In the nicest possible way there are some quite naive posters here that I feel need to look at the bigger picture.

• It’s not as simple as BBC 4 closing not saving much money so why bother - some current BBC 4 content (plus CBBC content no doubt) will I imagine move to BBC 2 (and 1) so there will be probably just as much saving from BBC 2, if not more. It’s about rationalising services and content across the board. 
  
• There won’t be a campaign to save any of these channels like we saw with 6 Music. Nobody really cares about BBC 4 in all honesty. CBBC viewers will be able to find their shows online easily enough. 6 Music is more like a ‘club’ that listeners are more engaged with. 
  

Overall I’m pretty pleased with today’s announcement - they seem to have finally done what they’ve needed to do for a long time and worked out what they should be providing and what can be better provided by other means than just sticking something on its own channel.

The changes to BBC News seem rational and will finally give it some certainty rather than the awkward kind-of-merging-but-trying-to-pretend-it-isn’t style they’ve been doing. I think it will be a better service for UK viewers. 

I think there is more still they can do. It won’t be popular here for understandable reasons, but I don’t understand how they can justify separate playout and announcers in the nations. Every single salary should be justified in terms of how many licence fee payers pay for it and what value they bring. Someone on a salary of 50k (as a ballpark and probably quite reasonable average) costs the licence fee of over 250 households. This same thought process needs to be made for every local radio station, every podcast, and anything that isn’t a core service. And if this sounds harsh - it’s what nearly every private company has to do. I’m really pleased that the person at the top seems to have this mindset too.

Making cuts to services in the nations is politically explosive and will be kept to a minimum I suspect.