BBC Four & CBBC to close

[Brekkie]

Wonder why they don't put CBBC on during BBC2's daytime hours? Or keep CBBC as a channel and start BBC2 at 7pm?

Live sport mainly, although thanks to the cuts there it's only really Wimbledon, snooker and the Olympics, plus a couple of other events (a week of bowls) which interupt it.   I suspect though CBBC will get something like a 4-6pm slot on BBC2 on weekdays and probably weekend mornings.  

I think it’s a big mistake losing CBBC. To maintain the longevity of viewers sticking with the BBC, it has to serve them at all age groups. Dropping its linear channel is going to open it up to more competition from rivals and therefore lose any potential future BBC viewership.
It was why I was so dead against closing BBC Three to lose the young adult audience. But as that’s come back they’ve done something far worse and removing the linear option for older children.
A big mistake if you ask me.

Completely agree - they're pretty much saying goodbye to viewers once they start school with this move and a danger they never come back as they get older - but then the BBC of the 2040s is probably going to be quite different.

What annoys me though is this isn't a "Digital First" strategy - it's a "cuts first" strategy and then trying to justify it with talk of "going digital", something which has been a buzzphrase for 25 years now.   There are some things that can absolutely be done better through a digital strategy than relying on linear channels but many of them have fallen by the wayside over the last decade or so - noteably BBC Democracy Live, which was a much better way of covering live parliamentary discussion than one linear channel, and things like the smart TV/red button apps for BBC News and BBC Sport, which made short form content easily accessible via the TV screen, but they've been lost even though much of that content is still produced for the website, mobile app and social media.

Apparently CBBC may still operate a "live channel" schedule once it goes online, which doesn't really suggest a true "digital first" approach.  BBC4 in it's archive guise doesn't really sit well there too - suspect it'll just continue mainly as an option to broadcast live proms etc, but a pop-up iPlayer channel can do that instead.