BBC Four & CBBC to close

[Brekkie]

Absolutely - closing CBBC triggers an audience which is now too old for CBBC but has fond memories of the channel, but may widely be considered to be the Netflix generation now.   It's almost the same tactic as 6Music - but with the real threat.

And it is political but also a political hot potato.   The licence fee is just one of those issues that never quite goes away and is never really dealt with because there isn't really a better solution.   I don't really recall how it was dealt with by the Tories of the 80s and 90s but of course the TV landscape was very different back then.   The BBC's digital growth in the late 90s and early 00s was probably more coincidental than down to Labour, but there is no doubt that it's wings have been clipped in the last decade - but they also needed clipping to a certain extent too - just not ripped off completely.

The Peacock Committee was the main thing with the BBC during the Thatcher ministries.  This was initially to find a new way to fund the BBC going forward.  Thatcher in her autobiography discusses the possibility of subscription in an effort to - her words - "make [the Corporation] more cost-conscious & business-like."  Advertising was seriously entertained.

As we now know, none of that got picked up.  However it also suggested that ITV franchises should be a sealed-bid-tender cash auction when the 1991 round took place.  And the rest, as they say...

The 80s was probably the opportunity missed for advertising on the BBC - competition for ITV then would have been seen as a good thing considering they had a virtual monopoly on TV advertising, but by the time the 90s came along and certainly the noughties the impact on competitors was the reason not to do it.

Arguably the biggest saviour of the BBC was limiting their commercial rivals to just one network for so long.   Had a genuine commercial rival to ITV been permitted in the 60s or 70s, perhaps rather than launching BBC2, then there would have been more plurality in TV and perhaps the BBC thrived as a slightly smaller player in the market rather than grown into the dominant one.

Rewriting history doesn't solve the current conundrum though.   The subscription or commercial argument is often bought up and of course the BBC have a commercial operation in UKTV, but when closures are suggested there is never much talk of moving them from licence fee services to UKTV services.   The only move in that direction we've seen really was when EastEnders same night repeats moved to W from BBC3 following it's closure, but that didn't last long.