BBC Four & CBBC to close

[Ash101]

BBC Four closing is never going to save anywhere near enough money, unless they also axe one of the children's channels to free up the bandwidth (which I don't think is a good idea!) - but I guess it gets headlines and makes the right people sit up and realise the BBC has to make big changes to react to such a cut in funding.

The BBC Local Radio in England sharing more shows seemed very inevitable from the moment they tidied up the structure of the show times at the start of the pandemic. Everyone on the same slots of 6-10a, 10-2, 2-6p, 6-10, 10-1 means it's very simple to neighbour up stations without too much mess for a listener. I'm surprised we haven't seen more of it already....
(is there a reason BBC Radio London managed to avoid this? Or have they simply retained an Early Breakfast show because Vanessa is not available till 7am?)

[Roger Darthwell]

Jim Waterson (Guardian) reporting that the Oxford and Cambridge opts are to go from TV News, alongside This is England being cancelled.

What was This Is England?

The Inside Out replacement series on BBC One England.

For additional clarification, We are England is the replacement for Inside Out (though with larger regions) and This is England is a film and later Channel 4 series by Shane Meadows about the 1980s (which I had just got confused with This Country, an accalimed BBC Three sitcom).

That's why I got confused, thank you very much for clarifying DTV

[Dylan2001]

Jim Waterson (Guardian) reporting that the Oxford and Cambridge opts are to go from TV News, alongside This is England being cancelled.

Maybe Janine Machin will move to Norwich and Geraldine Peers and Jerome Sale to Southampton

[Keith]

Jim Waterson (Guardian) reporting that the Oxford and Cambridge opts are to go from TV News, alongside This is England being cancelled.

Maybe Janine Machin will move to Norwich and Geraldine Peers and Jerome Sale to Southampton

I suppose it depends upon which buildings they decide to stay in. From memory Cambridge has newer kit in, though is a smaller studio space. At risk of speculation the separate Cambridge opt might allow them to temporarily broadcast from Cambridge whilst upgrading the Norwich studio, if they decided to only retain the Norwich site in the long-term.

[cityprod]

I had not put two and two together, but there is an announcement later today regarding a "digital-first BBC" so would make sense if true.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...ategy.html

The mail also suggests changes to the children channels. BBC Four and BBC children channels could be slowly phased out and then closed. That would make more sense. And I must say if true it was as I predicted further back in this thread while being heavily criticised, but let us wait and see. DM could be be wrong!

it invariably is wrong, most of the time.  It would be more shocking if they were actually accurate for a change.

[Ash101]

[CantGetIn]

[FrancisC]

Full details from the BBC Media Centre:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2022/p...first-bbc/

[natashajacobs]

Think the cbbc plan is bonkers because so unlikely the audience will follow to iPlayer, they’ll just stick to YouTube and TikTok and so on. Won’t be a window shop to get kids over from CBeebies anymore

[CantGetIn]

Full details from the BBC Media Centre:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2022/p...first-bbc/

It says they are cutting 1000 jobs.

[XIII]

TBH given Disney has already axed kids linear channels, I think we'll see more broadcasters doing the same not just the BBC.

[L1]

Think the cbbc plan is bonkers because so unlikely the audience will follow to iPlayer, they’ll just stick to YouTube and TikTok and so on. Won’t be a window shop to get kids over from CBeebies anymore

I think it is probably the right decision. Kids prefer to choose what to watch these days, and the target audience is at school for the majority of the channel's airtime so I think the right decision. Would be nice to see a Saturday morning block of some sort appearing on BBC Two as a presence on linear in the years ahead aswell.

[Keith]

Full details from the BBC Media Centre:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2022/p...first-bbc/

Also on the Media Centre article...

Examples of future changes announced today include:

The creation of a single, 24-hour TV news channel serving UK and international audiences, called BBC News, offering greater amounts of shared content, but maintaining the ability to offer separate broadcasts depending on what’s happening at home and abroad;

So it looks like long term the News Channel and World News will merge, but the UK will be able to opt-out to offer separate bulletins where needed.

[natashajacobs]

Think the cbbc plan is bonkers because so unlikely the audience will follow to iPlayer, they’ll just stick to YouTube and TikTok and so on. Won’t be a window shop to get kids over from CBeebies anymore

I think it is probably the right decision. Kids prefer to choose what to watch these days, and the target audience is at school for the majority of the channel's airtime so I think the right decision. Would be nice to see a Saturday morning block of some sort appearing on BBC Two as a presence on linear in the years ahead aswell.

I was just thinking maybe they’ll use BBC2 afternoons for some of the big brands like Newsround and Blue Peter as these will be staying and probably won’t work online only

[i.h]

So it feels like the BBC3 argument again, if it’s “going digital” (puke) then what are the actual savings to be made in removing digital “linear” channels. It’s going to be largely fixed cost, right?

Some fees to Red Bee maybe, but that doesn’t seem like a lifechanging sum of money.