BBC Four & CBBC to close

[Rex]

I am absolutely not surprised that BBC Four is getting axed. It's arguably the least watched of the main 4 BBC channels, and the fact it became an archive channel doesn't help matters.

BBC Four's viewing figures are a lot higher than BBC Three, there isn't any 'arguably' about it.

My mistake. Though I'd also like to speculate if BBC Three will start broadcasting full time when CBBC shuts down?

Like I said in the CBBC thread, probably not. I do believe I'm repeating this a fair bit.

Closing both BBC Four and CBBC negates the need for the BBC to have a fourth broadcast stream when there's nothing broadcasting there - also I don't think they're going to allow the extra capacity to lay to waste much like when CBBC was broadcasting up to 9pm and had that animated slide when it was off air. 

Additionally, BBC Three has £80m allocated to it, I cannot see them try to fill up the dead hours with a lot of repeated content when the iPlayer provides a cost-effective solution to this. Remember the one time it was extended to 24 hours in time for the Olympics in 2012 and the schedulers struggled to fill it with a couple of programmes? 

The most realistic scenario is moving CBeebies to the downtime hours of BBC Three and having both channels share the broadcast stream, when BBC Four and CBBC are culled in 2025 at the earliest.