BBC Four & CBBC to close

[DTV]

...Consolidating the news channel and BBC World News (though preserving the ability for the UK to opt out) is hardly a surprise...

Cue weekly "BBC pays journalists and technicians MILLIONS to SIT AROUND DOING NOTHING WAITING FOR BREAKING NEWS" stories. To have the true ability to opt out any time, you still need a presenter, producer, entire gallery and studio crew, makeup artists, etc etc etc - as well as a maintained, functioning, turned on studio - on standby. You may as well utilise those resources to, err, broadcast a separate channel. Unless there will be UK focused opt outs at specific, regular times of the day - which still requires scheduled crews, talent and studios to be paid for, and reduces you ability to cover the news outside of those scheduled hours.

This is one of my big questions about the supposed potential ability to opt. Either they are planning to have this opt-out team on standby all the time, in which case why not bother just having a permanent UK opt out from say 0900-1800, or they are expecting the opt to basically only amount to pre-planned events like budgets or local elections, in which case you just end up with running orders that are either too-UK for global audiences, too-international for UK audiences or an unsatisfactory smudge that satisfies neither.

As the plans stand, they are reducing BBC News to two studios (one of which will only be used for an hour a day), which will likely mean a clear reduction in production staff, as well as allowing a further reduction in the presenter pool. Doing that represents meaningful cuts. As you say, maintaining a stand-by crew for a semi-regular opt-out is not just a waste of money (when you could use them full-time), but invalidates a large part of the cuts. Which is exactly why I suspect that the opt-out will be used incredibly rarely and the new channel will be a crappy compromise that doesn't really work as a domestic or international news channel.