BBC Four & CBBC to close

[Rex]

Whilst BBC Four is one of my most regularly watched channels, I can see the argument that it could be merged with BBC 2 especially with the cuts in recent years, however I think the possibility of the CBBC channel being cut is a bigger issue.

CBBC is probably the last great outputs of British children's productions. Yes, CiTV exists but is a shadow of its former self. Moving it to solely online is a big risk and whilst the press release says Blue Peter and Newsround would still continue, it does make you wonder for how long? It would be a shame for long running institutions like that to get axed purely due to a short sighted decision of basically cutting out a whole generation of public.

If anything has to be cut, surely BBC Alba and BBC Scotland are more niche than something like CBBC?

CBBC would require a linear outlet on either BBC One or Two if it ends up being closed in 2025, and with a heavy marketing campaign to inform people of it too. With how neutered BBC Two daytime is, dedicating it to a CBBC block at the peak of after school whilst still maintaining the likes of Newsround and Blue Peter would rationalise and streamline the BBC Two schedule. That way, BBC Two effectively serves the remits of both BBC Four and CBBC as a streamlined channel. 

It's still devastating to cut off the CBBC channel, but it's been in a massive decline for a while - it only reaches 14% of its target audience compared to 27% back in 2015, and it has a rich content library on iPlayer which the BBC will aim to curate too. Getting 75% of the audience on iPlayer in general compared to less than 50% also mitigates the loss of both BBC Four and CBBC further down the line. I can definitely see the logic in trying to build on iPlayer's audience whilst cutting down on the number of linear channels they have, and honestly, it's been going that way for a long while now.

Closing BBC Four isn't a surprise anyway. It was the one channel noted by insiders to not even survive another round of cuts which have now been announced, and its programming has been completely neutered into something that can be better served by iPlayer. It's been dead from the moment the BBC cut commissioning power for it, and the archive channel plans were a stopgap to prevent the inevitable. 

As for BBC Three and CBeebies? Those channels are safe since CBeebies provides an incredible entry into the BBC for younger viewers and parents, and BBC Three is clearly a long term prospect into retaining the youth audience which has been hard for the BBC to attract. Oh, and they just spent substantial funds relaunching it.