BBC Four & CBBC to close

[Steve Williams]

As for cost - BT and Virgin offer low cost broadband to those in receipt of certain benefits, and once again, by the time this decision is implemented the number of households without internet is going to be even lower than it is now

Yes, and worth looking again at the relevant part from Tim Davie's speech...
Over time we expect to consolidate and share more content between services, and expect to stop broadcasting some of our smaller channels on linear. This will include services like BBC Four, CBBC and Radio 4 Extra. But we won’t do this for at least the next three years because for the moment they are still delivering value to millions of viewers and listeners, at low extra cost.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/speech...-tim-davie

Funnily enough I was reading the Radio Times earlier and their piece about the new series of Stranger Things which starts today, which points out that since the last series, three years ago, the streaming market has completely changed and Netflix is no longer the unassailable behemoth it was then with numerous other streaming services now established and news that people are looking to give up some of their subscriptions. I know the past three years have been a bit different and some of the changes were vastly accelerated, but it emphasises that things can change greatly in the TV landscape in that time. As you say, in three years there will be a more developed broadbrand infrastructure, three more years of people replacing old TVs, three more years of new low-cost technology being developed and much else.

It's also worth pointing out that it's "at least" three years and they've been clear that the changes will not be made at an arbritary point or even at the same time. It's not the case that on 1st January 2025 they'll all be switched off. It will happen when it stops "delivering value to millions of viewers and listeners, at low extra cost" and the number of people watching them via linear TV becomes so low it's not worth it. And it won't just be done on a whim, but when the figures illustrate that. The BBC do absolutely tonnes of audience research and have statistics coming out of their ears.

It reminds me of digital switchover, there was much discussion when the timetable was announced that it was going to leave millions of people alienated because they would need to get a new TV, and people in rural areas relying on relay transmitters would have problems. But that all got ironed out and it was fairly painless at the end. And of course there's a great example here because the Beeb kept kids shows on BBC1 and BBC2 until the end of 2012, after every single part of the UK had undergone digital switchover and everyone had access to CBBC and CBeebies, and when the research they'd done illustrated that hardly any kids would be disenfranchised by the move. The Beeb doesn't do these things on a whim.