BBC Four & CBBC to close

[telebox2001]

I'm going to phrase this carefully bearing in mind what Rob has said, but I do wonder if there is an element of the BBC playing politics here in announcing this so far ahead of time?

By the time it takes effect we'll have had a General Election, so I wonder if there is an element of announcing the worst case scenario in the hope that opposition parties will pick it up as an election issue?

A repeat of the 6 Music closure U Turn in the offing?

Absolutely - closing CBBC triggers an audience which is now too old for CBBC but has fond memories of the channel, but may widely be considered to be the Netflix generation now.   It's almost the same tactic as 6Music - but with the real threat.

And it is political but also a political hot potato.   The licence fee is just one of those issues that never quite goes away and is never really dealt with because there isn't really a better solution.   I don't really recall how it was dealt with by the Tories of the 80s and 90s but of course the TV landscape was very different back then.   The BBC's digital growth in the late 90s and early 00s was probably more coincidental than down to Labour, but there is no doubt that it's wings have been clipped in the last decade - but they also needed clipping to a certain extent too - just not ripped off completely.

The Peacock Committee was the main thing with the BBC during the Thatcher ministries.  This was initially to find a new way to fund the BBC going forward.  Thatcher in her autobiography discusses the possibility of subscription in an effort to - her words - "make [the Corporation] more cost-conscious & business-like."  Advertising was seriously entertained.

As we now know, none of that got picked up.  However it also suggested that ITV franchises should be a sealed-bid-tender cash auction when the 1991 round took place.  And the rest, as they say...