[DTV]

Well, here's a genuine question. Why can't the BBC's single news channel be primarily editorially UK-centric and designed to serve the licence fee payers first and foremost, but still marketed to the rest of the world with opt outs for world news? That's the type of offering other international broadcasters do and they could still make some money out of it. I just disagree with the principle that the only editorial focus for the channel can be international news with some occasional UK opt outs. I bet no other broadcaster in the world would sacrifice domestic content in favour of providing overseas viewers with what is effectively a luxury channel.

Because there is no market for a UK-centric news channel internationally. People keep comparing BBC World News to CNNi or France 24 or DW, but they are completely different beasts. CNN can afford to be US-centric because of the unique status of the US and the fact that US news tends to be of interest/fascination to many non-US viewers. France 24 or DW have a domestic skew out of a mistaken view that they are copying the BBC and consequently have very limited reach. BBC World News is an international news channel with a significant reach. For tens of millions of viewers it is the go-to English-language news source, because of its far better news balance. Because of this, it is commercially successful.

You shift BBC World News into being a UK-focussed channel and it becomes financially unviable very quickly. No matter what some might think, there really is no commercially-viable market for such a channel. The minute it ceases to make a profit, it has to go - after all, it can't be subsidised by licence payers. If it goes, you lose the profit it brings into BBC News and you lose the hours of output that it produces for BBC News (requiring the money to come out of UK news budgets to make up the shortfall). In all, you are looking at 10s of £m in additional cost to the domestic BBC News operation, almost certainly requiring further cuts to domestic output (on a scale of entire programmes like Newsnight being axed).

Far from BBC World News being a luxury for the BBC, it helps cross-subsidise the BBC's domestic news output as well as producing a significant chunk of the BBC News channel's output. The BBC News channel simply couldn't survive without BBC World News. You are right that no other broadcaster would sacrifice domestic content for the international market, simply because no other broadcaster has a domestic news operation so tied up with a commercially successful international news operation.