[Lester]

This is the email I received. Probably a stock answer ....



The BBC remains totally committed to covering UK stories and to a 24 hour news channel which serves the needs of UK audiences, as well as international audiences.

Under the proposals there will be a separate stream for UK audiences which will serve UK specific content at certain times of the day or on certain stories. When there are big UK stories, these will be seen by the international audience too. When a UK story breaks, we’ll be there to cover it – either just in the UK, or to viewers all across the world.

Running one 24 hour channel, rather than two parallel channels, allows us to invest more in our ability to cover breaking news across the BBC. Our teams are rightly proud of the great work they are doing, but we need to make changes to ensure better value for licence fee payers.

The channel will be free from adverts in the UK. We are proposing that as well as being available to UK viewers, it will also be accessible internationally where it will carry adverts, driving commercial income that the BBC can then re-invest in content.

The experience for viewers watching the new BBC News channel in the UK will not just differ in this respect to those watching around the world. There will be many hours of UK-only content every day on the UK feed – for example key programmes like Breakfast and all our BBC One News bulletins will be carried on the channel for UK audiences. We are also pioneering a new televised version of some of our radio news programming starting with the Nicky Campbell Show currently heard only on 5 Live. We are committed to coverage of key Parliamentary events, including Prime Minister’s Questions every week. And, we are proposing to invest in a new Live and Breaking team, which will make UK-facing content when there are important UK developments.

We hope this reassures you that we’re not stepping away from UK coverage, we’re making that coverage better.