[DTV]

It's interesting to me how World is very much the favoured child in all of this, whereas 20 or so years ago things were the complete opposite - 24 was the golden child and World was stuck in a broom cupboard with, as Stephen Cole once put it, News 24's cast-offs. How times change, eh?

Well I suppose in the early-2000s World was not in a financially good state - indeed, at one point it was at real risk of being axed if things didn't improve quickly (around the time of a bit of a kerfuffle around fair use fees). That is why you had a bare-bones schedule and presenters doing quite long shifts even on weekdays. This sort of changed around 2006 when World finally got proper US distribution for the first time - over the next few years, World become profitable and was able to expand its schedules again. The channel has since become financially self-sustaining and has continuously improved its audience, while gaining a solid international reputation - everything executives wanted from the channel.

The News channel hasn't really gone in the opposite direction - it's viewing figures have actually gone up in the last 15/20 years - but it has suffered from being a somewhat superfluous channel at a time of financial difficulties for the BBC. While it has taken several rounds of cuts since, coincidentally, 2006, there are limits to how deep those cuts can actually go on the channel - most have been somewhat superficial (e.g. losing double-headed presentation) and the channel has ultimately seen proportionally fewer cuts than pretty much every other BBC channel or station. So the News channel has been a bit frustrating to executives - it's a sizeable chunk of budget that couldn't really be cut back further.

And that's why World is somewhat favoured - both channels might do what they are supposed to do and meet performance targets, but only one pays for itself and brings in money.