[News76]

The dominance of World in the merger is not really surprising - its difficult to sell a UK orientated channel to the international audience.

World News is sold by the commercial arm of the BBC, there's lots of advertising and carriage contracts reliant on it. Any merger was always going to benefit that channel over the UK one.

Well then we can kiss goodbye to BBC News as a channel until the BBC Three style u-turn in about five years time when they finally realize you cannot merge World and Domestic news on one channel news channel and everything has to be unravelled by which time all the talent will be gone.

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Now watch (like BBC Three before it) The News Channel come back in about five years time when the merger flops.

Ironically, your best hope is that the international channel is successful and so generates enough profit to subsidise a more substantial UK opt-out. With inflation where it is and licence fee trajectories where they are, the money just isn't there for the foreseeable future.

Plus, even if managers do admit defeat, as with BBC Three, it'll be a partial return - likely as per the channel is now. The channel as it was 10 years ago is long gone and a truly supplementary service as it was in the early years is so distant as to be virtually unimaginable.

Ironically a person is allowed to dream that mangers will admit defeat in the same way they did with BBC Three.

And i think you'll find inflation will not stay high forever either meaning the money will turn up at some point when the merger does indeed flop.