[DTV]

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.

Inflation will not stay high forever, but by then the BBC will have had several years of below inflation licence fee increases, if that. Every year the BBC's income falls in real terms means another set of cuts. Even if the BBC is lucky enough to get a government willing to give it budget increases in line with inflation, that'll be several years down the line and will likely involve simply a stabilisation of what is left of the BBC. For 'extra' licence money to exist, you are going to require above inflation increases - which I just find hard to believe will be politically palatable in the foreseeable future unless there is a drastic improvement in the UK's medium-term economic fortunes. Even if that does happen, the axeing of the News channel will just be one in a long list of former or diminished BBC services and programmes hoping for a slice of the pie.

Ergo, the best hope of a more substantial UK service on the new channel is to come from the profits of the international service - which  have been earmarked for domestic BBC News operations. As I've said before, pretty much the entire history of BBC News 24/BBC News has been the original idealised channel being chipped away bit-by-bit - sadly, the progression of what the channel actually is has only really ever been in one direction.

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Really hope they find good roles for Jane Hill (fingers crossed as the replacement for Huw)

This is definitely something where we are in alignment, if it were up to me, she'd be the next BBC election night presenter after Huw - very few presenters are as smooth when it comes to breaking/rolling news as she is and that is just one big rolling news event.

It did occur me to earlier, though it seems quite unlikely, that it wouldn't surprise me if Jane ended up in one of the US presenter positions. I seem to recall that she worked in the US before joining the BBC and has done a lot of stuff with US elections before. It's an outside shout, but if any London-based presenters did transfer, she's surely up there.