[NickyBoy]

From my point of view they would have been better doing that, considering what they are doing with the channel anyway. I doubt I'll be heading to the channel for any UK based breaking news story in the future, I'll head to Sky or online for updates.

How is providing no service better than providing an international news channel?

Obviously we don't know what the service is going to be like until it launches, and how they will handle breaking UK news, but from the general opinion on here and in the media, domestic coverage is going to play very little part of the new channel, so it will be of very little interest to those, like me, looking for the latest on UK related stories predominantly. It was suggested earlier in the thread that viewing figures have collapsed for the late evening now that they have dropped the Papers, so if the general outcome of this is that no-one watches, and goes elsewhere for their news, then what's the point of it being there. 

As others have said, it's not a merger, they are replacing the UK News Channel with BBC World News.