[Radio_man]

Are you going to pay for this service yourself?

As DTV says, a reality check is needed here. The merger is happening because there's no more money left in the news budget. The pot is empty. The license fee has been frozen, and cut in real terms, for well over a decade. 
The merger plans are a compromise to keep a linear TV news channel going for UK viewers. The other option is to close the BBC's UK linear TV news service completely, which I'm sure was considered. 
But to think that by the end if the year, we'll get a 2012 level BBC News Channel again is living in a fantasy world.

If you feel so strongly about this, write to your MP, demanding that the license fee is significantly increased, and to complain about how the cuts of the last 10+ years have hollowed out BBC news.

And some people here will be getting "reality check" followed by "I told you so" from me when this merger/compromise does crash and burn so don't expect me to back down on this, i don't care if i live in fantasy land or the only person on here who has this opinion, it's what needs to happen-Good night!

So where's the money coming from? The BBC is not a charity. If you cannot grasp the fact that the BBC needs funding to run a service........

If the merger is judged to be a failure, then the most likely outcome will be the closure of the linear TV news channel in the UK, with World News being saved, and maybe a full World News channel being made available to UK viewers on iPlayer with breakfillers and promos instead of adverts.