[Stockland Hillman]

That could be a clever move from BBC News - putting the UK breaking news opt-out via a red button sending you to an iPlayer stream, rather than the UK broadcast changing.

This way they could monitor how much interest there is, and work out the cost per button push!

If a major UK story breaks and very few people press red to watch the coverage, then they know to scale it back. However if every time UK viewers are given the opportunity to watch the break away service tens of thousands choose to view, then they know it’s worth expanding the offering.

I know what service I would've chosen on Sunday afternoon just gone.

If the UK-opt of the new channel was put entirely on red button / iPlayer, and the full international version of the channel was broadcast on Sky, Virgin, Freeview & Freesat (minus Breakfast & Nicky Campbell in the mornings) that would be an interesting experiment to see which service got the most viewers & interest.

It would tell us nothing.  Add  no relevant facts, but give an excuse for more deceptive BBC PR that uses the lack of use of a UK red button stream to justify futher cuts

It's hard enough to get people to follow from linear BBC ONE to BBC TWO , red button and On demand services are used by a fraction of the audience of linear broadcast, even total SVOD AVOD and streamed OTT viewing are still much smaller than broadcast.