[interestednovice]

Sky’s rule that any channel on the EPG must carry a minimum amount of programming could make this tricky. We could see a BBC Three closure situation in which they run a few programmes in the middle of the night to make this possible.

Good point. On one hand, they could easily run the “Joins BBC News” part of the schedule with no slate (or the smaller slate) overnight on BBC One to meet the rule.

On the other hand, perhaps Sky will waive the usual rules given the circumstances here? The purpose of the rule is basically to prevent EPG squatting, but the BBC will still be using the same EPG numbers for their HD services so it doesn’t really achieve anything to prevent them from doing this. It’s actually helpful, as it stops 101 from simply going dark or appearing missing - directing viewers to seek help from Sky to get them migrated. Given that Sky did not insist on their usual testing period ahead of the regional switches, it seems that they may be willing to work pragmatically with the BBC during this change and give them some latitude outside of the usual rules.

It’s also strategically beneficial, to Sky especially, to allow the BBC to lead viewers into expecting HD only, as then Sky will be able to end their own dual-emission more quickly.

As to why it would be worth bothering - we all know that some people are immune to visual clutter and will simply ignore the current captions, etc. Sometimes you just need to throw the news right into the viewer’s face!