[DTV]

How the hell did we end here-This whole relaunch has been an unmitigated disaster and unless Ofcom finally wake up, there's not a thing we can do it about unless the BBC themselves realize  that one news service was never a good idea regardless of money.

You've actually held out longer than I thought you would. But, in short, as to how we've ended up here - the BBC's licence income has been repeatedly slashed in real terms meaning that it has had to make multiple rounds of increasingly severe cuts - the latest being £400m in annual savings. At some point, the BBC News channel being one of only two TV/radio stations not to have had a real term cut in its budget in the last decade became unsustainable.

Now, I know your position is that the NC's budget should actually have been increased, but even keeping things as they were just wasn't realistic or reasonable - especially not given the duplicative nature of the channel in multiple senses. Ultimately, all the plausible paths for the News channel's future would have been downgrades.

Also, I'm not really sure that it's been the 'unified' element of the channels that has been the 'disaster'. While there are some editorial decisions that were questionable and somethings that I'd structure differently, it's been more justifiable than the interim period and none of it has really been wrong in a way wouldn't be fairly fixable and I expect emblematic of the fact it's early days. Most of the actual issues are presentational, with the serious faults being operational - though, in both cases, again fixable. Even if a full-scale reversal was possible, which it isn't, I don't thing calls of irredeemability are justified at this point - even if, yes, it is overall a weaker service (but, again, all options were).