[DTV]

Bleak. While the audience has seemingly held up domestically, I wonder how things are going for world. One of the old channel’s greatest assets was consistency and reliability. Regardless where you were, you could switch it on and get a quality world bulletin on the hour. Neither dominated by UK domestic news or lazy CNN Trump type content. 

World used to be a constant at home and in hotels abroad, it’s not on anymore. Further why would the premium advertisers stick around and pay the ad fees BBC charges if it’s no longer a premium product?

The BBC do have measures of their global audience, but they seldom release them anywhere other than the Annual Report - so it's likely nearly a year until we'll be able to see whether the international audience is holding up. And UK viewers better hope that it is, because any substantive decline in advertising revenue and syndication and distribution fees will just mean further budget cuts for the channel.

And, before somebody inevitably suggests it, no, the channel collapsing internationally would likely not allow for a return to a domestic channel, not without significant extra licence money being invested (which would, of course, likely be required to be a level higher than it was previously to cover for the huge amount of World-produced content on the old News channel).