[AaronTV]

I know that there is a tendency by many in this thread to overstate the reach and importance of the channel, but to suggest it is watched by less than 100,000 people (during an unspecified period) is as much an understatement in the other direction. Evening slots alone typically average that and, cumulatively, it reaches around 2m viewers per day - more than the News at One. It might not really possess agenda-setting powers, but that's more to do with it being a secondary outlet for the BBC rather than because of its audience - which tends to disproportionately include so-called 'opinion formers'.

I'm also not sure what financial viability has to do with it. As far as I know, the only UK-based news channel to ever turn a profit was BBC World News. Sky News seem to manage to do alright with agenda setting, despite being heavily financially reliant on the rest of Sky.

‘Cumulative daily reach’ is one of those figures that sounds impressive but doesn’t really mean anything in terms of actual viewers. 

Although I appreciate there was a lot of desire in forums such as this and in the industry to see the services remain separate, I think the reality is that nobody outside of these groups has noticed the channels have merged. 

The fact that there has been little outcry or commentary in several months suggests to me the previous UK only channel was watched by a fairly small group of people outside of breaking news. 

To most normal people, the BBC News channel is the same as it’s ever been and looks like it - an anchor sat in front of the BBC newsroom. 

The way that the vast, vast majority of people consume BBC News has not changed since the merger, so it makes complete sense to me to merge the channels and still provide a rolling service, but in a way that stops financial cuts affecting the quality of what most UK viewers see. 

As has been alluded to above, I do think there is a potential that the look and feel of the channel is not as good as it could be (even on a reduced but still pretty vast budget) because the merger was widely disproved of internally, so nobody really wanted it to work in any case as opposed to trying to make the best of it. 

The best thing senior management could probably do to that end is emphasise that the merger is here to stay and there will be no further separation of the services, as clearly UK viewers are, on the whole, being served just as effectively as they were before.