[DTV]

However its worth noting that Sky News runs a full newsgathing, online and broadcast service, including distribution costs for apparently LESS than BBC News channel alone.

It's reported at start of Comcasts legal undertaking to fund Sky News it was circa £90m a year costs (15m loss after sales) that's increased by CPIH every year.

It's definitely right to say that Sky News is better pretty much across the board than the BBC News channel these days - being more interesting in content, formats and presentation, as well as at least having a clear sense of what it is trying to do and who it is trying to serve.

That said, not sure it's right to say that Sky News costs less than the BBC News channel alone. As you say, Sky News is around £90-100m; based on the piecemeal public data, BBC News channel is somewhere around £50-70m - both BBC channels were in that region before, but UK contributions were cut by about 50% and World weren't bringing in as much advertising towards the end as they had done previously, so would guess that World contributions to the budget are down too. It could be a bit higher than that ballpark, but can't see it adding up to Sky levels.

But as I've said previously, I'm not sure that all the bizarre choices around the new channel are budget related - the presentation and format seems to be (at least in part) out of a deliberate (and misguided) attempt to ape Outside Source and The Context across the day.