Re: Coming soon to Virgin TV 2014
 

50,000-60,000 native speakers depending on where you look online. I would imagine well over 90% of those are also fluent English speakers also.

It really is puzzling that it has survived the axe along with BBC4 both of which have less viewers than BBC3

Re: Coming soon to Virgin TV 2014
 

The reason that I've read is because the age group of the BBC 3 audience is more likely to adapt to on-line viewing. Given the main age group that BBC is aimed at, that seems fairly reasonable to me.

Re: Coming soon to Virgin TV 2014
 

BBC Alba has an 11% reach and costs 4 Million. BBC Three has a 23% reach and costs 87 million. So that's 20 times the costs for only double the reach.

Canning BBC Alba would only free up 4 million. Hardly a drop in the ocean of the 100 million they need to save.

Re: Coming soon to Virgin TV 2014
 

BBC Alba costs £14 million per year - £4 million from the BBC, and £10 million from MG Alba, a Gaelic media body funded by the Scottish Government and regulated by Ofcom.

And if you compare the cost per viewer/hour, BBC Alba is quite a bit more expensive than BBC3 - figures from 2010 (I can't find any more recent) show that BBC Alba cost 29.4p per viewer, per hour, whilst BBC3 cost 16.8p per viewer, per hour.

Re: Coming soon to Virgin TV 2014
 

Where do you even start with this? :rolleyes::td:

Re: Coming soon to Virgin TV 2014
 

It's all small fish when you think BBC paid £180m for the rights to show premier league highlights for 3 years and an undisclosed (but no doubt huge) sum for FA Cup rights which they outbid ITV for.

It's sport and US imports that I think BBC should be cutting back on and focus on things not supplied by the commercial sector and half the license fee while they are at it.

Re: Coming soon to Virgin TV 2014
 

I had an idea that BBC Alba wasn't soley funded by the BBC, I didn't realise that the vast majority of the cost was met by the Scottish Government (in effect, general taxation).

Re: Coming soon to Virgin TV 2014
 

But if they cut back on sport then there is even less free to air sport for people to see and that's not a good thing.

Re: Coming soon to Virgin TV 2014
 

Your numbers are well out of date. For 2012/13 it was actually 7.4p against 6.6p. Admittedly still more expensive but no where near your figures.

Re: Coming soon to Virgin TV 2014
 

wow when did we stop caring about our culture here,

this part of our history and like the welsh language why shouldnt we try and preserve some the oldest langauages in existence. To state that English is the business Language is plain ignorant and this country recognising other languages such as gaelic as OFFICIAL languages. Just to recap Whilst English is a dominant langauage there is plenty of business dozen in Other langauages and in this country ranging from Cantonese to German. The fact these countries folk have learnt english shows either a) deep lover affair with english b) failure of our own to learn a new language. If anything we shoudl be showing interest in these cultures including our own traditions and beliefs because soon they will dissappear. £4 million is a very small price to pay. I think its awful that we are trying to justify losing this so that we can keep free to air football thats like selling children to pay for a PS3 (okay not that extreme). Thankfully BBC are not looking to lose ALBA. Prsonally I would keep BBC3 as well and not giev anymore cash to BBC1 to throw away on such itesm as the Voice but that is my own personal opinion.

Likewise i respect all views here but I am slightly disappointed with the way this discussion was going

p.s. I am neither Welsh nor Scottish, neither can i speak the languages, proud to british, call Austria my second home and love all people from all societies, nationalities, culture and creed

Re: Coming soon to Virgin TV 2014
 

Well said. Cultures need to be preserved.

Re: Coming soon to Virgin TV 2014
 

I found that BBC Alba is good for Scottish Football lovers.

As an Motherwell fan BBC Alba pick more Motherwell games then both BT Sport and $ky Sports.

Re: Coming soon to Virgin TV 2014
 

But given the way greedy sports rights holders are driving up prices by playing off the TV providers against each other, should the BBC be expected to spend inordinate amounts of money on these sports?

Re: Coming soon to Virgin TV 2014
 

But English is the main language of business, it is a fact, not an opinion.

I do understand the issue about culture, but you know what, I don't want to pay for that out of my TV licence. Given that just about everyone can speak English in the communities BBC Alba serves, I really don't see the point in having a separate language BBC channel in this case. If people want it, they can pay for it. BBC Alba didn't even exist until recently, so it is not that big a deal, and the fact that they didn't have a TV channel over all those years before has not killed the language.

This is not as outrageous as you imply. Cornwall also has its own native tongue, but it doesn't have its own BBC channel. Where do you draw the line?

Frankly, if the world spoke the same language there would be less potential for conflict because we'd all be able to understand each other better, so I'm not really into preserving languages that are hardly used. However, if people want to preserve it, they can continue to speak it, nobody's stopping them.

My point is that you can't have a separate channel for every small minority language, particularly when you think of the small numbers speaking it - that doesn't make economic sense particularly in these difficult economic times.

Re: Coming soon to Virgin TV 2014
 

Speakers of minority languages probably feel the same about paying the licence fee to fund programmes solely in English.

Cornwall had its own language, which became extinct in the 19th century. The point of these channels is to prevent the Gaelic and Welsh languages also becoming extinct.

Fortunately, previously extinct languages such as Cornish and Manx are being revived. So there may come a time when some of your licence fee also goes towards supporting channels in these languages. ;)