Chris

I think the BBC does too much. I've never seen anything compelling that justifies the continued existence of BBC2 and BBCs 3 and 4, for example. 3 and 4 seem to have split what used to be BBC2's remit between them and while that means 3 and 4 both have a very clearly defined audience, I'm no longer certain what BBC2 is for. Yet BBC2 is benefiting from the bandwidth vacated by the closure of BBC-HD while 3 and 4 are not. Nor are the News, CBBC or Cbeebies channels for that matter. And that's another thing ... The broadcast of a channel for school-age children, during term time. What is the point of that? ITV has a far better set up, broadcasting CITV Mini during the day and older CITV stuff in the late afternoon. But then, ITV has to earn its keep. The Beeb can afford to use a scattergun, ensuring that the very few school age kids that are in a position to see the CBBC channel at 11am on a Thursday, can do so.

You could say the same for radio. 1extra, 4extra, Asian Network ... I know the BBC's public sevice remit is to ensure that the niches are covered, but I think some of their output is a bit *too* niche.

If they pared back a little on the breadth, they could do more about the depth, such as (in theory) making progress towards use of HD on their more important channels. Although as I said, the main block on HD is lack of space for it on Freeview and the BBC's reluctance to launch anything that it can't replicate across satellite, cable and terrestrial.