(1) You asked about the Total Channels and gave your own suggestion as to why it had changed.
(2) I confirmed what you had said regarding BBC Olympics channels and had the NIT listing analysed by indexing the NIT entries, extracting the TSID, SID, Service Name fields. Sorting the SID field into numerical order and comparing to a similar extract from the previous scan. There are 68 networks in the scan and the BBC Olympics channels and the Hidden 23 placeholder had been removed from all 68 networks.
(3) Having confirmed what had actually happened for you, it is somewhat impolite for you to reply that the information is wrong and you have better information. Sorry but your information was wrong, feel free to report what your sources tell you but I'm quite sure that your sources didn't analyse the 61356 rows of data in the NIT to get that incorrect information.
(4) Feel free to draw your own conclusions if you prefer fantasy and speculation to the facts.
(5) So, the Total Channels count has changed again, better get your source to fill you in on why.
To be fair, if you rely on the SDT, you will always be dealing with inaccurate information. Many services being listed which are only available in other regions and some services which have actually been removed from the NIT but are left behind in the SDT.