Chris

1 and 2 are far too distinct to merge effectively. They could certainly afford to lose 1-Extra, run commercials on 1 and 6, bid for 4 to become some kind of state-funded special case, and cross-subsidise 2 with revenue from its commericalised TV operations, effectively using radio 2 commercial space as advertising for BBC TV. They should sell 3 to classic FM who in my humble opinion do a better, more accessible job of it anyway.

Any local stations that want to stay open would have to go commercial. In reality most of them would close. A few such as Radio Merseyside have a genuine following and would probably survive.

The BBC’s TV operations are based on a mass audience strategy and there’s no way they’re ever going behind a paywall. Absent a licence fee, they’ll go free-to-air with advertising, and will probably merge Four back into BBC2, which did a perfectly good job of that sort of arts output before Four was launched anyway.

I don’t think public funding of TV is ever going to go away completely. The day may well come when the TV licence is terminated, but it will be replaced by something else which, I believe, is likely to fund a central pot which all broadcasters could bid for a slice of in order to fund public service programming.