Chris

What you believe or doubt vis a vis viewing figures is neither here nor there. For starters, the figures are actually available - BARB collects them. And then, as others have said, over and over, these channels don’t need large viewer numbers to be viable. They’re broadcasting repeats over mature infrastructure from largely automated play-out suites. The cost of providing one of these channels is comfortably less than the revenue from the syndicated advert packages they run, or else they wouldn’t be doing it.