#8

Scrap Sky Arts

11 Likes
#9

This is really sad. Can understand that it costs them money with no real value (unlike BBC3 which produces content which be sold to other companies, Fleabag, Normal People ect…) But there are so many decent programmes on there that don’t fit it it’s other broadcasting options that it makes sense, to me at least, to keep it. Maybe as an online channel?

2 Likes
#10

Hope they put TOTP on the iPlayer

2 Likes
#11

Feel sad for my mum, this is the only stuff she watches that isn’t cop shows or stuff about hospitals

1 Like
#12

will be really sad if this happens, more for my dad than for myself
hopefully this at least means the walters stop defending the bbc on the grounds of their arts programming

#13

Perhaps bin off some of the absolute dogshit that appears on the other 2 channels would help with budgets.

4 Likes
#14

this’d be shite.

bbc4 is great.

2 Likes
#15

But isn’t it the stuff that best meets the first two parts of their mission to “inform, educate and entertain”?

Like - I get it, the value of the cuts the BBC are having to absorb are huge, but the whole idea is their decision making is supposed to not be driven primarily by what’s in the public interest rather than what’s interesting to the public.

3 Likes
#16

I can accept the removal of the channel as long as they seriously revamp the two channels that are left, continue to make good, thought-provoking programmes that fulfill their mission. They need to scrap some of the cheap, reality-based rubbish that they churn out to fill the schedule.

Really pissed off if they cancel TOTP repeats before we get to 1990-1993 which is my favourite time for the charts.

2 Likes
#17

Surely will turn into like the yoot shows and BBC3 whereby anything remotely intellectual will be marked BBC4 and stuck on the iPlayer
I don’t really care what people broadcast anymore

1 Like
#18

Having said that I did watch a pretty excellent show on James Joyce made by Angelica Houston of all people just last night so I guess I will miss it not being at the press of a button.

#19

She starred in her dad’s adaptation of The Dead so is probably a Joyce fan.

On your first point, I don’t really understand why they’d do away with BBC4 altogether, like you said, BBC3 was cut as a channel but exists as a brand, why not just do that.

4 Likes
#20

Yeah, like all those times they try to have a big saturday night game show that is ridiculously over budget and also fucking appalling

That one with the rabbit for eg

1 Like
#21

(And bbc3 got a loooooot better after that tbf)

#22

Could even show some late nights on 2 in a similar way they do with 3 on 1 atm
Probably will tbh would be nonsense not to

1 Like
#23

Remember the beeb have done this kind of “oh yeah we might kill it off, soz” thing before with 6Music and there was an equally huge outcry and they kept it, and now it’s doing better than ever. Part of me wonders if leaking stuff like this is just testing the water to see public reaction. The story seems to come up every few years for BBC4 (there’s an Torygraph article here from six years ago, for instance) but it never happens.

1 Like
#24

tbf this is exactly what happened to bbc3 after they went iplayer-only. no more shitty reality stuff or hellscape sitcoms to pad out the schedule

2 Likes
#25

oh i thought thats what they were doing

#26

What was that AWFUL BBC3 sitcom about university that started around 2009?

1 Like
#27

Coming Of Age?

the writer’s moved on to being a full-time walloper on twitter nowadays