BBC announces raft of closures with CBBC and BBC Four to be online only

theguardian.com:

CBBC, BBC Four and Radio 4 Extra will shut down and become online-only services, the corporation has said, as part of plans to close television and radio channels in order to focus on streaming services.

The BBC director general, Tim Davie, made the announcement on Thursday, in response to the culture secretary Nadine Dorries’s decision to freeze the licence fee at £159 for the next two years.

He added that many of the World Service’s foreign language services would go online only,while the existing UK-focused BBC News channel will merge with BBC World to form a single global rolling TV news service.

Radio 4’s long-wave service, known as the traditional crackly home of Test Match Special and the shipping forecast, will lose its dedicated programming before being shut down altogether.

There will also be cuts to local television and radio services in England, although the BBC insisted the overall budget for local journalism would be maintained – with spending instead redistributed towards hiring journalists to produce online content.

The vast majority of the BBC’s spending is focused on its traditional broadcast television and radio channels while audiences are shifting online.

The BBC said about 1,000 jobs will be lost at the broadcaster over the next few years, with the latest announcement af years of redundancies and cuts.

Davie told staff they had to accept a need to shift away from traditional television and radio channels and invest in programmes made specifically for services such as iPlayer and BBC Sounds.

He said: “This is our moment to build a digital-first BBC. Something genuinely new, a Reithian organisation for the digital age, a positive force for the UK and the world. To do that we need to evolve faster and embrace