The newspapers and the BBC

There's a long interview with Jeremy Hunt, Tory would-be Culture Secretary, in The Independent. Not much new, but he's still got his eyes on BBC3 and BBC4.

"These are channels costing nearly £100m each to run, but with very, very small audiences. There may be good public service broadcasting reasons why this investment is sensible but I'd like to hear arguments beyond the simple one that everyone pays the licence fee. The reality is that there isn't enough money even in the BBC's generous licence fee pot for it to produce programming for every single niche that exists."

In the Guardian, there's a Q&A with technology chief Erik Huggers, with one rather puzzling answer...

"We intend to halve the number of top-level domains, of which there are about 400, by 2012. By top-level domains I mean "/sitename"[bbc.co.uk/spooks, for instance] – some are large websites like news, others are groupings such as comedy or specific programmes. We're not yet in a position to give any specific examples of what will go, and it wouldn't be fair of me to do so today given that these are proposals that will take time to work through – but I hope the direction is clear".

But the review itself is much more specific...

Some sites that are currently live will be closed, such as /celebdaq, /sportdaq, /naturestop40,
/lastmillionaire, /jamiekane, /bbcpartners, /openweekend, /actingup, /amiafreak
• A number of sites that have already been ‘mothballed’ will also be closed, such as
/amazingmrspritchard, /streetdoctor, /keyskills, /strictlydancefever, /filmfestival,
/underdogshow
• Some sites will be consolidated under larger audience-facing propositions, such as /history
or /drama e.g., /spooks, /robinhood.

Meanwhile, The Daily Mail, despite being warned off by Sir Terry Wogan, continues picking at Chris Evans, saying he's gone grey, and that he's lost a million listeners.