Early look ahead filler

An exciting 2019 in prospect for the BBC.

Most important: The outcome of the public consultation on 'free' licences for households with Over-75s on board. The highest potential loss of income to the BBC is estimated at £745m a year - a fifth of the BBC's current budget, by 2021/22.  Remember, closing BBC3 as a broadcast channel only 'saved' £30m. The online questionnaire is open until 12th February.

It's all change at breakfast on BBC Network Radio. Zoe Ball moves in at Radio 2 on January 14th; Lauren Laverne wakes up Radio 6Music listeners from January 7th. Chris Evans' launch date on Virgin is January 21st.

At News, we await the appointment of a Digital Director, and a formal successor to Evan Davies at Newsnight. Newsnight, as we have noted, is advertising for a UK Correspondent (presumably filling the Policy Editor gap left by Chris Cook's departure for Tortoise Media) but only on a year's contract or attachment. Does this mean the whole Newsnight operation is under review later in 2019 ?

Former China Editor and news presenter Carrie Gracie is due back from her six-month break in January; where will she end up ?  I suspect Director of News Fran Unsworth will have a number of strategies up her sleeve for that meeting.

Meanwhile News will have to adapt to yet another computer system, with more savings (and a Major Change Programme) pinned on successful implementation of Wolftech News - as one reader notes, a sort of Uber system for deploying slightly fewer 'cars' to one 'booking.'  They're giving it a go in Cardiff.

Will 2019 be the year of BBC Sounds, the Corporation app with the lowest star rating on the App Store and Google Play ? Expect increased calls for some transparency about the investment - declared at £13m so far. The annual cost of content provision for Radio 4 Extra is £2.9m.

Over at Content, Charlotte Moore will be hoping for better from Eastenders, with a new set and a new executive producer. It would be good to climb back ahead of Emmerdale. Can someone please make watching The One Show less squirmy ?

One the business front, 2019 should be the year the BBC resolves what it's doing about UKTV, and belatedly, in partnership with ITV, produces an app. The solution may be more integration than we expected....