Almost all of the sites being archived or deleted (yes, archived - the reporting that these are all up for deletion was overly simplistic and incorrect) are for

Almost all of the sites being archived or deleted (yes, archived - the reporting that these are all up for deletion was overly simplistic and incorrect) are for programmes or programme strands that are no longer being broadcast, in some cases for many many years. From what I've seen reported, the only site of any significance which is being removed is 'WW2 People's War', which asked people to put their and their family's personal stories of the second world war into a central archive (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/). I believe that this was already being archived by the British Library, so won't be lost. The overall decision to cut 50% of the 'TLDs' is definitely political, to placate an administration that's beholden to the Murdoch media empire, but the choice of which ones to kill seems mostly pragmatic.