Doing this to BBC Four is definitely a "fuck you" to the government from the BBC. TL:DR - BBC moves channel aimed at old, mostly white viewers solely online an

Doing this to BBC Four is definitely a "fuck you" to the government from the BBC. TL:DR - BBC moves channel aimed at old, mostly white viewers solely online and channel aimed at young, ethnically diverse viewers on to OTA TV whilst maintaining online access which by any considered approach is the opposite way you'd do it to sustain viewers for both. Likely viewers for BBC Four are Conservative voters. BBC Four is the high-brow channel with a mostly middle class and upper class audience. I'd also wager more men and more white people generally. It's content is a strange combination of history, arts and old music performances. These kind of older people are the types of people who mostly consume TV via Freeview OTA broadcasts and balk at the idea of paying for Sky or streaming services and many won't have ever used iPlayer or perhaps even have access to it. A few years ago, BBC Three was made online only on iPlayer and it's target audience was Teens and people in their 20's and for those people access via computers wasn't a massive hardship as many would be in their bedrooms on their laptops or tablets anyway. BBC Three has definitely shifted towards content for a more ethnically diverse audience in recent years and has garnered plaudits for this from within the media. In the last 12 months, after struggling with internal concerns about relevance against the likes of Netflix, has brought BBC Three back to Freeview OTA. So this news about BBC Four being moved to iPlayer is a likely nail in it's coffin. Likely viewers for BBC Four are Conservative voters.