I’m watching BBC Three and BBC Four quite a bit these days. It’s got a cracking mix of comedy and documentaries that are seemingly aimed square at me. However, both channels have been under the threat of closure thanks to a funding gap of £2billion at the BBC, with people demanding that they should suffer in favour of news and current affairs.

Now, reports are suggesting that it is in fact BBC Two and BBC Four that are to be the hardest hit in the corporation’s forthcoming budget cuts. Having said that BBC Four is safe from the chop, insiders believe the corporation will look to share content between the two channels, enabling them to reduce the total programming budget. The only great news on this is that the constant repeats of 2 Pints of Lager… will be shunted off to the TV glue boilers in the sky.

Broadcast suggests that BBC Two controller Roly Keating would have the final approval on dual-commissions for the channels in prime time, and that BBC Four content is likely to get a second showing on BBC Two to fill space off-peak.

Last week at a Royal Television Society event Jana Bennett, director of BBC Vision, said that she would “rather have one special piece of content-delivering impact on both channels than risk ending up with two indifferent programmes which were underfunded”.