BBC mulls CBeebies radio station

According to BroadcastNow, the Controller of BBC's children's programmes, Richard Deverell, is lobbying for a CBeebies radio station to be launched, and also for the CBBC TV channel to extend the hours it broadcasts by two hours, so that instead of going off-air at 7pm it will continue until 9pm. 

Firstly, if you think that a CBeebies radio station could launch on the BBC national DAB multiplex and thus reducing the bit rates of existing stations, I don't think there's any danger of that happening, because the BBC DAB multiplex is already full to bursting, and Radio 3 has to be reduced from 192 kbps to 160 kbps whenever Radio 5 Sports Extra goes on-air before 5pm, and Radio 4 is reduced to mono when R5 Sports Extra goes on-air after 5pm, so they're not going to exacerbate the already ridiculous situation they've landed themselves in.

The only way they could realistically launch a CBeebies radio station is if they use DAB+, because it would only require a bit rate of about 48 kbps, or maybe lower if it were in mono. There would also still be no room on the BBC's national DAB multiplex, as mentioned above, until they've switched at least some of their services to using DAB+ and switched off some of their MP2 stations, and the latter is likely to be some way off. Therefore, the only way I could see it launching in the near-future is if they transmitted it on the Digital One or the new Channel 4 national multiplex.

On the issue of CBBC extending its hours, apparently they're thinking of switching on BBC3 at 9pm instead of 7pm, which would allow CBBC to continue broadcasting until 9pm, because BBC3 and CBBC time-share the bandwidth they use on Freeview. If BBC3 weren't switched off later than this would result in the picture quality of the BBC TV channels on Freeview having to be degraded for the 2 hours from 7-9pm, so hopefully they're not planning that.

Switching off BBC3 two hours earlier would also save some of the costs associated with broadcasting that channel, and the BBC has been moaning about having no money, so it would seem logical for them to do this. Extending CBBC for 2 hours would obviously increase the costs for that channel, but I'd imagine that there would be a net saving altogether, because children's TV is likely to be cheaper to produce than BBC3.