sustainable given their audience level and the costs involved. nobody would touch them in a privatised world and try and make money out of them. they're simply not commercially sustainable. so this isn't about making a kind of kneejerk defend the bbc case. this is about thinking about the rest of the radio industry. the commercial world would be affected. not only would all those bbc local and nation services closed down — the bbc networks collectively, one, two, three, four and five could just about survive if they were prepared to cut their cost base by about their content costs by about 60%. well, good luck saving the good bits of the bbc that people know and love if you have to take 60% off the cost and then the third leg of this is that the commercial sector, if the bbc, if the networks were taking commercials, the commercial sector would suddenly find its own revenue base cut back by ten, 15, 20%. therefore, the commercial