From the BBC
The BBC Food website carrying more than 11,000 recipes is to close as part of a plan to cut £15m from the corporation's online budget, a BBC source has said.
All existing recipes are likely to be archived, though whether some could move to the commercial BBC Good Food website is still to be decided.
TV show recipes will be posted online but only made available for 30 days.
The BBC source said online services had to be "high-quality, distinctive, and offer genuine public value".
Which is why this makes sense. There are plenty of sources for recipes out there: food.com, epicurious, Martha Stewart, food network, all recipes, Delia Smith, netmums, cbc, as well as bloggers and food companies and supermarkets giving recipes away. There's nothing distinctive about the BBC's recipes, nothing superior about them.
And they might look free, but they aren't. They're free at the point of access. You don't directly pay for them. But your license fee is, and anyone who wants to watch live TV is forced to pay for a license fee, regardless of whether they then use BBC services. We don't force people who read the Guardian to pay for the Daily Mail. We respect that there are market choices. Now, there are things that count as public service TV - things that the market won't provide. We might include things like parliamentary broadcasting, or CBeebies, but it's clear that the market will provide recipes for creme brulee or coq au vin, so we don't need to have the BBC doing it. We can allow people to choose who provides it.
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