Why are programmes removed from iPlayer at 10pm?? I understand they will be removed at some point.. but 10pm seems daft as it's 'prime time' in many houses, and if you're catching up before bedtime you have to get it watched before 10pm. We were trying to get the last 2 Happy Valleys watched last night, but I had to download the last episode and watch it on the iPad rather than through my Tv. Why not just remove stuff overnight at say 4am rather than in the middle of the evening?

Paying staff to work at 4am is more expensive than 10pm and it all has to come out of our licence fee.

And why do they keep all of those bloody Sunday Politics programmes, cluttering up the iPlayer for months on end?

Yes, it's such a shame there isn't an automated solution to the problem. If only the BBC had access to computers and software!

To the OP: presumably they use a rather inflexible interpretation of the expiry time, being an exact number of hours after transmission.