Here is some data suggesting why some changes to York were thought necessary:
York Statistics - Apr 2008: 14,567 total registrations
York Statistics - Apr 2015: 10,987 total registrations
That's a 25% drop in registrations. You can believe TCA has been looking for ways to reverse that trend (and attendance has picked up a bit but not much in the three shows since - Apr 2016 showed 11,395).