If the commercial operators care about their passengers as much as they say, rather than lining their shareholders pockets - Nexus would not need to step in and subsidise the services they do.

Yes, they need to generate some sort of profit, but when a potential funding shortfall is snowballing out of control, maybe something will prick their conscience and they will step in to ease the burden on funders....
Oh, who am I kidding, of course GNE, Arriva or Stagecoach won't step in and have a loss leader running. I mean, imagine them running a local service, serving communities and making a small loss, but generating buzzfare tickets and feeding into the more popular services - it's almost sacrilege to even think it!