BBC News flying BBC Three to return kite

Harry Palmr

As observers will be aware there has been chatter about how BBC Three programmes are just the thing right now and how linear TV is back in fashion with the kids, so maybe it should come as no surprise that tonight BBC News carried a report suggesting the corporation is considering bring it back. Now Call me an old cynic but I don't think for a moment BBC News would have gone to the bother of putting a TV report together about a dead TV channel coming back unless it was coming back and that this story is essentially a way of getting some chit chat going - tomorrow the media pages will be full of it and then the kids will be instagramming their excitement about lots of Stacy Dooley (well maybe not) but clearly something is afoot. And if Three does come back with a bigger budget than the 30m PA they have now for OTT delivery then something is going to have to go - you get one guess as to what that will be.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-52719883

Delta2113

Be sad to see BBC4 go to make way for this again. I'm a big fan off the BBC but this chasing the 16-34 market or whatever is not the way to go.

Elmo

TBH I think it was a mistake to drop BBC 3 as a linear channel so early. I think if if its a toss between BBC 3 and 4, I think they should keep 4.

They could have kept it running from 9pm after CBBC.

They need to consider some nation changes IMO.

BBC Scotland and BBC Alba should either be one alone channel or should be sister channels SBC 1 and 2.

I think BBC Scotland is wasted with daytime BBC2 and late night This is BBC Scotland

I think BBC Scotland daytime would be better served with a mix of BBC archive programming and their own Daytime shows. They should also show films.

Capt'n Midnight

In January BBC 4 was getting a daily reach of 2,269,000 and weekly reach of 3.75m

BBC1 Chanel Islands , Freesat 952 serves a populations of 170,500. And don't get me started on BBC Radio 3 which costs twice as much as BBC 4.

A lot of the people who watch BBC4 have been watching it before the target audience were born and will be watching it after the current generation have grown too old for it.

Yoof market is hard, there's lots of competition. And fashions change.

Yes I miss some BBC3 stuff, but it's far more generic than the BBC4 stuff. And were else would the BBC repeat stuff like I Claudius every 20 years ?

SPDUB

Elmo wrote: »

TBH

I think BBC Scotland is wasted with daytime BBC2 and late night This is BBC Scotland

Because of the Covid 19 Scottish briefings they haven't carried BBC2 daytime since they started .

1 sheep2

Harry Palmr wrote: »

As observers will be aware there has been chatter about how BBC Three programmes are just the thing right now and how linear TV is back in fashion with the kids

That had passed me by. Do you know of any articles about it?

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

And don't get me started on BBC Radio 3 which costs twice as much as BBC 4.

As expensive as Radio 3 is (£39m in 18/19), it's nothing on Radio 4's £96m cost!

downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/annualreport/2018-19.pdf

For comparison, RTE's four radio stations cost €67m in 2018.

Capt'n Midnight

1 sheep2 wrote: »

As expensive as Radio 3 is (£39m in 18/19), it's nothing on Radio 4's £96m cost!

Now do the costings per listener

Also factor in that if the Today program on BBC 4 misses a few broadcasts then the good people of Moscow will have an extremely bad day.

1 sheep2

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Now do the costings per listener

Well that certainly gives a different picture. But, looking at the figures on page 63 of the doc I linked, R3 costs the same as R1 and £10m less than R2. Would you really advocate that its budget be reduced to much less than those?

icdg

The actual plan is here:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/annualplan/annual-plan-2020-21.pdf

It is still vague about BBC Three. The sentiment about restoring it to TV seems to have been driven by the success of Normal People and a worry that without the linear outlet it hasn’t been specifically identified as a “BBC Three” programme (it did get an airing on BBC One though).

More worrying is the conversion of BBC Four to an archive channel, with new shows moving to BBC Two.

Elmo

icdg wrote: »

It is still vague about BBC Three. The sentiment about restoring it to TV seems to have been driven by the success of Normal People and a worry that without the linear outlet it hasn’t been specifically identified as a “BBC Three” programme (it did get an airing on BBC One though).

As part of the agreement to drop BBC THREE the BBC must provide space on either BBC ONE and TWO TV for BBC THREE programming (usually late nights). BBC ONE +1 was also proposed starting from 8pm each night but this was rejected, while CBBC now continues until 9pm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWtgTrQLD2k

I would think that that document was written long before Normal People aired.

icdg

It is recent enough to include viewing figures as of the end of March. The stuff in it about BBC Three returning to linear is so vague and doesn’t sit well with other parts of the plan, so that it’s very plausible for it to have been a last minute addition.