Is it bye-bye to BBC Three?
In a surprise announcement last week, the BBC announced that it is going to drop BBC Three as an on-air channel, moving it to an iPlayer only channel. The move comes as a result of the “tough choices” outlined by director general Tony Hall, which are required to reduce the BBC’s budget by £100 million. Final approval must be granted by the BBC Trust.
Twitter has been awash with commentary about the various merits (or otherwise) of the well-known shows that it has spawned such as Little Britain, Gavin and Stacey and others.
On the BBC’s website the story announcing the axing has garnered (at time of writing) over 1,200 comments, many of which were making alternative suggestions regarding cuts (from axing the news channel, BBC Parliament and even BBC1) to axing various BBC top bods.
Several people noted that BBC Three per se was not being ‘axed’, simply moved to a different platform, and one that its target market of younger viewers was well-versed in using.
Indeed as we descend the ‘young-ness’ chain, we see that the use of media platforms for accessing their chosen content becomes more and more varied. In my own experience of being the mother of two ‘tweenies’, children below the age of 12 rarely watch anything on terrestrial TV channels in so-called real-time. All their viewing takes place via iPlayer (or equivalent), Netflix, YouTube (strict parental controls, of course!) or the PVR to watch something they have recorded previously.
I think this is a sound decision by the BBC, which has to look to the future, as well as save money now.
The report that first highlighted the likely re-homing of BBC Three also led to a flurry of stories regarding the debate over licence fees this weekend, with some articles stating that one proposal was to scrap the fee and replace it with subscriptions, and other reports suggesting the fee may be pegged to inflation. Interestingly, other stories reported on the possible decriminalisation of fee-avoidance, mooted by the government, in order to free up magistrates’ court time. Of all the likely outcomes floating about, this one is sure to be the most popular with the general public, although not, one suspects, with the BBC.