Earlier in the year, the BBC revealed its cost cutting plans on the TV service that involved shutting down the Youth Orientated BBC Three channel on Digital services. Since the announcement much has been made of the move, but today the BBC’s director general Tony Hall (with a few other senior executives) have outlined the corporation’s plans on how BBC Three will switch to being an online-only channel in 2015.
Whilst the decision to remove BBC Three form the channel listing in a moneysaving bid is still controversial, it would seem that the BEeb are moving forward with its plans to move the Some of the channels biggest shows to BBC One/Two and to the online iPlayer service exclusively.
However, before any changes can be finalised, the full plan needs to be detailed and presented to the BBC Trust next year, whom will then give the final go ahead for the channel to move online. As the BBC is a publicly owned company who is funded by the British public, there is still a chance the Trust could turn down the plans.
Hall and the BBC seniors have met with the press at BBC’s Broadcasting House in London where they detailed their plans for the big 2015 move.
First up the Beeb are changing the current 9 hour a day format (BBC Three only runs from 7pm to 4am daily, with no Daytime content shown) to a 24 hour one, but this doesn’t mean that there will be more content being made for the show, instead replays and older shows will be used heavily to fill the roster. The BBC plans to increase the Channels focus on focus more on just two areas of Television, namely comedy and serious factual, with the best content also getting a showing on BBC’s One and Two.
The channel will be available to watch in full live online, with the BBC saying that they will be putting in some new design work on tablets so the site works as it does on computer. Additionally more content will be spread over social media and online with sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter all name dropped, with an aim to drive people back to the Channel online.
Seeing as the Changeover was for monetary budgets, the BBC has said that 80 per cent of the new budget of BBC Three (Which is around £30 million ) will be spent on long-form programming, while 20 per cent will be set aside for innovative digital projects including the website re-design.
The Beeb has said that they are yet to get an exact date on when the changeover will happen, and that when it does happen, they do expect a drop off in audience figures initially. However, with the recent news that the amount of Households with TV’s has dropped for the first time in 30 years recently (mainly due to iPlayer and streaming services) the move is looking set to be accepted soon.
When BBC Three channel is moved from Digital TV, it will be replaced by the launch of new BBC +1 channels on Freeview and paid TV services.