BBC3 “off air”…. moves online.
Youth-skewed BBC Three channel has ceased broadcasting as a linear channel.
- Published by David Knox
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Youth-skewed BBC Three channel has ceased broadcasting as a linear channel in the UK after 13 years.
It now exists as an online-only channel in a move designed to save £30m ($A60.4m).
Programmes and other content such as animations and short films will now be available via the channel’s website and the BBC iPlayer.
While the change was approved by the BBC Trust it drew a Save BBC Three campaign with more than 300,000 people sign a petition to keep the channel on television.
BBC Three was effectively responsible for launching the careers of James Corden, Matthew Horne, David Walliams, Matt Lucas and Julia Davis and was home to The Mighty Boosh and Being Human.
The final programme broadcast was a repeat of the first ever episode of Gavin and Stacey.
SourceL BBC
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- Tagged with Being Human, Gavin and Stacey, The Mighty Boosh
4 Responses
This brings back In The Flesh memories, frack the BBC, would have loved a 3rd season!
I was stunned by the closure of BBC3, it has been the place of creativity, innovation and edgy stuff for so long over there.
This is a short-sighed decision, I was reading the site of the petitioners and I agree with their points. The audience of BBC3 most likely isn’t going to go to other BBC channels, they’ll go elsewhere and that elsewhere won’t be the online-stuff they have planned.
I find it incredibly ageist that they feel that the Teenager and Adult Young demographics aren’t important, that their content is disposable, transferable if popular (like Little Britain) but otherwise ignored, almost scoffed at.
Treating the audience with respect should be the number one rule of programming, otherwise you’ll pay for it, maybe not now, but later on in the future BBC3’s closure I bet will have a negative impact on them.
As much as I would hate to see this, I think the writing is on the wall for ABC4Kids and ABC3 as linear channels
ABC3 more so than ABC4KIDS I would think.
ABC4KIDS tends to rate pretty well and I cannot see many parents wanting their pre-school aged kids watching online-only content.
ABC3 would be more realistic as they don’t rate as well and I think the reason for that is that ABC3’s main demographic is pretty much only watching online-only stuff on YouTube, Netflix and Pirated content.
However with the awful quality of iView, I cannot see the current ABC3 viewerbase migrating over to that, they will go elsewhere, but it won’t be ABC, it will be GO! or the like.
That would be the biggest problem with getting rid of ABC3, it wouldn’t boost the ratings of their other channels, they’d just loose the audience they have there.
((Also as a Tax Funded thing, ABC3 should exist as a service like the rest of ABC is)).