The BBC’s director of policy has defended the planned closure of BBC3, insisting it was a creative opportunity to “blaze a trail” digitally.
James Heath told the Voice of the Listener and Viewer autumn conference on Tuesday in London that the move would be a chance for the corporation to renew the youth-oriented channel as a “web native” product and offer new forms of interactivity to viewers.
He likened the proposed transition to online-only as another form of innovation that the BBC had demonstrated with the iPlayer and its website before that. The BBC3 audience was the most advanced of the four main television networks in terms of digital media consumption, Heath added.
However, he admitted that financial necessity was driving the decision to take the station off air and that the BBC would not otherwise be doing so at this point. Closing the station would save £50m annually.
The BBC Trust is expected to discuss the future of BBC3 at its final meeting of the year on 14 December. The BBC’s proposals would be subject to a public consultation and a market impact assessment by Ofcom.
In the session about the challenges facing public-service broadcasting, Dan Brooke, chief marketing and communications officer a Channel 4, called for a re-evaluation of retransmission fees that it and other broadcasters had to pay platforms such as Sky to carry their channels.
He said a new system was needed that “reflects the true value that each of these sides bring to the equation”. Fifty per cent of the viewing in pay TV households was still of the main public service channels, which Brooke said underlined their enormous value to the platform operators.
The Channel 4 executive also highlighted the importance of public service channels retaining their prominent positions on electronic programme guides. Any move to alter that risked “pulling a thread on the whole system” and would affect the ability of viewers to find the programmes they wanted to watch.
It would also mean lower ratings for the broadcasters in question and thus lower revenues. Brooke called on organisations such as VLV to lobby politicians to maintain the status quo.
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