BBC Three will stop broadcasting by February as it moves online-only, Trust confirms – but there’ll be no BBC One +1 channel
BBC Three will cease broadcasting by February next year, the corporation confirmed today, in an attempt to save millions of pounds.
The channel, aimed at a young adult audience, will move online-only.
BBC Three controller Damian Kavanagh defended the move as better serving them and the way younger audiences view television.
"BBC Three is not closing, we are reinventing online. We will not be a scheduled 7pm to 4am linear broadcast TV channel but we will be everywhere else giving you the freedom to choose what to watch when you want.
We will be available on BBC iPlayer on connected TV’s and via set top boxes and consoles like the PS4 so you can watch on a big TV with friends, if you want. We will be on mobiles and tablets so you can watch on your own in the bath, if you want. The truth is we will be available to you in more places than ever before including linear TV. All our shows will be on BBC One or BBC Two so you can watch on traditional TV, if you want,"
The channel will also have its budget cut by £30m. The channel will spend its remaining budget split between 80 per cent drama, comedy and entertainment programming, and 20 per cent on new types of content for online, such as short video, picture stories, animation and "authored pieces".
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As part of the move online, all programming on BBC Three will have to be shown on BBC One or Two, across time slots.
The BBC Trust which governs the broadcaster also gave the go ahead to extending CBBC broadcasting to 9pm and improving iPlayer by including programmes which air online first and adding third party content.
However, a plan to create a BBC One +1 channel broadcasting an hour behind the main channel was not approved and the BBC will look at what to do with the spare broadcast spectrum.