Recommendation 7

The BBC also plans to reintroduce BBC Three to terrestrial TV, five years after making it an online-only service.10 We questioned why BBC Three is the answer to falling audience share among young people when it did not work last time. According to the BBC, ‘linear viewing’ proved to be very resilient over the last few years, as a result of which migration to online viewing has not happened as fast as anticipated. The BBC also stated that the return of BBC Three is not the only answer but one part of its plans for addressing the decline in audiences. Other measures included: looking at its content mix to ensure that its programming reaches all audiences and that younger audiences and underserved audiences feel it is relevant to them; the work it is doing to bring more audiences to iPlayer; and its recently-announced plans to expand across the UK in order to enable the more authentic portrayal of different regional communities.11 However, the BBC’s answers were unconvincing as to why, this time, it would be different, and bringing back BBC Three would indeed help to address falling audience share.12 Reaching audiences across the UK