So BBC3 will be online-only from next autumn. If the Beeb had presented this news as the channel being the first one to take the daring step of migrating to the internet, instead of it being booted out to save the likes of BBC4, perhaps BBC3 fans would be feeling less aggrieved. After all, as companies like Netflix demonstrate, the future of TV is probably on the web. Linear channels are just so, well, linear and old-fashioned.
The Beeb says the move is part of its cost-cutting, and will result in £30 million more for BBC1 (presumably enough to replenish Sherlock’s coat supply). I had hoped that, as a consequence, our licence fees would also be cut, but apparently not. Instead, the BBC is now proposing that its fee be pegged to inflation. Hopefully, the inflation index it uses won’t include London house prices, or we are done for.
Defenders of BBC3 point out that the channel gave us such gems as Gavin & Stacey and Little Britain, both of which were so successful that they were moved to BBC2, then BBC1. Which brings up something else that has always puzzled me about the BBC: why does it operate as though it were a football league system?
Why does a successful TV programme get shuttled to a channel that’s ‘higher up’ in the BBC hierarchy, as though it were moving up the league tables or across divisions? In a football league, this fosters competition: the league tables are only tables, and an entire team and everyone who’s worked for it gets promoted when the team does well (or relegated when it does not). But if you were a BBC lower-tier channel that conceptualised, created, promoted and nurtured a successful programme, only to have it snatched from you and handed over to a more ‘prestigious’ channel, well, what’s the point of even trying? The delightful Great British Bake Off, for instance, has been such a phenomenon that the next time it comes back it will no longer be on BBC2 but on BBC1.
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