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BBC Three gets £40m reward for wooing young audiences

Normal People - Element Pictures/Enda Bowe
Normal People - Element Pictures/Enda Bowe

The BBC is to double the budget of BBC Three by taking £40 million from its other channels, claiming it has recaptured young audiences during the pandemic and needs to keep them.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph today, the BBC’s director-general says that “strengthening our relationship with young audiences is crucial to the future of public service broadcasting”.

BBC Three, which is aimed at 16-34-year-olds, will have a programme budget increase from £40 million to £80 million.

The biggest loser will be BBC Four, which is expected to be wound down as a broadcast channel within a year and moved online with only a fraction of its £44 million budget remaining. The content budgets for BBC One and BBC Two - currently £1.1 billion and £381 million respectively - are also likely to be cut.

In its annual plan, published today, the corporation says of the financial boost for BBC Three: “Clearly it means reductions elsewhere, but we’d be wrong not to back a service that is doing better than anyone could ever have conceived and is reaching a wide audience.”

The BBC said it is considering moving BBC Three back to linear television from iPlayer, after conceding that taking it online-only in 2016 was a mistake. “No decisions have been taken and this will need to take into account how viewing habits develop during the Covid-19 crisis,” it said.

According to the corporation, young people have flocked back to its services during the Covid-19 crisis and reversed decline “in dramatic fashion”.

Nearly six out of ten 16-34-year-olds watched BBC national news bulletins in the first week of lockdown - double the number who watched in February.

Lord Hall also hails the success of Normal People, the BBC Three drama which was streamed over 16 million times in its first week. Its viewing figures were boosted by broadcasts on BBC One. Killing Eve and Fleabag also started life as BBC Three shows.

However, the BBC warns that the pandemic has had “a very negative impact” on its finances, leaving an estimated £125 million hole.