BBC Broadcast News

30.11.2021

BBC Three is to return as a linear TV channel for the first time in six years, following Ofcom approval of the relaunch. New terms of trade have been agreed with Pact, the body representing independent production and distribution companies. Ofcom states: “To ensure the channel is distinctive, at least 75% of hours broadcast each year must be original programmes.” BBC Three will launch in early February 2022. It’ll be available on Freeview, Sky, Virgin and Freesat.

The first series of Stephen Merchant’s The Outlaws is the BBC’s biggest comedy launch this year, It has been streamed 11 million times on iPlayer so far.

PlayStation 5 owners can now add the BBC iPlayer app to their PlayStation home screens.

Ofcom has published its fourth annual report on the BBC. The corporation reached, in 2020/21, a record global audience of 489 million adults every week, an increase of more than 20 million on the previous year. The top three countries by BBC News audience are India (65 million), the USA (48m) and Nigeria (34m).

The corporation marks 100 years of broadcasting in 2022.

30.09.2021

The BBC and Sky have renewed and expanded their long-term strategic partnership which integrates the corporation’s streaming platforms, iPlayer and Sounds, on Sky Q.

The BBC and NBCUniversal, meanwhile, have formed a development partnership to find and fund new unscripted programming ideas.

BBC Studios’ Casualty is working with BBC Writersroom to launch a writing contest for frontline medical workers, while the 40th anniversary of another of the BBC’s most popular shows, Only Fools And Horses, will be marked by the release a new archive.

The BBC has announced its coverage plans for the UN’s upcoming climate change conference in Glasgow, COP26.

30.06.2021

The BBC will broadcast more than 350 hours of round-the-clock TV coverage, presented from a virtual reality studio, during the Tokyo Olympics, which begin next month.

England’s opening Euro 2020 game against Croatia was watched by a peak TV audience of 11.6 million and a 79.2% share of available viewers and, with 3.9 million streams, set an iPlayer live-viewing record.

Ofcom is inviting views on BBC plans to return BBC Three to a linear channel in January next year. BBC Three became the first TV channel in the world to make the switch from linear to online-first in February 2016.

The BBC is trialling Watch Together. The ‘Watch with friends’ feature, available through the iPlayer’s online version, will be rolled out on BBC iPlayer for its ‘The Glastonbury Experience 2021’ collection of archive content and enables viewers to watch sets from Glastonbury in sync with their friends

29.07.2021

Ofcom has launched a formal investigation into the BBC’s plan to reinstate BBC Three as a broadcast channel. The investigation could last up to six months because the relaunch would count as a substantial change to the BBC’s public service output.

The Euro 2020 football tournament set a record as the BBC's highest-ever online-viewed live event. Across BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport online, 75.9 million live streams were served, including 6.9 million for the final which featured England and Italy. On the day of that final, 25 million people watched the football on BBC One (six million watched on ITV) and 7.8 million watched the Wimbledon men’s final. The England/Italy match was watched by more viewers than any programme since Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997.

The BBC’s head of major sport events, Ron Chakraborty, has however acknowledged viewer frustration that the corporation could offer only two live Olympic events from Tokyo simultaneously, via one broadcast channel and on iPlayer red button. The International Olympic Committee sold European TV rights to Discovery, owner of Eurosport, in 2015, who outbid the European Broadcasting Union alliance of public service media across Europe, including the BBC, which sub-licences from Discovery. The arrangement lasts until 2024.

BBC and the All England Club have extended their contract by three years up to and including 2027 to broadcast Wimbledon.

31.03.2021

The DCMS report mentioned above also discussed the licence fee. It concluded that the government “needs to come out with a strong alternative… or strongly support the current model for at least the next Charter period (2028–2038)”. Julian Knight, the DCMS Committee Chair and a Conservative MP, said: “It's clear that the BBC TV licence fee has a limited shelf life in a digital media landscape. However, the government has missed the boat to reform it.”

In another parliamentary debate, to discuss the future of the BBC and its financial strategy, Tim Davie, the BBC's director-general, Glyn Isherwood, interim chief operating officer, and Charlotte Moore, chief content officer, spoke to the Public Accounts Committee. Of the UK’s 27 million households, the number who’d made a conscious decision last year to stop accessing BBC services and therefore no longer needed a licence, Isherwood said, was 1.7 million, up from 1.5 million the previous year.

More than 90% of UK adults used BBC services each week across the last 12 months. The monthly figure was 97%.

About 150 jobs are to be cut as the BBC moves its news operation away from London, BBC2 is to double its spend on arts programming, BBC Three is to return as a broadcast channel in January 2022, and BBC Four is to stop commissioning new content and become archive-focused.

29.01.2021

Children’s programming on BBC iPlayer was requested 40.8m times – a record – during the week 11-17 January, while BBC and BT have agreed a partnership to remove mobile data charges for BBC Bitesize educational content.

BBC R&D is developing BBC Together, a tool to enable people in different locations to simultaneously consume the same content on iPlayer, BBC Sounds, BBC Bitesize or the BBC news or sport websites. It’s available to try, for another two months, here.

A National Audit Office report has found the BBC faces “significant” uncertainty over its financial future due to changes in viewing habits and because the corporation is “heavily reliant on its main source of income, the licence fee”.

Richard Sharp has been announced as the next chairman of the BBC. The 64-year-old is a former banker at Goldman Sachs, where he worked with Chancellor Rishi Sunak, and a former donor to the Conservative party, and takes up his post next month. He said in December that the licence fee “may be worth reassessing”