BBC Three boss defends broadcast ratings, says iPlayer is priority

By Morgan Jeffery

Published: Thursday, 25 August 2022 at 12:00 am

The performance of BBC Three’s programming on iPlayer remains top priority, the channel’s controller has said – despite its much-publicised return to linear broadcasting.

In 2014, then BBC Director-General Tony Hall announced that the broadcaster would be closing BBC Three as a linear channel and moving its programming online. In 2021, the decision was reversed, with linear broadcasting resuming in early 2022.

Much of BBC Three’s programming has attracted fewer than 100,000 viewers on live television since the relaunch, but speaking at this year’s Edinburgh International TV Festival, controller Fiona Campbell said that iPlayer remains the key focus when commissioning.

“We very clearly said right from the beginning that our strategy remains commissioning for iPlayer,” she explained.

“[But] we want to showcase the platform and the content to maximum effect and there are members of the older audience who don’t have a strong, frequent relationship with iPlayer, so it’s really important to get that content out there in the maximum ways possible, to show them what the BBC has for them and then to pull them in to have a closer, more frequent relationship with iPlayer.

“So all along, I’ve said, the commissions strategy doesn’t change. It’s all about content that’s going to work on iPlayer.”

Campbell argued that offering BBC Three programming on both iPlayer and a broadcast channel allows the channel to “distribute it as far and wide” as possible, adding that viewers who sample one episode of a show on broadcast might then head to iPlayer to watch the remainder of the series.

“The hope is that by people finding [shows] through that route, they go, ‘Actually, that’s really for me and I’ll go and seek the rest of that out on iPlayer,’ so it’s a whole package of distribution.”