I come to bury BBC3 with faint praise.
BBC3 is closing – or at least being consigned to an internet-only fate. It’s always sad to hear news of cultural death, even when culture in this case often means repeats of (the long off-the-boil) Family Guy. The last thing the BBC tried to cut that gathered this much press attention was when the 6 Music radio station was threatened with closure, but was granted a reprieve when there was a massive online campaign – we’ll get onto why I don’t think history will repeat itself later.
…according to the biased Russell Kane (where will he find the money to feed his hair now?) The problem with this argument is that BBC3 isn’t producing good comedy often enough. It is telling that every time the story has been reported on the news, Gavin and Stacey and Little Britain (programmes that ended 4 and 7 years ago respectively) are mentioned as BBC3s highlight programmes. When someone is threatening to close your station you need to be able to make a strong case against by having really, really good current content. And BBC3 will have trouble with this, because its strongest content now is repeats, either of its own programmes or of BBC1 big hitters like Eastenders or Doctor Who. To an extent, you can see why the argument to make it an online only service makes sense because its schedules sometimes look like the homepage of the BBC iPlayer.
It is more than possible that BBC3 is the fall guy here. Whatever you say about the quality of BBC3’s programmes, BBC1’s schedules aren’t full to the brim with amazing originality either. The thing is BBC1 isn’t good enough often enough to justify its existence sometimes. On Friday night we watched the creaking Room 101 having its cobwebs blasted off yet again, followed by a very lacklustre Jonathan Creek; these programmes started last century and are frankly well past it. BBC3 is getting all the attention, but it’s a scapegoat to distract attention from BBC1’s lack of originality and substance. BBC1 could take more of a high ground were it not for the fact that a lot of its own programmes are quite shocking. For all the criticism of BBC3’s ‘lowest common denominator’ comedy, it’s BBC1 that gives us Mrs Brown’s Boys, a show that goes about as low as common denominators go.
This is not to argue that BBC3 has lots of great programming, because it doesn’t. It’s just to point out that its quality is not inconsistent with some of the BBC’s overall TV output. There was talk of BBC4 and BBC2 being combined to save money, and instead they’ve chosen to make BBC3 an online only service. In my opinion they should have combined BBC3 with BBC1. BBC3 makes just enough quantity of quality programming that it could easily displace some of BBC1’s screensaver dross and make the main channel more attractive to young people. The programmes it repeats all the time could be made permanently available on the iPlayer (if not already there) and comedy like Russell Howard’s Good News and Bad Education could liven up BBC1’s stagnant comedy scheduling a bit (and Russell Howard is putting the main channel’s comedy output to shame should be pretty shaming in itself...) It would be nice to have an inclusive main channel again anyway. What’s wrong with having the main channel do some under-30s programming, rather than putting it out in a ghetto with no crossover appeal?
BBC3 as a concept is insulting to its own audience by implying that they don’t merit being catered for on a mainstream channel, and instead need an underfunded ghetto filled with repeats. And because the BBC in general treats BBC3’s audience with a degree of contempt, it hasn’t got a loyal audience. This is where the comparisons with the 6 Music almost-closure fails. For a start, 6 Music was a radio station and BBC3 is a TV channel – the stakes are much higher in TV because more time and money is involved in making an evening’s worth of programmes than in paying a DJ to play records all evening. But that aside, they are two fundamentally different media, absorbed in different ways. Radio stations get loyal listeners much more easily because they find a DJ they like, trust them to choose the music, and if they don’t like a track it’ll change in 3 minutes or so.
In the 21st Century, TV channels do not get loyal viewers partly because of the surfeit of choice - people channel-hop until they find something good on. Only certain programmes still have people tuning in specifically for them live, mainly the soaps and ‘Event’ series like Sherlock. It’s the programmes that have the loyal viewers, not the channel. People can get passionate about a genre of music and be (for instance) a punk fan; but it’s rare for people to be a fan of a genre of television – there aren’t many drama, documentary or panel-show fans. When it comes to television peoples’ tastes are more specific and discerning, even when they are tastefully discerning to watch is Snog, Marry, Avoid.
Anyway, 6 Music was in a better position to start a grass-roots campaign because of the relative diversity of its audience. 6 Music’s audience spans more than one demographic; it has different programmes catering for different tastes and ages throughout the week. BBC 3 has all its eggs in the same under-30s basket. A basket which (people more cynical than myself might argue) is made up of people more likely to shrug their shoulders and switch to E4 or Sky Living or Comedy Central (or even BBC1).
It would be extremely satisfying if BBC3 came out with some blinding hit comedies to make the decision seem ridiculous, but it doesn’t seem very likely. If it could point to a list of 10 crucial programmes it has produced in the last 4 years it would be in with more of a chance, but frankly it can only just about manage to do that for its entire existence (and even to do that you have to include Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps). In principle it’s a shame. But in practice, I think we’ll live without it.
