The Student Room Group

BBC programmes moving to iPlayer only..?

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Thank you for all your contributions to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee’s inquiry into the future of the BBC.

We collated together all your comments and responses to our questions and they were used to inform the MPs during their questioning of members of the BBC Trust and Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP (Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport) on Tuesday 21 October.

The Committee plans to include a summary of the posts as an annex to its report at the end of the inquiry we expect the report to be published in December we’ll let you know once it’s published.

There were a few points during the evidence session when the Student Room and the information contributed by its users were explicitly mentioned so look out for them! Thank you for all your hard work!

The evidence session is available now to view on Youtube, however we have also picked out some particular points which were raised relating to comments you made regarding the future of the BBC.

[video="youtube;uG6K7fc_Y3w"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG6K7fc_Y3w&feature=yout u.be [/video]

A transcript of the evidence session can be found on the Committee’s webpages:

http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/culture-media-and-sport-committee/future-of-the-bbc/oral/14707.html (HTML)

http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/culture-media-and-sport-committee/future-of-the-bbc/oral/14707.pdf (PDF)

What are your thoughts on the responses from the BBC Trust representatives and the Minister?
Will you be contributing to the public review of the BBC Charter once it opens?

We will keep you updated on the progress of the inquiry and want to thank you again for the time you have taken to inform the Committee.

Thank you again!
Many of you commented in your responses to the plans that the BBC may move BBC3 to a wholly online channel by saying that this can have accessibility issues and could also lead to decreasing quality of content for BBC3.


Seaholme in post #9 you said:

Original post by seaholme
I don't see why young people should have their content restricted to iPlayer and everybody else be able to watch it in both formats. I watch things from all channels on TV and on the iPlayer, depending on where I am. If anything I watch more BBC1 and BBC2 programmes on the iPlayer and more BBC3 (the channel I believe they're about to ditch) on TV because it's more likely to be showing something I want to watch if I'm just idly browsing channels.


The topic of BBC3’s future was raised with members of the BBC Trust.

Length of Response: 3 ½ minutes (1.23.50-1.27.27)

Q737 Paul Farrelly: I just have one last question on governance, Chair, but before I do that. At the moment you are going through a public value testing process with respect to the decision on BBC Three.

David Liddiment: We will be doing, yes.

Paul Farrelly: You will be doing?

David Liddiment: It has not started.

Paul Farrelly: I thought Tony had announced that in March.

David Liddiment: No, he announced his intention subject to Trust approval, his proposal to remove BBC Three as a normal channel and put it online. That has to go through a public value test and we said, “Right, we await the detailed proposals”. He made the announcement in March because it was known to only a tiny number of people at the BBC, and my understanding is that the proposal is imminent.


Q738 Paul Farrelly: He made the announcement in March but nothing has happened since?

David Liddiment: What has happened since is that he has people working on the detail of the proposal.


Q739 Paul Farrelly: He has made the announcement without having the detail?

David Liddiment: He said, “My intention is to do this”. In other words, “I am persuaded by the strategic, financial and every other argument that this is in the best interests of the BBC. I recognise that in order to make this happen I need to get approval from the governing body of the BBC, the BBC Trust. In order that they can make a decision, they need great detail because they need to understand exactly how this is going to work. They need to understand in great detail the impact it may or may not have on the market, because we need to be able to the public value test. So until we get the detail we cannot do the public value test”. I do not think that is a—


Q740 Paul Farrelly: You are a very respected television executive in the independent sector as well, and one of the complaints that we have, be it on BBC Three, bet it on BBC One + 1, be it on BBC Production where BBC Production is potentially going to compete in the outside market, and other announcements that the BBC makes, is that they instil a great deal of uncertainty in the outside world, and that uncertainty is certainly not dispelled by months and months and months of waiting for detail.

David Liddiment: But we will publish what the BBC send to us, the detailed proposal. We will publish that. We will then do our work, and the work allows everybody to come in and say, “What about this? What about that?” It is an entirely open process, so those people who have concerns about BBC Three and think it is the wrong thing to do will have the opportunity to make their arguments through that process. I do not think anyone has anything to fear from that. No one is going to do a backdoor deal around BBC Three.


Q741 Paul Farrelly: It is so open but your answer that nothing has happened is news to me.

Jon Zeff: The formal public value test has not started because, as David said, the Trust is awaiting the very detailed proposal that we need in order to run the kind of detailed scrutiny, for Ofcom to do the market impact assessment, and for us to run with the consultation that we need to. I do not think that is the same at all as saying, “Nothing has happened”.
I've seen the part of the speech where it said that people watching catch-up TV need to be considered as well :biggrin:

I hope this means less shows that are good quality would be cancelled.
I watched about an hour and a half of the questions, up until the BBC representatives were dismissed.

The BBC made interesting points, some of the MPs on the committee were throwing some strong questions at them.

I'm glad that no final decision has been made on the future of BBC Three, however I'm surprised that it hasn't even been put to the public opinion yet as the announcement was made some time ago.

I still hold the opinion that it's slightly too early to move a channel to online only - streaming speeds aren't great and it would put the internet infrastructure during peak times under great pressure.

I was interested to learn that they weren't particularly interested in a subscription model. Also that they want to focus on more risky programming from newcomers to the industry.

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