BBC3, BBC Scotland and Radio 4 Extra to close next spring
Three is indeed the magic number, as that’s how many services the BBC will shut down next year to save the corporation up to £500 million, as announced today.
First on the chopping block is BBC3. Rumours of its (re)closure had been swirling around for a while. The experiment turned out to be a failure, a costly failure at that, which has ultimately led to the channel’s second closure in 11 years. Instead the BBC will focus its efforts on content for YouTube, as the corporation’s first attempt to lure its young audience to iPlayer was a failure too. It’s currently unclear what will happen to CBBC once BBC3 goes. It could go back to 9pm closedown as was the case after 2016, but we’ll have to wait for full confirmation on that.
Next to go is the BBC Scotland channel. Again, not too much of a surprise. It’s basically been a massive money pit to try and steer the country away from a second independence referendum, which the BBC absolutely does not support. Indeed, there’ll probably be a lot of people in Scotland that didn’t even know the channel existed until today’s announcement (apart from Scottish Premiership fans). Most of its programmes are repeats, but any original programmes will move to iPlayer or BBC1 and 2.
Last but by no means least is Radio 4 Extra. Originally launched in 2002 as BBC7 and later Radio 7, its programmes have shifted from mostly children’s programmes at launch to repeats of radio plays and comedies from the archives. 4 Extra was originally meant to close in 2025 alongside CBBC and BBC4 (both have been spared for now) protest and popularity have allowed it to continue. Again, I doubt that many people will miss this service.
If the BBC is to close services, I think these are probably the right choices. Getting rid of CBBC and BBC4 cannot be justified at this point, especially the latter. While it is a shame that channels have to close, if the public isn’t engaging with them, then the logical solution is to get rid of them. It would waste time and money trying to promote them if there’s no result at the end. Could CBBC and BBC4 join this list? Time will tell.
I guess 2026 is the new 2016 for BBC Three.
To me, the big reason as to why the Three revival flopped was a lack of original content. I hardly watched Three because frankly, there was no reason for me to tune in. There was a lot of original content in the early days, but that dried up when most of it failed. Whenever I’d look at what’s on pre-watershed, it would just be whatever random CBBC content they had lying around, reruns of Top Gear and Eastenders, and reruns of family movies aired over the weekends on One. They had practically zero content suitable for before the watershed, and I kinda saw the writing on the was when they…
It seems to be Groundhog Day for BBC3…