A great deal of hand-wringing has taken place since the decision to cut BBC3 as a terrestrial television channel, particularly on the pages of The Guardian – where everyone from Steve Hewlett to Boyd Hilton to Mark Jackson has mused on the implications of the decision for the Corporation’s commitment to youth audiences, weighed against the relatively minor cost savings that will be made (Hewlett’s piece is best for pointing out this predicament).

I understand the angst. I do.

But behind the decision lies a genuine opportunity for risk, renewal and innovation within the digital space that the BBC has often failed to grasp. The concern about shifting BBC3 online, therefore, has generally overlooked a key statement from Danny Cohen and Lord Hall – that BBC3’s reimagining as an online destination “will not just be a TV Channel distributed online”.

With the promise that the BBC’s first ever axing of a television service is only half the story. The other half is the chance if offers to reinvent public service for a youth audience in the digital era. Yes, it may be 4-5 years earlier than they might have wanted to make the decision but the growth of broadband internet means that by the time the channel moves online in 2015, Ofcom’s research on the rate of take up suggests that well over 80% of homes will have a superfast connection.

The key question is what does this vision of “not just a TV Channel online” mean? If the BBC can keep to this promise, then the move offers the chance for the Corporation to stop viewing the internet as simply pipes to shove television down. Instead it must harness the creative power of the UK’s digital industries, which offer unique, innovative and playful ways to understand public service online. They’ve been doing it for over a decade, with and without the BBC: interactive, digital public service extends well beyond the broadcasters and into the domains of health, culture, science, history, education and charities (to name but a few). What we need to hear now is less talk about programmes, and more about services, applications, short form and interactive content. Because if we focus on, and give air to, the idea that BBC3 Online is simply a TV Channel on the web, then everyone loses. As the father of a future generation of youth, watching my son on the CBeebies appdemonstrates to me how the BBC can be a major innovator in this space. Don’t get me wrong, Christine Geraghty is right to warn against seeing young boys (even toddlers) as the future of the industry: but the BBC have a right and a need to innovate in the space – at the same time as continuing to be a leading player in the broadcast televisual space.

So when we make an evaluation of whether the cutting of BBC3 is good or bad for public service, we need to take a leap into the dark and worry less about the smaller budgets on offer for programmes here: digital innovation can cost a fraction of that within television and can encourage risk, failure, iteration and playfulness. In making this argument, I am reminded of one of the quotes from our AHRC research project that ended in 2012:

The whole Reithian view of innovation [is important to PSB], if the BBC had done nothing when telly came out, we’d still be listening to the bloody radio (IV51).

Lord Hall, upon his appointment, promised us the reinvention of the BBC as a “digital hub”. If he’s not to go the same way as Mark Thompson – who promised us a “360 multiplatform organisation” – or George Entwhistle – who briefly pledged us a future of “genuinely new forms of digital content – then the axing of BBC3 must truly be more than the move of the channel online. The BBC’s vision of the internet has become dominated by iPlayer and the distribution of programmes online. To move beyond the linear legacies of the Corporation’s broadcast culture, the BBC must embrace the opportunity to do what successive DGs have failed to deliver: a truly digital public service.

 

 

Dr James Bennett is a Reader in Television & Digital Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London. His work focuses on digital television as well as TV fame.

Twitter: @james_a_bennett