Beeb Young Demo Wimbledon Studio Show Bombs

[Mark Jeffries]

BBC Sport, in an attempt to break from the traditional highlights-and-analysis of studio shows and get down with the kids and their social media, redubbed the highlights show of The Championships (aka Wimbledon) "Wimbledon2Day" and added a studio audience and wacky home videos, to mostly negative tweets and posts and about the same ratings that the traditional format studio show received last year, took the fall and for the tournament's second week this week is kicking out the studio audience and returning to the usual format:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wimbledon-bbc-changes-highlights-show-806808?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=hollywoodreporter_livefeed_daily&utm_campaign=THR%20Live%20Feed_2015-07-06%2011%3A00%3A00_lgoldberg

Speaking of young demo pandering at the Beeb, I have heard that BBC3, the digital channel that's the usual suspect when it comes to complaints about young demo pandering, is going off the air soon--is that true or not (or has it already happened?).

[Adam Bowie]

Basically the problem was that some new producers decided that instead of highlights of all the matches people missed at work that people wanted to see, they put too many "features" in a new format.

As I type, today's episode is airing, delayed after Djokovic was close to being knocked out. They've moved back to a more traditional set this week, and no studio audience (they seem to be a bit of a trend in the UK at the moment and add nothing to a show like this). One way or another, Wimbledon is pretty popular in the UK - not least because Andy Murray is doing pretty well right now. So audiences come to it anyway without "trying too hard" to make it better.

As for BBC 3? Well it's still there - just. Last week the BBC Trust, the body that oversees the BBC, said that it agreed with BBC plans to turn the channel into an online service. So instead of a linear broadcast channel, you'd get it all delivered via the internet and the BBC's iPlayer. Formal sign off isn't for another three months, and I imagine it'll be a few months after that until the transmission is stopped - early next year perhaps? The BBC is only really doing this because it needs to save money. Its funding mechanism, the licence fee, has been kept flat for years now, which means without inflationary increases its worth less than it was. Semi-closing a channel is part of the BBC's answer. 

Bigger news with regard to the BBC is its funding following today's announcement that it must stump up the bill for the government's decision to allow the over 75s to have a free TV licence. This effectively costs the BBC one fifth of its budget. The quid pro quo is that the BBC will be able to charge non-licence fee payers for use of the iPlayer. At the moment there's a loop-hole that allows much iPlayer use to be legitimate without a TV licence. It's worth noting that currently in the UK licence fee payers don't have to jump any OTT hurdles that you might have to do to use some on demand services in the US, like use your cable company's credentials to log on. 

This is all going to be quite a big ongoing story, as it could result in more job losses (1,000 out of 17,000 were announced last week for a much smaller saving), and the potentially the shutting of services. 

More on all that here: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/06/bbc-pay-cost-free-tv-licences-over-75s-fee-deal

Adam

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[Bob Jersey]

Mark Jeffries, in part

Speaking of young demo pandering at the Beeb, I have heard that BBC3, the digital channel that's the usual suspect when it comes to complaints about young demo pandering, is going off the air soon--is that true or not (or has it already happened?).

The plan was, and still is, to retire the channel in favor of an online-only entity later this year... here's the original report announcing that decision (link) back in '14... and a regional paper's report (link) that the Trust has only recently finally signed off on the plan, after scrapping the unrelated additional plan to create a "plus one" companion to the pubcaster's flagship, and acknowledging that the savings to be realized from the move would be below initial forecasts.

B