The BBC has announced that BBC Three, its online entertainment offering, will be reintroduced as a linear TV channel.
BBC Three, which was launched at the start of 2003, disappeared from the airwaves in February 2016 as the result of a BBC cost-cutting exercise.
The channel didn't vanish completely, but instead adopted a much reduced, exclusively online, on-demand format available via the BBC iPlayer.
The channel's remit "is to bring younger audiences to high quality public service broadcasting through a mixed-genre schedule of innovative UK content featuring new UK talent".
To give it its due BBC Three has shown some very popular programmes over its relatively short lifespan - so much so that the BBC, clearly regretting its decision to banish the channel to iPlayer only, decided to earmark part of the BBC One schedule for the regular broadcasting of BBC Three programmes.
After much speculation, the BBC today confirmed that BBC Three, the boomerang kid, would be returning as a linear TV channel.
The BBC is concerned about the ever dwindling number of younger viewers, so hopes catapulting BBC Three back to prominence might help stem to tide. The BBC's current entertainment offering, just doesn't cut the mustard with younger audience members.
Charlotte Moore, Chief Content Officer says: "BBC Three is a BBC success story, backing creativity, new talent and brave ideas has resulted in hit after hit, from Fleabag and Man Like Mobeen, Ru Paul's Drag Race UK and Jesy Nelson's Odd One Out, to Normal People and This Country.
"The BBC needs to back success and make sure its programmes reach as many young people as possible wherever they live in the UK. So regardless of the debates about the past, we want to give BBC Three its own broadcast channel again. It has exciting, groundbreaking content that deserves the widest possible audience and using BBC iPlayer alongside a broadcast channel will deliver the most value."
BBC Three will return to the airwaves between 7 pm and 4 am, piggy-backing onto the CBBC channel as it did previously.
The BBC has pledged to double the channel's budget, which it claims will be achieved by cost savings and efficiencies.
Subject to Ofcom's approval, the new version of BBC Three will go live in January 2022.
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