£65m will be saved by moving BBC Three online, with half of budget to go to BBC One
Cutting BBC Three would create space for a BBC One +1 service and allow the CBBC channel to run for longer in the evening, director general Tony Hall has said today, insisting that it is ‘not the end of BBC Three’.
Coming a day after it was leaked that the channel will go off air – which is expected to happen in 2015 – Hall called the decision “the beginning of a new BBC Three.”
Moving the service to be only on iPlayer will save the corporation £65m, with the cost reduced to £25m, it was revealed.
Hall said that half of the commissioning budget will now be ploughed into BBC One’s drama budget.
A petition to save BBC Three has reached over 55,000 signatures.