BBC must do more to reverse fall in young and ethnic minority audiences
The BBC has been ordered to take more risks to reverse a long-term decline in its young and ethnic minority audiences in a review by the BBC Trust and expect BBC television to serve the young and BAME audiences better.
The BBC Trust’s review of all four of the BBC’s main TV channels published on Thursday singled out BBC1 for criticism, saying the main channel was guilty of “playing it safe” and needed to show “more creative ambition”.
In the past 3 years BBC television’s reach has dropped more among younger viewers and black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) audiences than mainstream viewers losing more than 5% of BAME audience twice as much as white audiences. The BBC Trust said it would consider the BBC’s decision to axe the BBC3 TV channel. Ethnic audiences pay more than £180 million for TV licence but hardly get anything relevant to them in a predominantly elitist organisation that awards programming contacts to a handful of people.
The report said 63% of airtime between 7pm and 9pm on BBC1 was taken up by just 10 programmes, fuelling a perception among some viewers that it “played it safe” and relied on familiar hits. It is the only one of the four BBC channels to increase its weekly reach, but like BBC1 and BBC2 it is also getting older, with growth greatest among the over 55s.
At a time of cuts across the BBC, the Trust said BBC management should collaborate more between channels to maximise the value of the money it spent.
BAME audiences represent a higher proportion of BBC3’s audience than any other channel, it said, and it was perceived more positively than BBC1 or BBC2 for its relevance to viewers of all ethnicities.
