The BBC has started a redundancy process in its TV and streaming division, heightening staff fears that Matt Brittin will announce the closure of the poorly performing BBC Three and BBC Scotland channels next week. The corporation’s director general, who has repeatedly said that linear TV and radio services may have to shut as audiences move online, is expected to inform staff on Wednesday of the latest stage of a plan to save £500m and shed up to 2,000 jobs. This week, Dan McGolpin, the director of the BBC iPlayer and Channels division, which includes all the corporation’s TV stations, called for expressions of interest across the department in taking voluntary redundancy.
In an email he said the plan to “mitigate the number of [enforced] redundancies” included sounding out staff interest about job-sharing arrangements, a reduction in hours, and “relocating to another BBC base across the UK”. The move has fuelled speculation that the BBC is about to take the two channels online-only, according to sources, as Brittin focuses on cutting back on TV and radio services and content that delivers the least value for money. It would be the second time BBC Three has been taken off linear broadcast.
The youth-focused channel – which launched in 2003 and generated hits including Gavin and Stacey, Fleabag, Killing Eve and the lockdown hit Normal People – moved online-only in 2016 to save costs. Since making a comeback to linear TV in 2022, it has struggled as audiences increasingly drift to streaming TV and video platforms such as YouTube. BBC Three recently announced it was canning the high-profile RuPaul’s Drag Race UK owing to financial pressures.
On Tuesday, the channel’s highest-rating show was Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over, which was broadcast in a primetime 9pm slot but only managed an average audience of 74,000. Typically about 4% of the UK population watch the channel live in a week. Its cost per user hour was 26p in 2023-24 and 18p in 2024-25, the last year the BBC broke out statistics for individual services.
This compares with 10p for BBC One that year, 9p for BBC Two and 6p for BBC Four. BBC Three’s budget was doubled to about £80m when it returned to linear TV, rising to £90m in 2023-24, but it was cut to £66m in 2024-25. A similar online-only fate is looming for the BBC Scotland television channel, which was launched in 2019 as a dedicated outlet for Scottish programming, separate to the Gaelic-language BBC Alba.
According to the BBC’s latest annual report to 31 March just 12% of people in Scotland watch the channel live. That compares with 54% of the adult population consuming BBC Scotland content each week across BBC TV/iPlayer, BBC Radio and BBC Online. The BBC Scotland TV channel had a budget of £42m in 2024-25, while its cost per user hour was 13p.
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