When the BBC News guys say BBC3 is moving to online only, it's probably right. Of course, the BBC Trust could reject the saving, and that's where the Twitter campaign will go. Who will be fielded to describe this move as best solution ? Tony Hall, James Purnell, Danny Cohen or Zai Bennett - we'll see tomorrow.
Shifting BBC3 online (where, if you only watch catchup, it's all currently free) marks the third attempt the BBC has attempted in modern times to connect with yoof via a brand. The first was DEF II, a twice weekly insertion on BBC2, which ran from 1988 to 1994, edited by Janet Street-Porter, with some shows hosted by Normski, a rapper, currently with Hoxton FM. Normski and Janet were said to be walking out.
The second set of DEF II titles,spookily, included a hammer trying to crack a nut.
In October 2007 the BBC had another go, with Switch, under "teen Tsar" Andy Parfitt. This had programmes on BBC2 on Saturday afternoons, Radio 1 on Sunday evenings, and a web portal that included Slink, an online magazine for teenage girls ("my boyfriend was born a girl" "Try the Slink Love Calculator"), and The Cut, an online drama that ran weekdays for a year.
One daily programme was the 5.19 show, made in Grafton House. You only need to try a minute or so of this to judge standards.
In March 2010, Mark Thompson sounded the death knell for Switch, for not "reaching its target audience effectively. Although the BBC should continue to target younger teens, it must accept that its role will be secondary to that of Channel 4 and other broadcasters". I'm not sure if the Teen Tsar had his salary reduced at this stage.
Stop it with all the brand stuff - make quality programmes teenagers want to watch, and bring back some contemporary music, if not Top of The Pops, once a week on network tv. Don't pretend Glastonbury does it - average age of attendees is now over 35.
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