Adding and subtracting

Paul Revoir, now back at the Mail after a six year gap, thinks Lord Hall is ruminating about a return to the transmitters for BBC3.

You can see how it might work - out of BBC4's most recent Top 15 programmes, a good number are repeats from BBC2 - Walt Disney, New Zealand; Earth's Mythical Islands; The 80s with Dominic Sandbrook; Rick Stein's Long Weekends; Attenborough 60 years in the Wild. Two came from BBC1, Top of the Pops and the Welsh thriller, Hidden.   For some time, the weekend schedule has been propped up by archive music shows, mainly Top of The Pops. The remaining thread is largely history, mostly fronted by Lucy Worsley and Michael Wood. 

A re-imagined BBC3 could easily take the music stuff, and properly scheduled, the oldies would follow it; a re-imagined BBC2 could take back its own repeats, and a weekend dollop of history. BBC4 has a weekly reach of 9m, but they very much dip in when bored with other networks - average daily time with it's output is a mere 1 minute 38 seconds.