BBC 3

BBC Three was launched by Stuart Murphy, who previously ran BBC Choice, and before that UK Play, the now-discontinued UK TV music and comedy channel. At 33, Murphy was the youngest channel controller in the country.


BBC Three is a television network from the BBC broadcasting via digital cable, terrestrial, IPTV and satellite platforms. The channels target audience includes those in 16-34 year old age group, and has the prupose of providing innovative content to younger audiences, by focusing on new talent and new technologies. The channel is on-air from 19:00 to around 05:00 each night.

Targeting an audience of 16-34 year olds, BBC three has to compete with there rivals in order such as ITV2 and E4, for an audience that the BBC has traditionally had difficulty in attracting. On average nine million people watch BBC Three every week.

BBC Three's programming consists of comedy, drama, spin-off series and repeated episodes of series from BBC One and Two, which would attract many audiences as they may have missed out a show and want to catch up upon it later during the day and other programmes that attempt to alert others of their actions through a series of programmes challenging common beliefs.

Pre-watershed shows are held before 9pm, which are shows which have no swearing, nudity and this would be beneficial for the young viewers. Moreover, BBC 3 has films going on from 7 on some days, as this would attract many viewers, these are held on the weekends and fridays mostly, however the weekdays shows are on such as:

• 19.00 - Snog, marry or avoid 
• 20.00 - Don't tell the bride

However, these shows change everyday, there isn't a fixed timing for some of these shows as on some days snog marry or avoid is shown at 21.00, which indicates there is no fixed timing, suggesting audiences won't be aware of what time to expect a programme to be on, however this could also be a positive outcome as young audiences flick through the channels and don't usually stick to one, also having films shown on some days would attract them even more, especially on the weekend as that is when they want to relax. 

BBC three had 368,000 viewers on a documentary without being ratings dynamite - but the big audiences went to shows you could already have seen elsewhere - EastEnders, Doctor Who and Little Britain, with 502,000, 380,000 and 252,000 viewers respectively.

BBC three has many different shows at different timings, there are suitable shows that we could look at for our teen drama, which are pre-watershed as we could get information and new techniques which may help us with our drama, also the target audience for bbc three ranges from 16-34 years, but we need to aim ours at young teenagers, so we could research more about the young teenager shows in order to help us.