BBC Three channel to return in January 2022

Would things like Formula E and sports on iPlayer be shown on delay.

Ideal time to launch would be February for Winter Olympic Games

What do you mean by 'shown on delay' exactly.

Catch-up?

Delayed by 5-10 minutes?

I would like 60 seconds to get a brand new look with the Reith font. That pink and black one vas been used for ages.

So confusing. How can they afford it? Thought they were broke. All these cuts in news etc. Yet they can afford to launch extra tv channels. Strange times.

News isn't the be all and end all of the BBC....

They have made a reasonable profit from their commercial arm BBC Studios, who gave over £200 million to the BBC, so they could dip into that profit for a new budget for BBC Three.

Didn’t say it was, but seems odd to be pleading poverty, making cuts and then launching additional services when they can’t afford the ones they have.

I think it's mainly coming from the budget of BBC Four? But rather than go through all of the hassle of trying to close it down followed by the inevitable bowing to public pressure and keeping it open, they're simply reducing its budget to peanuts and keeping it going as an 'archive-focused' channel.

At risk of wild speculating I couldn't help noting.

I dare say this might help give them cover should they ever review the political hornet's nest that is BBC Scotland (channel).

Savings from efficency it says, which there has been a lot of. The increased programme budget was allocated for 2020/21 so it's already there.

The cost of actually taking those programmes and putting them into a channel will be minimal. The airtime already exists, they'll possibly need an extra post or 2 for the scheduling/media planning or that might just be extra work for those already doing that for other channels. They're already making trails for BBC Three so no extra work there, same for publicity.

It'll be a bit of configuration to do the time switching (on a system that already exists) and whatever it takes Red Bee to do to, which is really just an extra few hours of playout time a day. It's not like the old days when a new channel meant building transmitters and installing masses of equipment

Sorry if I ask but I don't understand why this would give the BBC cover should they ever review the BBC Scotland channel?

Perhaps they might spin it to say that the BBC Scotland budget is now still there but they are showing the programmes on more popular channels.

In the next year or two, they could quietly end that spending, put it all into BBC3, and strongly promote Scottish programmes on the channel in the hope noone will notice the missing money.

That is the conspiracy theorist in me.