BBC Three Closure

With plans to launch them on digital terrestrial did the BBC bid against ITV originally to run what would become On Digital?

No, and ONdigital wasn't an ITV bid, it was Granada, Carlton and BSkyB. Sky were forced to leave the consortium over competition grounds (oh how different things would have been if they'd stayed!)

There was at least one other bidder, DNT

Some of the planned BBC digital channels that became UKTV were planned to be in the line up of what became ONdigital

Thanks - easy to forget how much television has changed in the last 20 years. I guess even had DNT won we'd have probably ended up in the same situation with Freeview, possibly even sooner with it not having the support of Carlton/Granada.

BBC Three's 60 seconds presenter has signed off for the final time.
Chi said "goodbye forever"

I'm pretty sure the final 60 Seconds is on Monday with Sam Naz presenting the final bulletin.

I've just revisited the BBC Three launch. What a brilliant channel it was back then from branding to content.

You can definitely tell how much it was a "90s/00s BBC Two that let its hair down" than a, in-your-face "woo yeah young people, drugs and things" channel.

Was it not better for it? Providing entertainment, drama, news and documentaries for young adults rather than aiming at a teenage audience that it later became?

I think the BBC succeed far better when it doesn't bang on about its demographic. Looking back at some of the Children's BBC output from when I was younger, it comes across patronising than some of CITV's stuff, even more so compared to Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. The Nosin' Around "sketch" from The Young Ones makes me wonder if this has been a problem with the BBC for longer than I think, or it was a general dig at "yang adawts" programming in general.

Compare that to some of BBC Two's output, especially in the mid-late 90s when we got shows like Shooting Stars and Never Mind the Buzzcocks. It was blatantly aimed at a younger audience but it didn't do a song and dance about it. Even the Comedy Zone didn't point fingers at the "yoof," but instead had quirkier presentation which echoes that of the original BBC Three.

In the 80s/90s, BBC Two also had the 'DEF II' strand, which was essentially the BBC Three of the last 10 years.



I wonder whether the creator of the 'II!' brand is the same as for 'DEF II'

There is, of course, the urban myth that they called it DEF II despite nobody knowing what "def" meant.

Def means cool, according to Urban Dictionary. So 'Cool 2'