Scrap BBC Three and Four - bring back Choice and Knowledge?

It's very easy to say that BBC4 programming should just be moved to BBC2, but in reality much of its output would be considered to esoteric or too obscure to ever see the light of day on any of the main channels.

For example, would BBC2 ever commission a documentary on the history of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop? Or an hour-long documentary on the story of The Fall? Or run a season of long-forgotten programmes from the 1960s or Christmas ghost stories from the 1970s? I think not.

Fair point. Mind you, with Video on Demand already launching in cable areas, many of your concerns will shortly be met.

The Radio Times should act as a useful stopgap until then.

IMO, I think that BBC3 and BBC4 are far more superior compared to BBC Choice and BBC Knowledge, which towards the end of both channels became nothing of an embarassment. When both channels started they had a varied mix of new programming and good repeats, but towards the end BBC Choice was just repeats, the only original output was Liquid News, BBC Knowledge was also nothing but repeats of documentaries, though as good as they are I don't feel any need that a channel showcasing documentary repeats should be funded by the Licence Fee, they should be on a UKTV channel or something.

BBC3 has a problem of repeating too much of the same shows between 7.30pm and 9.00pm, due to the fact that the majority of their content is suitable for a pre-watershed showing. Now BBC3 has lived off the success of Little Britain too much, but you have to remember it also brings us other programmes each and every night, okay they might not be brilliant or widely watched, but they aren't imports, they are originally produced, something that most Digital channels won't offer you. Ditto with BBC4.

Though for BBC3 I think they should take the ITV2 approach between 7.30pm and 9.00pm by showing some of their best, some other BBC programmes and maybe some imports. (If the BBC have any)

These channels have been on the air for a couple of years now and people have settled with them and see what their general opinion of them is, BBC3 is more of a channel for new talent and BBC4 is what BBC2 used to be, by showing more comprehensive arts and documentaties, not catered by other services.

As some of you have pointed out BBC Three is restricted in the amount of non-original programmes it can repeat - which is why you don't get lots of BBC One or Two shows being shown again on Three but you do get lots of Little Britain, Two Pints, Monkey Dust, Little Angels - these are made for the channel so are original programming. The only way to do it is if programmes eventually bound for BBC One are shown first on BBC Three. Also they are limited in the amount of the imported shows that they can show ... especially from outside Europe. I think the imported stuff will be taken up with the movies they show. In the end BBC Three does actually produce quite a lot of original programming for example at 2030 tonight there was a new programme 7 Days - basically a comic look at the week's news events. Also remember that however many times they repeat Little Britain it will always get an audience - if you were flickingh through the channels and happened upon it you are probably likely to stay with it. I know that the same applies with things like the Madonna Millions shows - they always got reasonably healthy figures when repeated.

Why excally can they not repeat BBC1&2 programes???

Changing the name would be pointless, but I understand what you mean about the programming.

I've often wondered why public broadcasters, especially ones with large archives of programs to which they own the broadcast rights, don't have retro channels?

CBC Retro and BBC Retro could be excellent cable specialty channels. You could even use old idents (some would really like that).

No it wasn't, originally it was an education channel broadcasting for 7 hours a day. They started each day at 5pm with pre-school programmes (Tweenies, The K Klub etc) then broadcast adult education and careers programmes only heavy repeat rotation. It was on all day on Weekends, excpet for ONdigital viewers who lost it at midday

It was only after this that it gradually morphed into a documentary channel.... which still wasn't that good as it was 3 hours of repeated factual programmes repeated all day. The original Knowledge was crap, but at least it had original programming.

BBC4 is a top station, well worth ditching Knowledge for

Oh yeah, I agree BBC Four is great! My point was that Knowledge was in a class of it's own and it was a shame to see it go. I accept that saying "all the way through it's life" was inaccurate.

As to the former, they did in 1965. Where do you think the B/W footage used in the recent BBC FOUR doco came from?

As for the others - yes, of course BBC2 would have and did do done stuff like this 20+ years ago.

BBC THREE is a fantastic channel with great content, my wife watches Body Hits, Little Angels and Who Rules the roost, Wedding Stories and The Batchelor almost religiously.

I really like Two Pints, Little Britain, Ideal and Twisted Tales.

The Smoking Room, Monkey Dust and Mighty Boosh are fantastic as are Bodies, Outlaws and the new 7 Days.

I think BBC THREE should be doing MORE new inivative content not older stuff that has already been on, we should be moving forward not looking back - buy the DVD, watch it on UKTV or wait until the creative archive is finally sorted.

And as for repeats I like them, I often don't get to see the programme I want on it's first airing in a week, sometimes not until it's second or third airing - why? - because I have other things to do.

My vote is Keep BBC THREE , let it do what it is doing - plus some and we will have great iniviative content that in 10 years time will want to watch again on some repeat channel.

I'd have to agree there. BBC Knowledge was the last channel they should have ditched. It did fulfill a genuine public service remit in that it was the only source of regular factual programming available to non pay TV homes during the day. And that it's programming was sourced almost entirely (if not actually entirely?) from the BBC1/2 archives offered two other huge pluspoints: firstly, it's operational costs were peanuts compared to BBC4, so the BBC couldn't be accused of wasting licence fee payer's money on the channel, and secondly, that meant that it could show programming that was made on huge BBC1 primetime budgets, something not possible with BBC4's homegrown programming which has to be made on a somewhat smaller budget.

Although UK History came along 8 months later as a sort of replacement for BBC Knowledge, that channel is genre-specific, and although it's programming is good, it has such a heavy repeat cycle that it gets boring very quickly.

BBC4 I think did get it very wrong at launch with it having far too narrow a remit (some of it's programmes registered no viewers at all - so we're talking about sub-1000 figures here!), and it's schedule has benefitted from some of it's more recent additions, but I still miss BBC Knowledge and valued that more than I do BBC4.

As for BBC Choice/BBC3, almost never watched BBC Choice, almost never watch BBC3. Maybe they're not bad channels, but almost none of the programming on either the present version or it's predecessor interests me.

bbc 4 does need more variety - repeating ex-bbc 1 and 2 programmes is the only way they’re likely to entice new comers over who will hopefully become interested in some of the channel's original programming.

holidays in the axis of evil, north korea: a state of mind, timeshift - all fantastic programmes - that wouldn’t naturally fit in to the lifestyle and comedy focus bbc two has developed recently. even though most of the flagship programmes on bbc 4 get an airing on bbc 2, they don’t command the same promotion as they do on bbc 4.

in order for bbc 4 to become successful its essential they start broadcasting in the daytime.