The BBC must find new ways of reaching younger audiences over the next decade or risk becoming a service for over-35s only, according to the corporation’s director of strategy, James Purnell.
“Young people consume the BBC hugely, 10, 12 hours a week, more than YouTube, more than Netflix, but that is falling,” Purnell told a Guardian Live event on the BBC on Thursday.
“These services are being used less than 10 years ago, and if you extrapolate that and we aren’t able to respond then in 10 years you would have an issue. If the BBC doesn’t address that, cannot address that over the next 10 years and it continues, you will have a BBC that was for people over 35 and not relevant for people under 35. That would not justify the licence fee for those groups.”
Purnell, who was culture secretary under the last Labour government, said plans to remain relevant with younger audiences would form a core part of BBC proposals for charter renewal at the end of 2016.
“We will be saying we have to invest in the digital future of the BBC and in reaching younger audiences,” he said. “That will be something we absolutely have to do, the question will then be how can that be funded.”
Last year, the BBC revealed plans to take BBC3, its youth-oriented channel, online only.
Purnell said BBC3’s audience made it the most appropriate choice to go online only, and the move was allowing the corporation to invest in original programming on other channels. However, the decision was driven by financial pressures.
“It was not something we would have done were it not for the money,” he said. “We got to the point where we were making all those cuts we couldn’t make further savings through salami slicing.”
