BBC Trust

A high proportion of those present were enthusiastic viewers of BBC Three, with a number of the channel’s genres being popular. Specific programmes mentioned included Family Guy, American Dad, The Revolution will be Televised, Sun Sex and Suspicious Parents, Russel Howard’s Good News and Her and Him. However, significant concerns were expressed regarding the BBC Executive’s proposals to make BBC Three accessible exclusively on-line as a service. One of the key elements of this concern was the poor reliability and speed of broadband services in many localities, with Prestatyn, Kinmel Bay and Craig-y-Don in Llandudno all being mentioned as areas where broadband provision was poor, or download speeds slow. It was felt to be a political issue since it involved infrastructure growth and development.  There was concern that moving BBC Three on-line only would disenfranchise them and some participants felt they were already marginalised with some expressing the view that they felt north Wales wasn’t adequately covered by the Wales national news services. Other participants were enthusiastic Netflix subscribers and were experienced users of on-line audio-visual services. There was recognition too that convergence of platforms was underway. Amongst the attractions of Netflix and similar services – according to the participants - was the ability to watch a whole season of programmes at the same time, the high quality of drama, and the wide choice of material on offer.

Drama was a key aspect of their TV viewing for many of the respondents, with Hinterland, Sherlock, American Horror Story and Doctor Who all mentioned (though not all being BBC drama).

The BBC’s Factual TV output was also appreciated by a number of the participants, with natural history programmes (and those narrated by David Attenborough in particular) being mentioned by a high proportion of them.

The BBC’s website was used by the vast majority of participants on a regular basis, and was considered a reliable source of information. A number said that that they felt that the information on the website (particularly in relation to news) built upon the information provided by the broadcast services. The BBC iPlayer was used by a high proportion of the participants who had a good broadband speed which made its use possible and a trouble-free experience.

60 Second news on BBC Three and Newsbeat on Radio 1 were both praised for presenting the news headlines in a succinct way and concentrating on the facts. Some participants felt that the BBC sometimes ‘went over the top’ in relation to some news stories and that this seemed to be dictated by logistical considerations. The criticism of the BBC’s domestic news provision was that much of it was “focused on London” rather than all the different nations and regions of the UK. There was criticism too that international stories too frequently seemed to be given attention because they involved people from the UK – “it bothers me that people aren’t equal to ‘British people’ – this approach seems to devalue the lives of people from other parts of the world.”

One participant also said that he often watched BBC Parliament, since it afforded him an opportunity to “view the source material and come to my own opinion on subjects having heard the arguments directly from the UK Parliament or National Assembly”. 

The BBC’s music coverage was praised by a high proportion of participants, with the coverage of the 2014 Glastonbury festival considered to have been very good indeed, and the interconnected coverage on a variety of platforms was praised and appreciated.