The BBC Trust has provisionally rejected an hour timeshift +1 channel for the BBC, on the grounds that it does not offer public value.
The timeshifted channel would take little extra resource from the BBC, but would take up spectrum, and the Trust has decided that it would impact negatively on both ITV and Five commercially.
Central to the decision was the fact that 24% of the UK population would need to upgrade their equipment in order to receive the +1 channel.
"The Trust's provisional conclusion is that this proposal fails the public value test and should be rejected," the BBC Trust - which is tasked with overseeing the publicly funded BBC - said in a statement.
Limited value
"The proposal would have limited public value given the need for 24 per cent of UK television households to upgrade their equipment in order to receive +1; the inability to offer 'opt-out' programmes for the nations and regions; the lack of distinctiveness of the proposal; and the limited impact on reach to 16 to 34-year-olds, which means it would be unlikely to mitigate the impact of changes to BBC Three."
So that's pretty damning then...
The decision arrived along with the news that the Trust would okay the move of BBC Three to an online only channel, and that a CBBC channel would launch in Three's spot, along with the condition that there remained a space on BBC 'live' TV channels for experimental programming.
