BBC Trust Review of services for younger audiences

At last the BBC Trust has had the courage to face up to the truth, at least in part. For example they recognise that BBC Switch on TV has not been very successful, and also that teenagers deserve better news services. Little is said about drama for young teens, although the Trust do acknowledge "that it is important for the BBC to provide older children and teenagers with some targeted output on television."

The Trust Review, published today, includes the following:

The BBC delivers some of its public purposes well to young people but faces challenges to deliver news to them, and to serve teenagers on television. BBC Switch "has not yet reached many teenagers on television. We continue to think that it is important for the BBC to provide older children and teenagers with some targeted output on television."

The Trust regard BBC News’ reach to young people as a very important performance indicator. A decline in the numbers of teenagers watching BBC television has driven an overall fall in BBC reach amongst teenagers. In response to its decline in reach to teenagers, the BBC launched BBC Switch but teenagers’ viewing of Switch on television is still low.

The Trust recognise that BBC Switch is "still an emerging proposition," but their view is that "its performance to date has been variable, with its television programmes in particular not yet reaching high enough volumes of the target audience." In fact the figure given by the Trust is 36,000 in the target age range 12 to 17 (0.8 per cent of the people in this age group)