BBC to give senior bosses ‘youth mentors’

THE BBC has launched a so- called ‘reverse mentoring’ scheme in a desperate bid to stop young audiences from abandoning the broadcaster.

From next month, managers in its radio and education divisions will have their own ‘mentor’ under 30, tasked with showing the corporation how to appeal to youngsters.

BBC radio boss James Purnell said that they would ‘meet regularly to shape strategy, discuss technology and what young people want’.

The move comes amid a growing mountain of evidence that the corporation is losing its grip on 16 to 34-year-olds.

The average age of those tuning into Radio 1 is now 33 – older than the top end of its target audience of 15 to 29-year-olds.

Meanwhile, its BBC3 youth service has plummeted in popularity after the broadcast TV channel was axed and turned into an online-only platform.

According to research published by the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom in June, youngsters have been switching off from the BBC because they think it is too middleaged, too middle class and does not take enough risks.

They are also giving up on BBC radio and TV channels in favour of other distractions such as social media and YouTube videos.

Mr Purnell said that the ‘reverse monitoring’ scheme would help to put the broadcaster in a better position to compete with American technology giants. ‘The idea came from ... another group of young BBC employees who pointed out that in our content-making areas the percentage of senior leaders under 30 is particularly low.

‘In 2016/17 it was only 0.1 per cent, which maybe doesn’t sound unusual until you think that the founders of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple were all 30 or under,’ he wrote in a blog post.

News of the ‘reverse mentoring’ scheme comes less than a week after it emerged that the BBC will delete all traces of university degrees from job applications, in a bid to make the broadcaster less posh.