BBC’s £34m to lure British kids off US TV

GENERATIONS of Britons were raised watching home-grown children’s TV favourites such as Blue Peter and Play School on the BBC.

But amid fears that Auntie Beeb is losing her appeal, the Corporation is to spend an extra £34million on children’s programming to combat the cultural threat from abroad.

Younger viewers are being tempted by the likes of the Disney Channel, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix, and the BBC has warned that British culture will be ‘shaped and defined’ by West Coast America if it does not take ‘vital’ action.

In speeches to staff today, Lord Hall, the BBC’s director-general, and Sir David Clementi, its new chairman, will set out plans to tackle this with the biggest increase to its children’s budget in a generation.

The BBC will spend an extra £34.4million on its CBeebies and CBBC services over the next three years, pushing their annual budget up from £ 110million today to £124.4million in 2019.

A quarter of the total budget for the services – which are aimed at children up to 12 – will be spent on online content. Lord Hall’s pledge comes amid growing evidence that the BBC has already lost the attention of many older teenagers, as well as viewers in their twenties, thirties and early forties.

James Purnell, head of BBC radio, chil- dren’s and education services, has admitted that 8 per cent of Britons aged 16 to 44 do not use any BBC service in a given week – almost twice the 5 per cent in 2013.

Those youngsters who use the BBC spend less than half the time plugged into BBC platforms than viewers aged 45 and above.

The loss of these younger viewers is a major threat. It will be harder to persuade audiences to pay the £147 licence fee if they have already given up the BBC habit.

Yesterday, a source said: ‘Investment in British content – particularly for the young – is vital unless we want more of our culture shaped and defined by the rise of West Coast American companies. The way young people are watching and consuming programmes and other content is changing fast, and the BBC needs to respond.’

The BBC said: ‘The BBC’s mission to inform, educate and entertain remains unchanged. But with competition not only from other UK broadcasters but from global media giants and young people consuming media in different ways, the BBC will need to achieve it in different ways.’