BBC Trust

Radio 4 Extra will replace children’s programming with archive programming and BBC Radio has published details of the plans. The Trust is reissuing the service licence for Radio 4 Extra with the removal of these commitments.

The decision follows the Trust’s consideration of an assessment carried out by the BBC Executive of the impact of the plans which led it to conclude that they did not represent a significant change to the UK public services and so did not require a public value test.

The decision represents a change to 4 Extra’s stated key characteristics in its service licence and so the Trust considered whether a public value test should be carried out prior to the decision being taken. The Trust drew on evidence from the BBC Executive’s assessment as well as its previous work in this area, including extensive research on children’s media habits carried out in 2013 as part of the Trust’s review of the BBC’s Children’s services.

According to the Framework Agreement, the criteria considered by the Trust in deciding whether or not a public value test is required are the following:

• The likely impact on audiences: the Trust considered evidence that only around 5,900 children were listening to the main programme aimed at them each week. On this basis, the Trust concluded that few children would be affected by the proposal to remove it. As children’s programming is being replaced with the type of output more commonly found on Radio 4 Extra, the Trust did not consider that the impact on other audiences would be great. The likely impact on the market: the Trust understands that the replacement programming is likely to attract more listeners to 4 Extra at these times and so increase the station’s overall listening hours. However, it believes that the extra listening is most likely to be drawn from other BBC speech radio, rather than commercial radio providers who provide mostly music.
• The financial implications of the proposals: the proposals will result in the reallocation of a very small amount of funding from 4 Extra to BBC Children’s and to other parts of the BBC. The service licence budget of Radio 4 Extra is unaffected by the change.
• Finally, the proposals do not represent any new or novel activities for the BBC but they are intended to be permanent.

Having considered the change against each of these criteria, the Trust concluded that a public value test was not required before taking a decision on this matter.

Its decision to approve the change was on the basis of the continuing poor performance of children’s programming on Radio 4 Extra. The Trust agrees with the BBC Executive that the BBC should focus on serving children on those platforms – television and online – where they will go to find its content. To this end, it supports the reallocation of some funding from 4 Extra’s children’s programming towards children’s audio content being offered online. It is confident that this change will be in the overall best interests of all licence fee payers.