BBC3 is a channel which is operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation. It launched in early 2003.
THE AUDIENCE
The channel has a target audience of 16-34 and has a variety of content, including comedies and dramas, sport, documentaries and more. The content on BBC is aimed towards a younger audience and is currently reaching 8.5% of people in its potential reach.
Due to being an online-only platform since late 2015, BBC 3 does have a smaller reach than it's opponents channels. Even so, the Top BBC 3 iPlayer shows are still reaching over 1 million people, with Drama "Thirteen" being the highest at 3 million viewers. These numbers exceed what the channel what was getting as a Television station, with content receiving less than a million viewers, mostly between 600-800,000 on average. iPlayer use increased since BBC 3's switch to online and BBC 3's content receives over 7% of its requests.
BBC3 online controller Damian Kavanagh has stated that he is not just after large audiences. He is focusing on broadcasting new and interesting ideas and increasing the viewer's engagement, rather than overall viewership. Much of BBC 3's iPlayer content is now being uploaded onto YouTube to help reach a further audience. Their YouTube channel now has over 1 million subscribers and it's most viewed video has reached 12 million views.
WHY BBC3?
BBC 3 is the ideal platform for this documentary. When watching BBC 3 content, you find yourself being involved within the subjects that are being broadcast. This is what our documentary wants to do for club-level motorsport. We are bringing the club-level motorsport scene to the public, who may only be aware of Formula One.
BBC 3's mottos are clear - Here is how Dream Chaser fits into BBC 3's needs.
Why Now? - Timeliness and Relevance
British Motorsport is in it’s prime with Lewis Hamilton has recently won his 5th F1 World Championship and younger British drivers are winning many of the lower categories. This documentary aims to show the issues they may have faced on their journey in motorsport and what kept them passionate about their dream.
It is a perfect time to illustrate this topic as many young motorsport fans in Britain will be intrigued by the success of our top athletes, this documentary will give perspective on what the journey is really like. Our angle of "chasing dreams" is something that is also always timely and relevant as everyone is constantly looking to improve themselves.
Talkability
This documentary is designed to get people talking. We will make people question themselves as to why they never followed their dreams. From the motorsport side, as a fan of the sport, it always frustrates me people say "They just sit down and drive, they are not athletes". This statement could not be further from the truth and this documentary will help show the reality of the sport and the hardships faced by all drivers.
Once we show our journey, we want to discuss how hard it was and if I feel differently towards my dreams, once I have completed it. This will allow the viewer to evaluate their situation and set themselves some goals to achieve. We want to show a positive side of living a dream, even through all of the struggles to make it happen.
Originality
The subject matter of chasing your dreams isn't generally brought into the mainstream media or television culture, unless something big happens that has changed peoples perspective on a situation. Once this is combined with Motorsport our show is truly unique and unlike any other show on BBC 3, while still being interesting and relevant to a large audience
There is no reason that this subject matter hasn't been talked about on a larger scale. It's definitely a passion project because as the main contributor, I need to allow the viewer to understand why this is so important to me. It will be exciting to explore a new route in documentary making and understand a subject that we are invested in.
Why not another channel?
It's important to understand why this show is being broadcast to a BBC 3 audience rather than one of its competitors. This possibly could have been a Channel 4 or ITV2 series as they have a similar audience, age and style of content.
ITV2 and E4 had both gained popularity because of BBC 3 change over to an online-only platform. However, most of the gain in the audience was sitcom and reality Television that was transferred from BBC3 to ITV2 and E4. It was not content that the channel produced themselves, rather bought from another company.
ITV2 would not be suitable as it was very different from the style of the programme I am creating. The channel is aimed at reality television, not factual documentary storytelling. The show would not have fit the brand that ITV2 stands for and we did not want to change the story to fit a specific channels audience.
Channel 4, like BBC 3, is a channel that supports more obscure ideas and documentaries. To try and gauge if Channel 4 or BBC3 was better, I started by looking through the current documentaries on Channel 4. Channel 4's factual documentaries typically inject more humour. Whereas BBC3's have a stronger emphasis on the story and the people behind it. BBC 3's documentaries do include some humour, but that typically comes from a specific situation that happens, rather than being forced upon us by the presenter.
There are exceptions, but BBC 3 definitely has a style of documentary making that is present throughout it's projects. Example work by Reggie Yates and Stacey Dooley helps set the tone for the style of documentaries that BBC 3 is trying to create. Both of these were shows I learned a vast amount from, when researching how to create a documentary of this style.
BBC 3 certainly fits the style of the documentary we are creating and it also produces a lot of short-form content which our project would fit under. The fact that BBC 3 is online-only does not affect our potential reach as the best BBC 3 shows generally get aired on BBC 2 and sometimes on BBC 1. As BBC 3 also produces a lot of content on a tight budget, it also fits perfectly with our plan of a total budget of under £2000.
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BBC 3 is the perfect platform for our project. It will allow us to explore our subject in a powerful way, allowing the viewer to connect to my story and it's importance and why they should be thinking about chasing their own dreams.
