Damian Kavanagh, BBC3

A year after BBC3 embarked on a new era as an online channel, controller Damian Kavanagh says he is proud of the brand’s continued commitment to new talent.

BBC3 has been an access route into the industry since it launched in February 2003, bringing names like James Corden, Reggie Yates and Stacey Dooley to screens, but when the channel lost its EPG slot and moved online, there was a genuine fear that this might be under threat.

Speaking to Broadcast on the 12-month anniversary of the channel’s move online, Kavanagh points out that five of the 18 Bafta Breakthrough Brits 2017 got their break on BBC3, including Thirteen writer Marnie Dickens and Kayode Ewumi, the writer and actor behind comedy #HoodDocumentary.

“I’m really proud that we have engaged new talent – writers, producers, actors and directors – across the board. Backing those new, fresh voices is the way that you can really stand out and become distinctive,” says Kavanagh.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag was arguably the channel’s standout piece of content last year, landing a raft of nominations and accolades, including two Broadcast Awards.

“It’s such a channel-defining show for us, but it was also a big, bold risk,” Kavanagh says. “By taking that risk and letting Phoebe’s vision play out, we ended up with something rather special.”

He also highlights Thirteen, which launched the channel’s online chapter this time last year. The first episode has notched up around 3 million iPlayer views to date and was only knocked off the top of the iPlayer ratings by Planet Earth II.

Presenter Livvy Haydock’s career has also developed rapidly since her first project for BBC3 last year directing episodes of the platform’s online series Drugs Map Of Britain. Haydock moved on to presenting Antidote Productions’ series of crime doc shorts for the channel and has since been given a 60-minute documentary to present, which will land next month.

Kavanagh says he had projected conservative social media reach figures for this point in the channel’s evolution, but they have been significantly higher than the anticipated 3.5 million to 4 million people on Facebook.

“We’re quite tough on ourselves in the way we measure these figures,” he says. “We only measure engaged reach, which means the content has to have been liked, shared or commented on.”

Pushing boundaries

Between 1.1 million and 1.5 million unique browsers come to BBC3 content on the online platform each week. Short-form strands like Mentorn’s Things Not To Say To… have been key to the brand’s social media presence, but Kavanagh is keen to keep scaling that success.

“I have told the team that this year we need to innovate more and push boundaries,” he says.

To do that, he is about to hire a dedicated BBC3 short-form commissioner and assistant commissioner who will focus solely on independently produced short-form content.

Kavanagh believes there is a sound business proposition for indies, and BBC Studios, to produce short-form for BBC3. The content can be ordered in bulk – Things Not To Say To…, for example, was commissioned for 15-20 episodes a time – and indies are now being recommissioned for short-form work.

“I ran daytime and the tariffs aren’t massive there, but you have to find a precinct where you’re going to get a lot of content first of all, and then you commission it in volume,” he says.

“There are certain indies that just aren’t going to be interested in short form, as there are indies that aren’t interested in daytime, but it’s about identifying the people who are really passionate, and get it.”

He sees the appointment of the new commissioners as a chance to put what BBC3 has learned about digital content into practice. “The biggest mistake we could make is to just keeping running forward and not learn from the stuff we’ve done,” he says.

Kavanagh admits that not every risk he has taken on BBC3 has paid off.

“Subtlety doesn’t work for us at all,” he explains, describing a series of “beautifully shot but quite esoteric films” called Things You Can’t Unsee.

“We learned quite quickly that a clear top line is really important,” he says. “It’s got to leap off the page and say to someone, ‘spend the next 15 minutes or half an hour with me’, so the ideas and territories we’re looking at have a much stronger sense of top line.”

Likewise, he says that relying on typically ‘digital’ themes has not always worked well on BBC3. He highlights Objective’s Stupid Man, Smart Phone which, despite its high production values and established YouTube talent, did not make the impact he’d hoped for.

“You cannot just pick up YouTubers and put them on TV and expect instant success; they’re different audiences,” he says. “That [show] might have suffered a little bit as well from not being clear on what that top line was.”

Kavanagh says he is not interested in traditional ratings as a measure of success for BBC3, although figures are in the public domain for long-form content that has run on BBC1 and BBC2.

This is typically aired post- 11pm, though Reggie Yates: Life And Death In Chicago played at 9pm on BBC1 to 1.9 million in October.

More cross-promotion with other parts of the BBC is on the cards. BBC3’s output on mental health could, for example, feed into BBC News’ mental health coverage, and Kavanagh has sport and the BBC homepage in his sights to push content. Meanwhile, BBC3 plans to work closely with the BBC Guerrillas digital team in Birmingham.

“We have really valuable real estate around the BBC that a lot of the big, young audience is accessing,” he says. “My job is to spot where those audiences are coming to the BBC and direct them to my content.”

Kavanagh sums up BBC3 as “a multi-media brand that has an ecosystem of touch points”.

He adds: “We can debate what the most important ones are. Is a 30-minute doc on BBC1 more important than Things Not To Say To… A Person With Downs Syndrome going viral on YouTube? I think that’s the wrong question.”

One problem the BBC3 team is still grappling with is how to extrapolate the best indication of reach from the channel’s many platforms.

Kavanagh says the minimum amount of time BBC3 will license a show for is six months, over which time the audience is likely to continue to grow.

“Live+30, that’s where the story starts,” he says. “Look at any other digital publisher – their reach figures are all on a monthly basis. “When do you stop measuring?

We’re still working through it. We don’t want to impose KPIs that tie us in knots and make us behave in a way that’s completely counterintuitive to the way our audience will consume content.”

Ultimately, it’s finding that connection between curious young viewers and the world of BBC content that remains his day-to-day focus.

“If a young person sees a piece of content that affects their life, regardless of whether it’s three minutes or half an hour, and they know that it came from BBC3 and has a sense of purpose about it, that is a good thing.”