‘The Custodian of the BBC Archives’: The future of BBC Four as an archive channel

Mhairi Brennan

doi:10.1177/17496020221078507

‘The Custodian of the BBC Archives’: The future of BBC Four as an archive channel

Mhairi Brennan^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

In its Annual Plan for 2021/22, the BBC announced that it would cease to make new content for BBC Four, instead relying on repeats and archive programmes to fill the channel’s schedule. The decision might seem to be a pragmatic response to the corporation’s financial constraints, but will it really lead to the channel becoming ‘the home of the most distinctive content from across the BBC’s archive’ as the broadcaster claims? This article explores the potential risks to cultural memory of recycling archival material on BBC Four with no new content to add to the mix.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	201-207
Number of pages	7
Journal	Critical Studies in Television
Volume	17
Issue number	2
Early online date	21 Apr 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/17496020221078507
Publication status	Published - Jun 2022

Bibliographical note

© The Author(s) 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Keywords

BBC
BBC Four
television archives

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10.1177/17496020221078507Licence: CC BY 4.0

brennan-2022-the-custodian-of-the-bbc-archives-the-future-of-bbc-four-as-an-archive-channel
© The Author(s) 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Final published version, 528 KBLicence: CC BY 4.0

Cite this

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‘The Custodian of the BBC Archives’: The future of BBC Four as an archive channel

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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