BBC One

BBC one

BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution. It was renamed BBC TV in 1960, using this name until the launch of sister channel BBC2 in 1964, whereupon the BBC TV channel became known as BBC1, with the current spelling adopted in 1997.

The channel's annual budget for 2012–13 is £1.14 billion. The channel is funded by the television licence fee together with the BBC's other domestic television stations, and therefore shows uninterrupted programming without commercial advertising. It is currently the most watched television channel in the United Kingdom, ahead of its traditional rival for ratings leadership, ITV.

As of June 2013 the channel controller for BBC One is Charlotte Moore, who succeeded Danny Cohen initially as an Acting Controller from May 2013.

As part of the Delivering Quality First proposals submitted by the BBC in October 2011 and approved by the BBC Trust in May 2012, all children's programming on BBC One and Two would be moved permanently to the CBBC and CBeebies channels following the digital switchover. It was found that the majority of child viewers watched the programmes on these channels already and that only 7% of these children watched CBBC programmes on BBC One and Two only, it was made clear "Children's programmes are absolutely fundamental to the BBC and that is why we have protected investment in them in the light of cuts elsewhere." Children's programming on BBC One ended on 21 December 2012. The move was criticised by the Teletubbies ' co-creator who described the changes as "ghettoising children's programmes" and believe it was merely a cost-cutting measures. d Anne Wood said "On the one hand it is inevitable. But it is dismissive of children. There is a certain amount of overlooking of the fact that children's programmes do get a wider audience than people are aware of ... I have frequently had letters from older people who have enjoyed my programmes as much as children do. A lot of the reason older people like to watch children's programming is because it is life-enhancing." head of BBC Children's, Joe Godwin said: "Our young viewers are our priority and the vast majority of children in the UK already tune in to CBeebies and CBBC to find their favourite BBC children's programmes. Far from being a 'cynical' move, we're just following where our audience has already gone.

As part of the review in 2012 other changes were brought in, including:

BBC1 is reducing the minimum hours of arts and music from 45 to 40, achieved through cutting episodes of shows, in particular Film 2013.
BBC One and Two will "largely be protected from making significant cuts".
Repeats on BBC One will increase, but remain under 10% of all output (the current rate is 8.4%).
Expenditure on sports rights will be cut by 15%. This has largely been achieved already by sharing rights to Formula 1 coverage.

In 2012, the BBC out-bid ITV for the rights to The Voice UK, which had already proved to be popular in other countries. The BBC paid £22 million for the rights to broadcast the show in the UK for two years. The Voice UK achieved good ratings for the BBC but ratings dropped towards the end of the first series and the second series. In 2013, The Voice was rescheduled to avoid a clash and as a result ratings have improved.