TV Station

BBC Two

Country: United Kingdom
Launched: April 20, 1964 (Monday)

Nowadays, new BBC programmes often appear on BBC Two, especially if those behind them have not proven themselves elsewhere. A successful BBC Two programme has often been moved to BBC One, in the manner of Have I Got News For You. Over its first thirty or so years the channel developed a reputation for screening highly praised and prestigious drama series, amongst these Boys from the Blackstuff (1982) or 1996's epic, critically-acclaimed Our Friends in the North ; its "highbrow" profile compared to rivals is also in part attributable to a long history of demanding, flagship documentaries, most famously Civilisation and The Ascent of Man. During the 1980s and early 1990s, like the early Channel 4, BBC2 also started to establish for itself a reputation as a champion of independent and international cinema.

The channel has sometimes been judged in more recent years increasingly to have moved away from this original role and to have moved closer to the mainstream. The perception of its greater minority interest nevertheless persists in today's multi-channel world, so that a programme moved from BBC Two to BBC One will often attract a much larger audience, even though no other change has been made. Since 2004 there have been some signs of an attempt to return closer to parts of BBC Two's earlier output with the arts strand The Culture Show and intermittent night-time repeats of programming from BBC Four. Its most popular programme at the moment is Top Gear.

During the evenings, the broadcast alternative programmes on BBC Two Northern Ireland, BBC Two Scotland and BBC Two Wales. In addition, BBC Wales broadcasts a special, digital-only channel, BBC 2W, which contains more opt-outs than BBC Two Wales, an analogue-only service. BBC Two Northern Ireland's offering includes local news and weather updates, whilst BBC Scotland broadcasts variations from the main network on BBC Two Scotland, such as Newsnight Scotland, and often Gaelic-language programmes under the banner "BBC Two Alba".

An important part of BBC2's early mission was not only to provide minority interest entertainment but also to fulfil the public service functions of educational and community broadcasting.

Following a long and important association with the Open University, which has always co-produced programming with the channel, BBC2 has also carried BBC's Schools programmes from 1983 onward from BBC1. In recent years the Open University programming has been broadcast under the wider category of the BBC Learning Zone, in its long-standing slot late at night and during the early hours. However, in 2004 the Open University announced it was to end the late night programmes in favour of more primetime co-productions, modelled on Coast.

As a result of the channel's commitment to community broadcasting and amongst other programming the channel produced the symbolic Open Space series, a strand developed in the early 1970s in which members of the public would be allotted half an hour of television time, and given a level of editorial and technical training in order to produce for themselves a film on an issue most important to them. BBC2's Community Programme Unit kept this aspect of the channel's tradition alive into the 1990s in the form of Video Diaries and later Video Nation, an intended role which, after intermittent reappearances in the form of "Video Shorts", was restarted in 2007 with My Life As A Child.