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BBC Two set for complete rebrand ‘to fight threat of Netflix’

Channel to refresh its identity for the first time in 25 years

BBC Two is planning a complete rebrand as it attempts to fight off the “growing threat” of the likes of Netflix.

The channel’s controller Patrick Holland said traditional television channels still had enormous influence and he could offer a “curated channel in an age where you’ve got all of this choice”, reports The Guardian.

He said the channel is facing up to the need to reach a younger audience – the current average age of a viewer being in their 60s.

Holland said BBC Two’s ability to broadcast to millions of people on any given evening meant it could still set the tone of the national debate. “Netflix cannot do that, Amazon cannot do that. An ongoing schedule gives you an ongoing dialogue with the audience. I wouldn’t swap that for anything.”

From Thursday, the channel will drop its on-screen identity based around physical representations of the number two, which it has used in various forms since the early 1990s. This will be replaced by a series of colourful visualisations based on a simple curve, which according to Holland represents the channel’s “constant evolution, constant eclecticism, constant sense of quality”.

“My role on BBC Two is to try and make the channel as engaged with the modern world, to make it engaged in the big questions of our time, but to do it in a way that brings extraordinary storytelling to the fore,” he said.