BBC to drop parliament TV for Olympics

Digital TV channel BBC Parliament's audience share is usually so small that it barely registers in the Barb ratings, but the service will get a boost this summer when the corporation ditches the politicians and replaces them with Olympics coverage.

The BBC has confirmed that it is to withdraw the BBC Parliament channel from the Freeview digital terrestrial TV service for the duration of the Beijing Olympics in August on order to replace it with action from the games. BBC Parliament's Freeview capacity will be used to "enhance" the quality of the interactive TV streaming the BBC is planning to use for the Olympics, which take place between August 8 and 24. This will mean that viewers accustomed to the channel's in-depth coverage of parliamentary committee hearings will instead be introduced to the delights of a myriad of minor Olympic sports.

The BBC said that as all the UK's parliaments and assemblies will be in recess during August, using the channel for Olympics coverage would make the best use of its capacity during a busy sports period. BBC Parliament has previously filled its summer schedule with repeats of big political and state events such as coverage of old general elections and last year Princess Diana's funeral, to mark the 10th anniversary of her death.

The BBC is due to officially unveil its Olympic coverage plans next month, but the event is expected to dominate the main BBC outlets including BBC1, BBC2 and BBC Radio 5 Live. However, coverage is not expected to leak on to BBC3 or BBC4.

The BBC will launch a number of specialised Olympic "red button" interactive streams, which it has previously used during major sporting events including the 2004 Athens Olympics. These interactive services will be broadcast on some of the DTT spectrum normally used by BBC Parliament.

The move to commandeer BBC Parliament on Freeview is because of the limited amount of spare spectrum. The channel will continue a normal service on the Sky satellite TV and Virgin Media cable TV services where there is more spectrum capacity. "The BBC is making full use of our channel capacity during the parliamentary recess to bring the best possible coverage of the Olympics," a BBC spokesman said.

BBC management had to ask the BBC Trust for permission to change BBC Parliament's content for the Olympics. The trust gave permission at its monthly meeting in March, saying a public value test was not required. But the trust added that if any of the UK's parliaments or assemblies were reinstated during the Olympics the normal BBC Parliament service should be resumed.

BBC Parliament's ratings are usually so low that individual programmes often do not register in the audience data published by research body Barb. However, it posted an average weekly reach - the number of people watching at least three consecutive minutes - of 437,000 viewers for the week ending April 27. For the week ending August 12 last year, it posted an average weekly reach of 258,000.