BBC Three could be set to return as a regular TV channel.
Tony Hall
The youth-orientated channel was taken off air and moved online four years ago, but the broadcaster is now looking to bring it back, with a budget that will potentially be double its original size.
According to the BBC, it is currently "considering the case" for returning BBC Three to "linear television".
A BBC spokesman said: "We'd be wrong not to back a service that is doing better than anyone could have ever conceived."
BBC Three has commissioned hit shows such as 'Normal People' and 'Fleabag', but the move could lead to reductions in other areas of the corporation's business.
BBC Four has recently been rumoured for the axe, while the broadcaster's income has shrunk by as much as £125 million during the coronavirus pandemic.
Meanwhile, BBC director general Tony Hall previously told a group of MPs that the corporation might need to scale back its output if it was hit hard by the health crisis.
Speaking in March, before the UK went into lockdown, he explained: "At the moment we are intent on keeping absolutely everything open, all our networks going, because we know that globally, nationally and locally, people turn to us for information, as they did during the floods.
"[We want] to make sure we can keep going if for some reason there was illness within a team. We're not planning on anything other than keeping everything going at the moment, but we need to plot just in case something happens.
"The primary purpose is to keep our services going. If we were hit to a very high degree by sickness then our priority is to make sure we have a service people would turn to, and that that service would keep going."