The BBC and a change of tactics in the fight for eyeballs
Pictured: Lord Tony Hall, BBC director-general. Source: BBC
Lord Hall’s leaked speech is a long overdue fight-back, but will there really be such a resurgence for the BBC given the intensifying international competition it is about to face? By Ray Snoddy
Being ethical is by definition a good thing. On the whole ethical behaviour is surely to be admired.
Ask viewers whether they like ethical television programmes and they will fall over themselves to agree.
Given half a chance they will also insist their viewing habits are entirely composed of news, current affairs and serious documentaries. So it’s often difficult to know how they could possibly find the time to know so much about the cast of Love Island.
For journalists of a thoughtful turn of mind the scariest of popularity charts are always the ones that show the Top Ten most read stories online of, say, a newspaper like The Times.
It amounts to a kind of parallel universe in which the lovingly created and chosen, serious front page stories of the print edition fall away and are often replaced by a totally different agenda composed of a heady mix of the sensationalist, populist and downright trivial.
It is therefore courageous of the BBC director-general Lord Tony Hall to set out his stall later this week at the Royal Television Society’s Cambridge Convention by arguing that the BBC will win the battle for audiences because they will choose the BBC for “ethical reasons.”
Lord Hall’s speech has not so much been leaked as planted all over the place to get his retaliation in first – even before fellow Cambridge speaker Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings has probably reached the UK.
Many people may hope that the BBC director-general is right that viewers will embrace the ethical choice. In this scenario the BBC will be “resurgent” and the ultimate winner in what Lord Hall calls “the second wave of disruption” about to hit the television industry worldwide.
The BBC director-general needs to qualify his language a little. The television industry has been hit by wave after wave of disruptions over the past 30 years from the launch of cable and satellite to the spread of the 500-channel universe and so on to internet TV.
If this is merely the second wave then it is a second wave of streaming or SVOD (subscription video on demand) disruption – the revenge of the studios, which have been kicking themselves for licencing their programmes and films to Netflix in the past and are now using those programmes to try to kick Netflix itself.
It is possible to see the American streamers – Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, and NBC Universal Peacock coming next year – despite all their billions, cutting each other down to size, in effect neutralising each other. Almost all, with the exception of the advertising-funded Peacock, are subscription services and could be a greater threat to Sky than either the BBC or ITV.
It is possible then that the plucky little British challenger could somehow fight its way through the battling streamers with the BBC’s “distinctive and different” services and find the sunny uplands.
It is possible, but they are arguments that at least deserve the closest scrutiny.
The biggest problem is eyeballs and where they wander.
If viewers are tempted to take out multiple, relatively inexpensive SVOD subscriptions, they will spend time watching such services. And will therefore be less available to watch BBC – or ITV programmes.
Already the British have taken out more than 15 million such subscriptions, although average viewing to the mainstream channels is still high at 69 per cent. The daily average though, according to Ofcom, has dropped by 50 minutes a day since 2010.
This is hardly disastrous but equally hard to imagine that a gradual downward squeeze will not continue and the 16-34 year-old audience is the group most likely to sign up for SVODs and desert traditional broadcasters.
They could turn into a lost generation for traditional public service broadcasting.
One thing is good about the Hall approach. At least for a change the BBC is getting out there and taking the argument to its many self-interested opponents, instead of going along with a form of pre-emptive cringe. A fight-back is long overdue.
But will there really be such a resurgence for the BBC given the intensifying international competition it is about to face?
According to a poll by media consultants Oliver & Ohlbaum, more British viewers say they are interested in subscribing to Disney+ than the planned BBC–ITV streaming service BritBox – 26 per cent to 19 per cent.
Early days, but in a way the BBC has already helped to undermine BritBox before it has even launched in the UK by seeking, and gaining from Ofcom, permission to run programmes on the iPlayer for up to a year.
As far as the BBC is concerned it will be making “old” programmes available for the streaming service, and unlike ITV, it is apparently not planning to put money into original commissions for BritBox.
It could be a difficult sell in a crowded streaming market.
The Lord Hall can at least reveal one good piece of news. The use of the iPlayer by younger audiences has increased by a third in the past year and if the BBC can get its act together on Sounds…
The BBC is able to point to the vast range of its services from news and sport to live channels, some of the best radio in the world, including local stations, quite apart from running five symphony orchestras and the Proms.
Reed Hastings doesn’t run a single symphony orchestra never mind five.
“No-one offers the range of content, in so many genres, on so many platforms, as the BBC. We’re not Netflix, we’re not Spotify. We’re not Apple News. We’re so much more than all of them put together,” Lord Hall plans to insist.
Yes to ethical, yes to trust and all the wide range of services provided by the BBC, which makes the BBC licence fee good value compared with pay TV or multiple SVOD subscriptions.
And yes it is more than time for Lord Hall and the BBC to start blowing their own trumpet and be less sensitive about the criticisms of friends.
The danger is that the audience will say yes to all of that – and then wander off to watch the third series of The Crown with three more promised, before signing up for Disney+ , Amazon Prime and maybe Apple TV+ as well.