It is almost 5 years ago that Faultline had a conversation with a number of leading lights at the BBC and asked why they didn’t a) Make all their content digital and available over the internet, and b) make it free to the UK license payer, but sell it to everyone else.
Well the BBC was pretty quick at talking about the first of these concepts and after four years of experiments, it duly brought out a piece of software which securely downloads TV programs to the PC, during the weeks after most TV programs have aired on TV. But it has taken all five of the intervening years before someone with clout at the BBC has come out and stated the obvious, which is that the iPlayer software should be opened up internationally.
There are good reasons for this if you sit inside the BBC. It is a public service broadcaster, and as such it is very careful to ensure that it does exactly that, services the public. Not the wider overseas public, just the UK public. In the past it has been criticized for suggesting charging for advertising on its web site (where 25 plus million non-UK visitors read the stories and web pages), because it’s not supposed to make money off the poor license payer. But the company has long since had commercial activities and BBC WorldWide, charged with making money from BBC content outside the UK, has deals all over the world. And that’s part of the problem. Internally BBC Worldwide would get upset if some of its customers had their noses put out of joint because content was available directly over the internet in customer countries.
But the bigger part of the issue is the fact that the Corporation collects some $5 billion from the 24 million UK homes as a license fee. This fee comes up for negotiation with the government each year, and every ten years or so the act that keeps the BBC funded is reviewed.
The BBC is something of an oxymoron in that yes it is a public service broadcaster but no it doesn’t make awful programs that are at best ‘worthy.’ It remains one of the truly global contributors to quality TV programming.
So while it has worried about even hinting that it might get ‘some’ of that money from non-UK citizens, just in case the UK government then begins to enforce a long downward spiral in its support of the institution, it has completely missed out on a huge potential revenue for itself, along with the potential to disrupt and seed online video services.
The culprit who has finally spoken up is the BBC Digital chief Eric Huggers who has come out publicly and said the iPlayer should be opened up internationally, pointing out that the Corporation is artificially blocking international access to the iPlayer, and all power to him.
But there will be factions within the BCC who are terrified of this type of development. The Charter under which the BBC operates does not allow advertising on the BBC TV channels because it might compromise its mission, and leave it at the beck and call of advertisers, interfering in its editorial independence. But of course individual overseas consumers can’t wield that kind of power, or else BBC Worldwide would have no remit.
And once the BBC takes the first steps towards commercialism it will unleash around $5 billion of new content per annum onto an unsuspecting world, all in a digital format. That move alone whether it is based on advertising free or advertising driven content (more likely to be a subscription service), could disrupt the entire online video economy, especially because unlike the US giants, it has no preference for the free to net advertising model.
And with the arrival of more and more free to air digital TV channels around the world, there are plenty of other opportunities emerging where the BBC would effectively make money from advertising, just not first hand, but through offering content to partners who fund their whole business model that way.