BBC to ‘reinvent’ iPlayer

The BBC is to ‘reinvent’ its VoD service iPlayer in a bid by the UK pubcaster to fight off competition from the likes of Netflix.

Tony Hall

Speaking to staff yesterday, BBC director general Tony Hall said the pubcaster’s OTT service would become a centrepiece of the broadcaster’s offering.

Hall said he wanted iPlayer to double its reach and quadruple the amount of time spent on it by 2020 by offering services such as being able to download entire seasons of shows.

The BBC chief added that iPlayer changes were “the biggest revolution of the last charter,” which came into force earlier this year and added “now we need it to make the leap from a catch-up service to a must-visit destination in its own right.”

Artificial intelligence and further personalisation options for the service were highlighted as focus areas by Hall.

Former BBC TV chief Danny Cohen had previously said the corporation couldn’t compete with the deep pockets of leading streamer Netflix although the two broadcasters have recently started to pair up on projects including the re-working of classic children’s story Watership Down.

Tom Williams, CEO at analyst group Ostmodern, said iPlayer’s ambitions to combine more viewer control would have to be balanced with editorial curation.

“Giving viewers more control over what they want to watch and putting out entire series in one go is sometimes effective, but isn’t always necessarily helpful without the right approach to manage this,” he said.

“Most of us above a certain age have grown up with television in a linear format. We’ve relied on editorial teams, who have developed a particular experience, to curate and schedule programmes for us.

“Opening up all content and expecting viewers to take the place of curators themselves is sometimes just too high a barrier for those viewers to become more engaged in VoD.

“All of this points to the need for greater curation, together with a better approach to how we manage VoD services, to take into account the real-world factors which have an impact on what we choose to watch.”