While the BBC’s digital-first strategy gathers pace, C21 investigates the challenges that prevent it from going completely online this decade and the unintended consequences its fellow UK pubcasters could face from growing their presence on YouTube.
Netflix’s landmark four-part series Adolescence has deservedly made headlines for its handling of contemporary social issues around masculinity as well as its cutting-edge cinematography.
It has also earned column inches as the first streaming show to top the UK’s weekly TV ratings, beating BBC programmes such as The Apprentice and Death in Paradise in the official rankings with 6.45 million viewers for its first episode in mid-March.
This marked another milestone in the growth of not only Netflix but streaming as the default way most people in the UK – and other parts of the world – watch television. It may not be there yet but Helen Burrows, controller of distribution at the BBC, says: “The numbers are only going one way.”
Helen Burrows
Burrows set the scene while speaking at the recent Next Steps for Public Service Media in the UK online conference, organised by the Westminster Media Forum, where the former BT exec discussed the balancing act the pubcaster faces between streaming and digital terrestrial television (DTT).
“We’re facing this very mixed world where there’s 20% or so of households today who only watch TV and TV-like content over the internet, but there’s 50% of households who don’t do that at all, and they’re relying on DTT broadcast or satellite for much more traditional, linear TV. And then you’ve got 65% of households in the middle who are doing a bit of a mixture,” said Burrows, citing a recent study by the UK’s Department of Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS).
The BBC, and many other non-commercially funded PSBs like it around the world, are in the challenging position of needing to transform themselves into a digital-first organisation to go where the vast majority of its audience is – online – while at the same time remaining universally accessible.
UK media regulator Ofcom is also keeping a close eye on the BBC to ensure those who aren’t watching over the internet don’t get left behind. After all, its royal charter – the constitutional basis for the BBC – stipulates it should serve all audiences, wi-fi or no wi-fi.
Towards the end of 2024, the DCMS published the findings of a research report commissioned in September 2023, led by Exeter University and a group of independent researchers. The project looked at the UK’s current television delivery and consumption trends, examining how they are likely to change in the coming decade if there is no government intervention.
Based on current trends, the report predicts that 95% of households will have the capacity to watch TV over the internet by 2040. However, 5% of households, or 1.5 million people, will still rely on traditional linear broadcasting without intervention.
This ‘unconnected’ group tends to be significantly older, have a lower socioeconomic status and lives in rural communities. The cost of broadband and lack of digital skills are factors in preventing households from adopting internet protocol television (IPTV) or programmes delivered via the internet.
“The BBC’s commitment to universality means we will continue creating content for traditional services while also adapting to an IP-based world,” said Burrows, who is keen to see the UK government assist with a transition she believes will require “significant support.”
Ofcom last year laid out the three options facing television distribution in the UK if it is to sustain universal provision, and in particular public service broadcasting. These are: invest in a more efficient DTT service; reduce DTT down to a core service, known as a ‘nightlight’; or move towards DTT switch-off over the 2030s.
Adolescence was the first streaming show to top the UK’s weekly TV ratings
The latter, like the campaign to end analogue TV signals almost 20 years ago, would require a planned campaign to support people in getting connected and confident with internet TV services ahead of a DTT switch-off post-2034, when the law that keeps it going lapses.
“This would take careful planning to ensure universality of public service broadcasting and that no one was left behind, but would also have wider benefits for digital inclusion,” Ofcom says.
While the DCMS continues to consider these options, it is clear that digital inclusion is high up on the government’s agenda following the publication of the Digital Inclusion Action Plan: First Steps in February.
“This document marks the first step of a new, ambitious approach to tackling digital exclusion. By working together with the private sector and civil society, we will deliver the long-term, systemic change that British people deserve,” reads the joint ministerial foreword to the document.
Burrows joined the BBC in 2024 to lead its digital transition, networks and spectrum and investigations teams, having led the content and services policy team at telecoms company BT for five years, covering issues including digital inclusion. Through the pandemic, she led BT’s efforts to work with the government to support vulnerable customers and citizens.
Burrows’ initial assessment of the document was that it “looks quite promising” but it had some notable omissions. “There’s a real lack of pledges from big tech. And that seems to me a bit of a gap, considering that the IP and internet industry, they’re the big winners. And they’re the ones with the money,” said Burrows.
The BBC’s iPlayer is popular and well used but is quickly being rivalled by YouTube
“Digital exclusion isn’t just a TV issue – it’s a major public policy challenge, and the pandemic proved just how critical it is,” added the exec, warning against TV going the way of other bugbears of modern life like parking apps that bamboozle the user, particularly older ones.
“On some connected TVs, it takes 11 steps just to watch BBC News. That level of complexity is frustrating for audiences and needs to change. The goal isn’t just reaching all UK viewers, it’s making sure they can navigate a rapidly evolving TV landscape without being left behind,” said Burrows.
Storm Fagan, the BBC’s chief product officer, was recently appointed to the corporation’s executive committee as part of its commitment to becoming a digital-first organisation, a strategy first announced in 2022.
Since then, the BBC believes it has made “significant progress” in digital via growth on iPlayer and BBC Sounds, record numbers for signed-in accounts and improvements to its user experience across its digital platforms.
Tim Davie
Director general Tim Davie said in March: “The shift towards digital is a vital part of our Value for All strategy and the way we will drive reach and relevance with audiences.”
While iPlayer is a much-loved and much-used platform, it is quickly being rivalled by YouTube, with Barb data revealing earlier this year the Google-owned platform is now “dependably” the second most-watched service in British households, behind only the Beeb.
This is leading some to urge the UK pubcaster to throw caution to the wind and embrace YouTube wholeheartedly, with UK television veteran Jon Thoday among those leading the calls.
The hypothetical scenario would see the BBC keep its licence fee, while its YouTube presence would be advertising-free, Thoday told C21 earlier this year.
The outspoken producer, who once tabled a joint bid to buy BBC Three from the UK pubcaster ahead of its ill-fated dalliance with going online-only a decade ago, poses an almost existential question for broadcasters in an age when YouTube gives anyone with an internet connection the ability to launch their own channel for free: wouldn’t all the money the BBC spends on tech and infrastructure be better spent on programming?
“A vast amount of the BBC’s overhead is committed to being an actual broadcaster. What’s brilliant about YouTube is you don’t have to have much overhead. You can spend more money on programming,” said the co-executive chairman at Avalon.
“A public broadcaster needs to be able to finance shows, so it should direct as much of its money towards doing that. My view is the word ‘broadcaster’ is a complete anachronism for the BBC. It should be the British Content Corporation, not British Broadcasting Corporation. For me, anything that saves a broadcaster money from the actual job of broadcasting is a good thing,” said Thoday.
Such a plan would represent one of the most radical and controversial shake-ups of the UK’s broadcasting sector in generations and there is no suggestion the BBC is contemplating moving over to YouTube. Indeed, one BBC insider who spoke to C21 about the proposals gave them short shrift.
Doing so would be “disastrous” for the BBC, said the senior exec, who declined to be named in this piece. Unlike its commercial PSB rivals like ITV and Channel 4, which are getting ad-revenue from their increasingly comprehensive presence on YouTube, the BBC coffers would not be boosted by being on the platform, although its overall viewing figures likely would.
This trade-off would not be worthwhile, according to the insider, because the perception among the audience from the BBC’s content being on YouTube is that YouTube would get the credit if they were enjoying it, regardless of the BBC logo being present.
This would act as a disincentive for the population to pay the licence fee, therefore undermining the entire funding model for one the world’s most enduring media companies. We may see the BBC start to put the odd episode of a new show on YouTube here and there to promote it and drive viewers to iPlayer, but nothing more, added the insider.
Channel 4, meanwhile, is aiming to transform into a digital-first public service streamer by 2030 through its Fast Forward strategy, a key part of which involves growing its presence on YouTube as its key 18- to 24-year-old audience increasingly shifts towards free social video viewing.
Ofcom showed it was mindful of this strategy when it granted Channel 4’s new 10-year public service broadcast licence last year by including proposals to support its digital transformation by allowing it “greater flexibility” to invest in online content and services.
Catherine Johnson
But Professor Catherine Johnson, an expert on public service media in the age of online platforms, believes public service media (PSM) outlets in the UK should think twice before going all in on YouTube or TikTok.
The problem with proposals such as Thoday’s is that not enough consideration is given to the challenges pubcasters would face if they were to be entirely dependent on the likes of Google for the distribution of their content, says Johnson, who is professor of media and communication and director of impact at the University of Leeds’ School of Media & Communication.
Johnson goes beyond the BBC in her thinking and raises concerns about other UK PSM outlets becoming ever more entwined with a US-based platform like YouTube and the consequences this could have for the UK’s creative economy.
“Ad revenues and audience reach would be entirely dependent on algorithms adopted by the platforms. Given current research into these algorithms, this would require the public service broadcasters [PSBs] to produce more sensationalist content to be visible and discoverable within the platforms. It would also leave the financial sustainability of PSM at the whim of platforms that could change their algorithms at any moment,” says Johnson.
“Social media platforms and video-sharing platforms like Google are only prepared to share very limited amounts of the data that they gather when PSBs share their content on those platforms.
“Data is the currency that drives platforms. Forcing PSBs to share content on video-sharing platforms [VSPs] and social media effectively requires them to give up valuable data to their competitors who can sell this data and use it to inform content production and algorithms. Reduced access to data will make it hard for PSBs/Ofcom to measure and monitor the reach of PSM content and the fulfilment of PSM remits.
“When distributing on social media and VSPs, PSBs lack control over the environment within which their content appears, which could lead to a decline in attribution and trust.”
What has happened to the children’s television sector over the past decade, leaving it dominated by YouTube and struggling to reach its audience with no discernible funding model, should go some way to injecting urgency into government talks about the future of the wider industry.
As Greg Childs, director of campaign group Children’s Media Foundation, said during the Westminster forum, there may be no future for PSBs because young people won’t understand what it is, having barely encountered it on YouTube, TikTok and Roblox while they were growing up.
Johnson adds: “More fundamentally, PSM is currently a system regulated to operate in the public interest. We have to ask ourselves do we really want to make our media ecosystem predominantly dependent on the likes of Google and Meta, which are unregulated and have been proven to cause social harms?”
Johnson and her colleagues have explored some of these issues as part of Leeds University’s ongoing Public Service in the Age of Platforms project, with the latest policy briefing available to read here.
Based on in-depth interviews with PSM employees (top and middle management) in nine European organisations in Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Poland and the UK, it highlights the continued challenges these broadcasters face while competing with the tech giants. It also features recommendations on the kinds of regulations that would be needed to support and enable PSM to distribute on social media and video-sharing platforms.
Meanwhile, the UK’s recently introduced Media Act goes some way towards modernising decades-old broadcasting legislation, perhaps most notably by ensuring PSB content is easily accessible on connected devices and smart TVs.
But anyone who’s had the misfortune of trying to set up a less tech-savvy relative with a smart TV, the words ‘easily accessibly’ are unlikely to be the first that come to mind when describing the experience.
BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and 5 joined forces on free streamer Freely
Freely, the streaming service from UK free-to-air broadcasters the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Paramount’s 5, will go some way to improve the situation, but at the time of writing it is not universally available on all smart TVs.
With the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV all prioritising digital-first long-term content strategies, research firm Ampere Analysis says collaboration could be the key to competing with deep-pocketed streamers. After all, these are tech giants investing billions in making sure their platforms are at the cutting edge, their content is the most visible and they get the most eyeballs.
Asked by C21 during the Westminster forum if he gets the sense Google would be open to giving greater prominence to PSM content on YouTube, Mark Griffin, deputy director of TV policy at the DCMS, acknowledged the increasing role YouTube and other VSPs are playing in the media ecosystem.
“We have been in discussion with Google and YouTube about the role that they play. In particular, the Secretary of State said about children’s television, we wanted to hear from the video sharing platforms about how they surface content to children and what that content is,” said Griffin.
“YouTube understand that they play a big role in the ecosystem and I think they are very open and interested in partnerships with PSBs and promote high-quality news content as well, particularly when there is breaking news.
“If the desire is to go further, particularly through using regulatory tools, there is a really interesting debate to be had, which I think we’re probably at the start of rather than towards the end of.
“What is the right policy mix in this space? What is in the interest of audiences who use these platforms? We are hoping to continue that conversation both with these platforms, but also with all other interested stakeholders.”
But as the debate starts to heat up, PSBs around the world are losing their grip on viewers, while the tech companies are strengthening theirs.
