NDM Case Study ..

How has the impact of new and digital media allow the audience to time shift and watch their programmes online such as BBC Iplayer and 4OD instead of following scheduled timing.

7- What concerns/ considerations are there (if any) for the media institutions involved in your case study as a result of the impact of new and digital media? 

What concerns are there for the BBC traditional television as a result of the impact of new and digital media (BBC iplayer)?

The traditional ways of watching television is slowly dying, there's a concern that people will no longer need TV because everything's online, being able to watch something whenever and wherever they want. However, is the BBC really effected? No, because of the TV license, the audience having to pay £145.50 annual which covers BBC iplayer. The BBC don't suffer as much as, for example ITV because they rely on adverts to make their money and if the audience no longer watch their channels, advertising will go somewhere more popular. At the BBC, the proportion of public service expenditure attributed to online activities (including mobile) has gradually increased over time and reached 5.8 per cent in 2007–8.

Its Time To Break Up BBC iPlayer

Steve Hewlett published an article in the press last week that suggested Tony Hall’s big challenge was to sort out the BBC’s ‘digital’ strategy. Steve was onto something in latching onto ‘digital’ as a key area requiring attention, but we think he erred in thinking that ‘digital’ was somehow a separate problem to core strategy. This article makes the case that you can’t separate ‘digital’ from the rest of BBC strategy. More importantly, it makes the case that there is a fundamental flaw in the way new media, and iPlayer in particular, are organised and managed within the core of the BBC. We believe that this flaw is now having a significant impact on the arguably more important BBC broadcast brands. BBC announcements in the last month have highlighted the need for a fundamental re-think.

The announcement of poor BBC2 viewing figures spoke a broadcaster that is losing sight of its core broadcast function. Our research indicates that poor scheduling and weak brand support for BBC2 has played its part in the audience decline, but the failure to support broadcast brands online, in favour of iPlayer is a big factor – particularly with young audiences. It is instructive that iPlayer has become a more recognisable brand than the BBC’s second most important TV brand, even though it delivers a fraction of the total viewing time.

-But What Is The Flaw and Why Does It Matter?

The central flaw that concerns us is that the iPlayer team control not only innovation and future developments of iPlayer, but they retain operational control of day-to-day delivery of BBC online output. They also control, and have dramatically reduced the wider web presence of the channel brands and restrict their ability to express themselves and build connections with their viewers.

The same applies to YouView, which should have been a broadcast centric platform, designed to maximise the interests of the channels. Unfortunately, it was colonised early by iPlayer people and went ‘platform-centric’. It is possible to spend an evening watching BBC3 content, and come away with the YouView and iPlayer logos lodged in your brain. The emphasis on iPlayer has also robbed the broadcast channels of the tools to build audience relationships on the web and mobile. 

What people appear to have forgotten is that iPlayer was designed and created as an alternative destination to broadcast, at a time when people still feared that the internet would beat TV and not the other way round. It most certainly wasn’t designed as a support component of a broadcast centric organisation. It was created by a team led by Anthony Rose who declared at a conference that year that ‘broadcast is dead’. Its look and feel, was created to sit outside the core branding of BBC channels and genres, and it was intended to eventually develop its own content strategy. It was effectively set up as the ‘anti-BBC’. The world of TV has changed significantly since iPlayer’s inception.

-Why Does This Matter?

Decipher make the case that this matters for two reasons: Firstly, this is our licence-fee money that is being used to prop up personal fiefdoms, and fund huge amounts of over-lapping or unnecessary activity. The current structure reflects the personal egos of Eric Huggers and Ashley Highfield, not the current needs of the BBC. To have a separate Head of FutureMedia and BBC R&D while claiming poverty under the DQF process is iniquitous.

Secondly, and more importantly, it hampers the proper evolution of the BBC as a broadcast centric organisation. In 1997, the BBC was 3 years ahead of any other UK broadcaster. It is now well behind the curve with ITV and Channel4 having done a much better job of integrating new media into a wider broadcast operation. The BBC like to hold themselves up as a template for other broadcasters. Not only can they no longer do this, but unless this flaw is rectified, they will fall further behind in defining the 21 century role for broadcasters.

-Recommendations

We would make the following recommendations:

• Clarify the key centre of gravity for TV and Radio in the BBC – We believe that this should be the broadcast channels and their brands, with new media distribution strategy rebuilt to support not compete with them. The BBC is, at heart, a broadcast organisation and it needs to be communicated clearly internally and externally.

• Retire the black and pink iPlayer branding completely- It is a divisive brand livery and the BBC should unify the branding and presentation of on-demand content with the broadcast genres (TV and radio) that its meant to support. This means there should be a single brand architecture for TV at the BBC, with individual channel identities built within it. BBC iPlayer look and feel should reflect this TV brand architecture not compete against it as present. This is what ITV have successfully done with the recent ITV Player re-design.

• Stop trying to build iPlayer as a BBC ‘platform’. However hard you want it to be true, no consumer views content that way any more. It is a strategy that will eventually isolate the BBC, not help it retains its position as the dominant beast in the broadcast TV pack. It is a strategy that works well in the export market, as a US iPlayer demonstrates.