Since the end of analogue transmission in 2012, we’ve watched TV via digital broadcast. Now the BBC and other broadcasters are getting ready to change to online-only broadcasting over the next decade, switching to streaming rather than sending broadcasts by aerial – and the BBC seems ready to lead the charge.
As budgets tighten, saving money by moving to streaming makes sense. But the older viewers who still value scheduled programming – and who are most loyal to the BBC as an institution – could be left behind; a fifth of people over 65 in the UK use the internet less than once a month.
So, should the BBC go online-only? The i Paper’s TV editor, Emily Baker, and journalist and former BBC presenter Janet Street-Porter offer their perspectives.
From this week, the BBC News channel will be streaming live on YouTube in the UK and the USA. It’s a further rollout of the digital-first strategy announced by the former director-general, Tim Davie. His successor, Matt Brittin, is the former the boss of Google in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, so don’t expect any deviation from the policy of dumping old-style terrestrial channels in favour of TikTok, YouTube and collaborations with leading tech companies.
A year ago, Tim Davie defined his goals as the need to attract new, younger audiences and form brand partnerships to promote the BBC’s output online. At the same time, millions will be poured into the iPlayer and BBC Sounds apps at the expense of the programme budgets for the mainstream channels on TV and radio. The reasoning is that streaming and apps are where younger audiences instinctively go for TV and radio now, and so the BBC needs to meet them where they are.
The licence fee is insufficient for BBC ambitions, and that funding gap means that anything attracting smaller audiences (like local TV and radio stations) will be slimmed down and moved online, with the money saved going into the digital-first expansion. Popular shows like Celebrity Mastermind, Live at the Apollo and Football Focus have already been culled and there will be many more.
I am 100 per cent in favour of attracting younger audiences. It was my remit when I joined the BBC in 1987 – I was given cash and early evening slots on BBC2 to try and win back 18 to 25-year-olds. It’s true to say I failed. Over the past 39 years, millions of younger viewers have deserted the Beeb entirely and now get their news and entertainment via phones and laptops – wherever they are, at a time that suits them. They have never looked at a TV schedule. So you might think that Brittin is doing the right thing in creating programmes for children and young adults in partnership with TikTok and YouTube.
Yes, it’s important to attract viewers and listeners early in life and gain brand loyalty as part of growing up – but this must not be at the expense of the existing BBC audience, people who pay their licence fees and tune in every day to their favourite programmes, whether it’s the Today programme, Composer of the Week on Radio 3, the News at 10 or Strictly.
The BBC seems reluctant to admit that their most loyal fans – their core consumers – are mostly over 60, and a great many have limited digital skills. They might have mastered BBC Sounds and the iPlayer, but anything that makes viewing and listening to everyday favourites more complicated is going to be a hard sell.
However smooth it might try to make the experience, going online simply isn’t as easy as flicking on the TV or radio. It is eating away at what the BBC does best too. I love classical music and already find BBC Sounds very irritating – too much material is repackaged as if I am stupid and can’t listen to a concert in its entirety. News and classical music is being hacked into bite-sized chunks as if I haven’t got the concentration to consume the original output unedited.
I am in my late 70s, and I have a reasonable amount of digital awareness. I can just about post on Instagram, and sometimes on X if I am feeling brave. But I don’t want to have to watch my favourite programmes interspersed with advertising and branding – I find the BBC’s endless self-promotion is quite repetitive enough already.
The problem for the BBC is that all viewers already have far too much choice. This is the golden age for entertainment. Who needs to leave home and go to a cinema? Every night we are offered so much drama, true crime, excellent documentaries and comedy on all the streamers.
This vast array of choices is almost exhausting, but easy to access if you are prepared to pay. I don’t feel the need to extend that choice even further with BBC digital offerings, which I suspect will be aimed at people half a century younger than me. And the fact is, those people are used to seeing the BBC as just one of hundreds of places to be entertained. Chasing after them is pointless – and doubly so when we older people, the people who still rely on it, are put off by that chasing.
The BBC must accept that its core audience are old, unfashionable, set in their ways and not particularly tech-savvy. But they are loyal in a way that the 20-year-olds of today will never be.