July 2025 looks like being a pivotal month for the current BBC management. The Great American News Gamble is officially underway.
More and more users of bbc.com in the United States are being presented with this screen, as they attempt to follow interesting headlines. The process is called 'dynamic charging', a euphemism for the marketing team hunting down those they believe might be willing subscription victims. To make sure those US subscribers get what the marketing team think they want, BBC Studios now pays for at least 100 journalists based in the States, most of them US citizens.
I was lucky enough to be working at Television Centre when the BBC News Online service emerged in 1997. In the nature of the web in those days, it was without international boundaries, and explicitly followed the World Service model, offering fair and accurate reporting, free of commercial or political contamination.
Now only bits of the BBC are free to US users - radio stations that take World Service programming survive. And the news site internationally is peppered with inappropriate ads, clickbait headlines and tittle-tattle; today's offerings include "Kill Russians, win points: Is Ukraine's new drone scheme gamifying war?","How popping a pimple led to a man getting sepsis"; "Watch moment child gets stuck inside claw machine".
Tim Davie, via marketing at Pepsico and Procter & Gamble, and leading BBC Studios, wanted to sell more 'product' in the States. "Dancing with the Stars", "Killing Eve" and the early deals for Dr Who hinted at a gold rush, now clearly easing to a trickle. What could possibly go wrong with 'selling' News in the States ? I believe it's already going wrong, and the marketing of news, under CEO Deborah Turness, distracts from the core purposes that made BBC News distinctive.
In the US you can get ITV News, Channel 4 News and Sky News via the web; Reuters and others offer at least dispassionate text news services. The BBC risks losing large numbers of US users to free alternatives. Spin the wheel, Tim.