Measuring success (or failure)

Direct quote from today's report by the MPs sitting on the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committe.

"We consider that some of the claims regarding BBC Three made by the BBC Trust and Executive are not fully supported by the evidence. The BBC has been more ready to highlight favourable over unfavourable information and its implications. In particular, we note that the Trust’s claim of “BBC Three’s effectiveness in reaching young people” is not supported by its audience reach. We are also surprised that the test of the value of BBC 6 Music and the Asian Network in the latest strategy review appears not to have been applied to BBC Three".

There's lots of beefs in the report about how the BBC measures reach and share (the MPs think it should be done differently to the rest of the broadcasting world). But they also highlight the problems of measuring "cost per user/viewer hour" in an organisation with many outputs.

According to the Annual Report, “Cost per viewer hour [for BBC Three] for the year was 10.6p (down from 12.9p in 2007–08)”. The Director General confirmed, however, that this figure ascribes no cost to BBC Three for the programmes transferred from BBC One and BBC Two, which account for a substantial proportion of BBC Three viewing....

Adjusted to remove the costs and viewer hours of acquisitions and transfers from other channels, the per user hour was 19.1p, nearly double the 10.6p figure stated in the Annual Report. This was reduced to 17.0p after taking into account the costs and user hours of BBC Three programmes transferred to other channels (e.g. BBC Three programmes repeated on BBC One and BBC Two), but still reflected a significant increase (+60%) on the cost per user measure used in the Annual Report. Whether the Trust considers that BBC Three offers value for money on this basis remains to be seen.

The costs per listener hour of 6Music is currently 3.4p; the cost per listener hour for the Asian Network is 6.9p.