Programmes and platforms

For MPs planning to question the BBC's Director of Nations Rhodri Talfan Davies later this week, it's worth reading the transcript of his speech to the VLV Conference. 

Mr Davies makes it plain that anyone standing in the way of his digital plans is barking; everyone, of all ages, is shifting to an on-demand digital world, and unless he gets his way, the future is lost.  But his arguments are, at best, misleading, and some of them deliberately misdirect.  Take this: "Too many of our resources are focused on broadcast and not online."  

The truth is that the big dramas on the BBC work both as broadcast and online offerings; that live sport is consumed both on linear channels and via the iPlayer and BBC Sounds; that chunks of Mock The Week and Have I Got News For You work as well online as on tv;  that versions of the same BBC News stories reach audiences both on mainstream bulletins and via the News App. Apart from the News zealots who insist on vertical video for part of their offering, not much changes between the programmes as transmitted via dishes and aerials, and as delivered over the internet. Mr Davies may have noticed that Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ are getting viewers for 'programmes'. 

In 2010, UK viewers spent an average of 242 minutes a day with their tv screens. That figure, now including screen-watching via Netflix etc, is still 242 minutes a day in 2023. Netflix, Amazon and Disney are not yet offering a challenge to Mr Davies' prime output, the 6.30pm regional tv news bulletins. The ratings organisation BARB is now including figures from the streamers, and so far, no BBC streamed-only offerings have bothered the weekly Top 50 - but then, neither did series 5 of The Crown. 

The last big change in the English Regions was the disastrous dropping of Inside Out, replaced by We Are England, itself now dropped. Unless and until Mr Davies' team of executives can demonstrate a surer touch with regional tv programming, why take money out of local radio ?