Not bad

Tim and Tom will be pleased, in general, with the National Audit Office report on the performance of BBC Studios. In particular, they will leap at the offer of revising existing financial targets to be delivered by 2027/28, because of changing market conditions. Yes folks, the targets will be easier. 

Of course, my job is to highlight the niggles. The NAO allows itself one big 'I told you so'.

In our 2020 report, we identified that BBC Studios had been less successful than planned in winning new commissions and generating IP. Since then, although generation of new IP has grown, BBC Studios has not met its targets in this area and remains reliant on the IP from BBC programmes created before it was first established in 2016. In 2023-24, of the 10 titles from its production business which provided the most profit to the BBC, only one was from new IP generated by BBC Studios. 

There are revealing bits from the investment in the USA: The revamp of bbc.com cost £25m. BBC Select, a service of documentaries for posh people, has produced 275,000 subscribers. 

BBC.com did not meet its user and income targets in North America for 2023/24.

Nonetheless

BBC Studios plans to consolidate its international digital services into a single high-quality digital offering. This would combine its existing digital services – BBC.com, its international news and sports apps, BBC Select, BBC Podcasts, and BBC Sounds international – into a single, multi-territory service. 

The NAO commends in general improvements to the governance of BBC Studios, but talks worryingly of moving targets inside the business. 

There are still some weaknesses in its reporting regime which we consider make it difficult for the BBC Commercial Board and BBC Studios’ own Executive Committee to identify whether BBC Studios is meeting its performance targets, and to make good strategic decisions.

These include rolling forward of internal targets over a three-year period resulting in no reporting against the original target set for the period, and KPIs not being agreed for the beginning of the 2023-24 financial year. In addition, BBC Studios regularly reforecasts its financial metrics during the year and subsequently reports performance against these re-forecasted levels rather than the original budget, making it more difficult to use these reports to track performance over time