London Calling: Streaming Media Europe Preview
What's your role and focus at the BBC Worldwide?
I’m leading Kangaroo for BBC Worldwide, which means I have responsibility for the commercial strategy, product development, and brand building of the venture, as well as ongoing business development—from a BBC Worldwide point of view.
What do you think is the most important goal for BBC Worldwide over the next 1–2 years? What do you think are the greatest challenges facing BBC Worldwide in this same time period?
One of the key targets for BBC Worldwide is to expand its digital revenues from 1% of total to 10% of total over a 5- year period. This is a big ask, but it’s one we’re answering with arange of revenue-focused digital projects.
The most obvious of these has been a very proactive syndication programme—getting our content onto the web via some major partners in revenue generating deals. We were the first major broadcaster to sign up for a channel on YouTube, we were the first global broadcaster to sign a deal with MySpace, and we were also the first U.K. broadcaster to sell full length content on iTunes.
Under the partnership, the best BBC video content will be made available online globally via MySpaceTV, the social networking site's popular new video platform.
As well as syndication, branded sites are an important part of our digital strategy. We take brands based around BBC content and create connected commercial web presences. Sites like TopGear.com and GardenersWorld.com are building on established magazine operations.
We’re also looking overseas for revenues and one of our major activities here is BBC.com, the international expression of the BBC online. With BBC.com we’re essentially looking to monetise the millions of non-license-fee-paying overseas users of BBC.co.uk. BBC.com is ad-funded and acts as a global window to BBC Worldwide content on the web and therefore is an important cross-marketing tool as well as a straightforward destination media site.
Obviously Kangaroo is a major business objective for us. By coming together with two of the other major broadcasters in the U.K. to create a VOD platform we’re helping build the wider market for online video content in the U.K. Kangaroo is potentially a huge opportunity for us to generate revenues from our content archives whilst giving users access to a huge library of content that hasn’t been available online before.
In terms of challenges, we face the same as any other media owner online. It’s a hugely competitive and fast-moving market and it’s not simply a matter of translating what we’ve done on traditional channels into new media formats. We, like all media owners, have had a steep learning curve in terms of what does and doesn’t work online or on mobile, and we’re continuing to pick up new data and examples every day that help us optimise our digital activities.