The BBC director-general has put forward proposals to open the BBC iPlayer to third-party content, introduce a new children’s iPlayer and move from rolling news to streaming news.
In a speech at the Science Museum, Tony Hall also outlined plans for new international television services in parts of the world seen as having a “democratic deficit” (see separate story). “These proposals are about creating an open, more distinctive BBC. An open BBC that works in partnership for the good of Britain at home and abroad. An open BBC that helps secure the future of public service broadcasting and upholds democracy both at a local and an international level.”
The proposals will come at a price, the BBC says it will go further than the 20% in cost savings already required, and is at pains to stress the proposals will not require additional licence fee funding or lead to a bigger BBC. They come at a time when the BBC is under immense political pressure ahead of Charter Renewal.
A makeover for the iPlayer would allow audiences to have the option of ‘binge watching’ – popularised by the likes of Netflix – but actually already available on the iPlayer through ‘Series Stacking’. Lord Hall said Britain was ‘losing out to global players, who are busy building platforms that could become gatekeepers to British content’. He offered to put the iPlayer at the disposal of British content providers through its brand and technology.
A new children’s service – iPlay – would create a single front-door for children to content provided by the BBC and trusted partners.
The move to streaming news, as opposed to the rolling news channel, follows a General Election where the day after one in five adults turned to BBC News on their mobile. The television rolling news channel is already a different beast to the channel that launched in 1997 and now shares its output with BBC One, BBC Two and BBC World News at various parts of the day.
An enhanced mobile service would inevitably be more personalised.
