The revamp of BBC Worldwide’s international channel business has resulted in 12 out of 33 international channel feeds carrying the new brands.
BBC First, BBC Brit and BBC Earth – in the year supported plans to upgrade the company’s linear channel offering and at year-end both BBC First and BBC Earth were available in around 40 countries and BBC Brit in 61.
BBC Worldwide has reported a headline profit of £138.6 million, an increase of 4% after an adjustment for the part-sale of BBC America to AMC.
It was the first full-year results for the BBC’s commercial division since the BBC America deal in October 2014.
Tim Davie, Chief Executive, BBC Worldwide and Director, Global said: “This year’s results are due to strategic focus and exceptional content, creatively commercialised. Despite operating in an increasingly challenging environment, we have held onto our ambition to transform the business, deepening our unrivalled content slate, while increasing our support to the BBC and the wider UK creative industries. All these elements played their part in delivering a good set of results and ensuring we enter the new year from a good place.”
In November, BBC Store launched in the UK, offering the opportunity to buy and keep a wealth of recent and classic titles. By year end the service offered 9,000 hours of content, making it the largest collection of BBC programmes available to own.
Although the global rollout of the BBC iPlayer was suspended there are plans for the deployment of the BBC programming portal in Singapore later in the year. A VOD service will also launch in the United States.
