BBC iPlayer Turns 10! What's Next?

It is hard to believe that on July 27th it will have been 10 years since BBC iPlayer was first introduced to the British public as a beta product. Back in those days the idea of internet delivered live and ondemand television was completely unproven and met with a lot of skepticism. I still remember the news headlines calling the project a waste of license fee payer money and worse... How wrong they were!

It must have been late 2006 when then Director General, Mark Thompson convinced me to move to London to lead the teams responsible for the BBC's online activities. I jumped at the opportunity having spent the previous 7 years trying to convince media companies that streaming was the future. While we had some success, no company had ever attempted to move their entire broadcast television programming line-up to the internet. So, when the leader of one of the world’s largest broadcaster explained this level of ambition, I was hooked.

Delivering on this big vision was another thing altogether. Even though the BBC had always been a pioneer in broadcast engineering, this project would need new skills: product management, software engineering and interaction design. Furthermore, it would require a 180-degree change to the way the organization worked. Steering groups and committee style decision-making were abandoned and replaced with a more streamlined start-up approach. Within weeks of making these changes and appointing new leaders, the Broadcast Centre in W12 was buzzing and product started shipping.

While the BBC’s technology teams deserve a lot of credit, it took the entire Corporation to make the project a success. From the amazing story tellers and on-air talent in television to the tough attorneys and rights negotiators and the brilliant marketers, it truly does take a village to make something like this happen. It’s fascinating to see how in just 10 years’ time audiences around the world now take for granted that high-quality programmes are available across any connected device.

BBC iPlayer led the way, and has helped put the United Kingdom at the forefront of Digital Media. However, now is not the time for the BBC to rest on its laurels. The iPlayer’s first mover advantages have run out of steam and it is time to rethink the entire proposition or risk being left behind by global players like Netflix, Amazon and Google. I certainly do not claim to have all the answers, but as a starter for ten, here are some important questions to consider.

Beyond Catch-up?

The original premise of BBC iPlayer was to give License Fee Payers better value for money by enabling time and place shifting of linear broadcast channels. With linear television audiences in decline across most Western countries, has the time come to rethink this broadcast first approach? Moving a channel like BBC3 online was a great start, but should the Corporation go further and re-imagine CBeebies and CBBC as online-first, or online-only propositions? How might this impact the type and quantity of programmes that the BBC commissions and produces? Over the longer run, does BBC iPlayer become the primary distribution for all BBC programmes including the 90+ years of programmes still locked-up in the BBC Archives? Perhaps all this points to a much larger question: what does it mean to inform, educate and entertain in a post-broadcasting world?

Beyond Broadcasting?

BBC iPlayer was very much hatched from a broadcasting culture, and while the service has admirably extended the broadcast channels online, for a long time it continued to offer a largely “one-size-fits-all” approach. I was pleased to hear that personalization of both content and user experience is finally becoming a priority. For content personalization, the good news is that there is no organization better placed to figure out the right balance between human-driven & algorithm-driven curation. The main challenge for the BBC will be cultural and organizational – nurturing a partnership between editorial and engineering teams that can forge the best symbiosis of human judgement and machine intelligence.

While commercial online services can afford to design their user experience around a core demographic, the BBC’s universal service obligation challenges the BBC iPlayer to meet the needs and expectations of every single license fee payer. And while not every license fee payer wants to like, tweet, snap or comment on TV shows, embracing and offering new forms of personalized engagement and self-expression will help ensure the BBC iPlayer remains relevant for and tailored to its diverse audiences. Having perfected content discovery and consumption during the last decade, should the Corporation figure-out next how to stimulate and capture the conversations that its programmes drive?

Beyond the BBC?

The BBC is a force to be reckoned with in the UK media landscape, but it’s a relatively small player on the global stage. This is increasingly true with companies like Netflix, Amazon and Google entering the original content race, harnessing the insights of their huge audience data sets and the scale of their global user bases. Ten years ago, BBC iPlayer looked like a significant public intervention. However, right now it runs the risk of becoming a subscale domestic player. Has the time come for free-to-air broadcasters to combine forces through a single Internet Television platform? Should BBC iPlayer become that platform and would it create an opportunity to finally rationalize Freeview, Freesat and Youview? I am obviously aware that project Kangaroo was famously rejected by the Competition Commission back in 2009. However, much has changed since those days in terms of audience behavior/expectations and more importantly the global competitive landscape has changed. Perhaps the idea deserves revisiting?

Envious Position

I continue to be a firm believer in the BBC’s mission and values and would argue that there has never been a more important time for a strong, independent public service broadcaster with an ambitious digital agenda. Despite its challenges, the Corporation finds itself in an envious position compared to most free-to-air broadcasters around the world. During the last decade, it managed to build a powerful brand and large-scale Internet Television service that audiences love. BBC iPlayer provides an amazing spring board for the next wave of innovation and storytelling. The good news is that the leadership team has finally challenged the organization with a set of audacious goals. I have no doubt that the incredibly talented people across the Corporation will once again step-up and deliver something extraordinary to ensure the continued success and relevance of the BBC.