The Future Of BBC: Restructuring For Success

Findings and Analysis

Write a report on the ‘Future of BBC’.

This report presents the framework regarding the ‘Future of BBC’. BBC or British Broadcasting Corporation is the broadcasting company of Britain. This report presents the framework where current director general of BBC is seeking towards restructuring the BBC. This report presents some major areas of debate regarding the future of the BBC within the media sector of world. According to the new director general, BBC needs to adopt a culture of innovation. BBC should acquire the new phase of internet technology for providing best as well as distinctive and proper content towards the people. It has been found from this report that public has demanded a free as well as independent BBC without any sort of political influence.

This report deals with the future of British Broadcasting Corporation or BBC. The BBC is the public service broadcaster of United Kingdom. It was founded in 1922 in London. BBC is operated by Royal Charter of UK. This media corporation is independent of the direct intervention of government. In every ten years, a process of review goes on that mainly considers the future activities of BBC. This review process helps to shape the future role of BBC. For this aspect, BBC should remain within its universal service. It is free from the intervention of the government of UK. However, it should be free from the politics and corruption of politics. Politics-free BBC can bring the huge range of benefits to the people of United Kingdom (Collins and Purnell 2014).

In the document, British Bold, and Creative, one point of debate has been raised that BBC should be fitted to the internet. In the media show discussion entitled ‘Future of the BBC: the Media Show Debate', five issues have been addressed by the speakers. In this discussion, the aspect of funding, directing and governing have been discussed by the speakers. In the aspect of online BBC, the fee structure of the audience should also be changed. They have debated over the funding program of BBC. For this report, the chosen topic of discussion is underlined within the aspect of the internet in BBC and license fee (Anderson and Egglestone 2012).

BBC and internet:

There are massive changes in the internet technology within the whole world. At the time of its foundation, wireless technology was very limited to television and radio. However, the society has been changed. It has been seen over the many years; the society has become too much technology oriented. In the top-down society, people always should be informed, entertained and educated by the media. Every broadcaster should have the adequate responsibility to tell the audience (Van et al. 2012). 

BBC and internet

However, it has been also noticed that the emergence of the internet has changed the scenario of media. The traditional broadcasting elements have been modified by the time with the advent of the internet. 

However, the internet has not replaced the radio and television or another traditional medium. Radio 2 of BBC has 15 m listeners in a week. There are different customers for the programs of radio BBC. However, British Broadcasting Corporation is willing to be fitted with the internet technology. However, there are many significant events or national incidents in the United Kingdom. The long-term direction of BBC is included in making the active program on an internet. However, the main motto of BBC is to become the creative partner of United Kingdom through its innovative and politics free program. BBC has started broadcasting some shows through the application of mobile phone (Strömberg 2015).

The Broadcaster's Audience Research Board (Barb) has provided the initial result of the TV player report. This report has presented the statistics of viewing a program on the device of a television set. Some programs of BBC can be seen through smartphones, computers and tablets and other devices. With the enhancement of technology, BBC has also taken the help of different application of the internet (www.downloads.bbc.co.uk 2016).

According to the TV player report of Barb, ‘Great British Bake Off' of BBC1 is a favorite show. It is one of the on-demand programs of BBC. This show has received 411,700 Average Program Streams (APS) across iPlayer websites and IOS application. More than 11.1 million or 39% individual people watched this show via television at the regular time of this show. However, 2.6 million people watched this show via PVR (www.gov.uk 2016).

 ‘Doctor who' is considered as the favorite show of BBC1. 6.5 million Individual people attended this series of Doctor Show. As per the statistics of TV Player report, the show ‘Doctor Who' has received 195,100 APS. This episode always has received 202,900 APS after one day. This show was broadcasted against the coverage of ITV regarding England vs. Wales Rugby World Cup Match. It has been noted that 5.2 million including 2 million via PVR watched ‘Doctor Who' rather than traditional and exciting Rugby match. Every episode of this Doctor's serried got the great level of APS by every week (www.gov.uk 2016).

However, Collins (2013) discussed that the current Director General Tony Hall is going to provide content of the organization for the next generation of the world. This person will fight for retaining the system of public funding of BBC. According to the concept of the current Director General, the content of BBC will be more open to achieving the competitive success within this age of the internet.

British, Bold, and Creative

Current Director General of BBC, Tony Hall has laid his vision regarding the future of BBC in the document titled ‘British, Bold, and Creative'. This paper provides the information relating to the upcoming reform or the future of the BBC. British Bold and Creative are considered as an effective material that gives the necessary information about the future of BBC. In this report, Director General Tony Hall has given his vision; those are as follows:

Cultural and local partnership: Tony Hall has recommended that the new set of BBC will always consider the local culture of Britain. The content of BBC will be involved in making active cooperation with the local as well as a national culture of England. Britain's greatest cultural force will be evaluated through the program of BBC. Apart from this cultural bonding, BBC will also work with the local newspapers (Wintour 2015).

Personalization: Tony Hall is open in the idea of ‘platform thinking'. This means that the organization will give the chance to the audience to providing news. BBC will take the curatorial role. BBC will apply platform thinking for the online products.

A new stream of BBC: BBC will introduce the new flow of news. BBC is all set to move to streaming news from rolling news. BBC will offer new the mobile-focused product of BBC new stream. This stream will deliver stories as well as videos, text and graphics to different mobile devices of people.

Service of Ideas: Ideas service will provide international views on the news. The idea of this service is to bring together the history, culture, arts and science and ideas of worldwide. Many recognized institutions of Arts and culture will make the content for this ideas service. Audiences will subscribe the platforms of BBC Four, Radio 4, Radio 3, BBC Three and BBC Learning. Ideas Service will get the required benefit from the cultural and academic institutions of Britain (Anderson and Egglestone 2012).

IPLAY: BBC has maintained the culture of entertainment and education among the people. BBC has continued it's strong and good track record to educate and entertain the children of this region. BBC will launch a dedicated online platform that is called IPLAY. ‘Learning and making' is considered as the core area of IPLAY.   

Dedicated service of music streaming: BBC has aimed to provide 50,000 tracks of music for the people. Audiences will be able to access the music via pre-loaded playlists. They can also build the list of music on their own. They will introduce an excellent service of music which can benefit both the audiences and artists. Music product of BBC will be fully integrated with digital providers.

IPLAY

Content aggregation: New form of BBC will explore opportunities for more original content for the audience. BBC will enhance its quality and also the level of houses as well as numbers of viewers. BBC will provide live and on-demand programs from different stations. The committee will also ensure an adequate video service for the critical mass of Britain.

According to the BBC Trust, public will support the new format and structure of independent as well as universal BBC. However, BBC Trust has also found the aspect that BBC Corporation must take the distinctive approach towards its broadcasting program. BBC Trust has given the formal response to the Green paper on British Government. BBC Trust has found evidence of public support for ‘universal, modern as well as entertaining BBC.' However, public has also demanded that BBC should be publicly funded organization. BBC Trust has published the report on behalf of the 40000 responses of people (Strömberg 2015).

Therefore, the consultation describes the fact that 58% group of public has the belief that BBC should always provide important things for everyone. Two third of people think that BBC should go for the online platform to develop its service of broadcasting. It has been found that the online platform has become one of the most positive aspects of the broadcasting genre. Everyone has started taking the advantage of the online forum for enhancing the number of the customers as well as viewers. BBC should introduce an online forum for the extended level of public. Apart from this, BBC Trust has also found that 81% people have the demand that BBC should act as independent body free from politics (Gannagé-Stewart 2015).

According to the report of BBC Trust, BBC should introduce a new set of public purposes as well as duties and values. According to BBC Trust, the ambition of BBC can impact on the people within the society. BBC should deliver effective dealings of broadcast with more efficient manner. It should provide commitment towards the viewers of the society. According to the recommendation of BBC Trust, service license should be restructured as per the requirement of current practice. The distinctiveness of each service of BBC should be included in the new reform of the service license of BBC. The restricting of service license can become an important aspect of measuring the performance of the service of British Broadcasting Corporation. According to the BBC Trust, the distinctiveness of performance will be measured effectively with the new set of service license of BBC.

According to the findings of BBC Trust, 60% people consider BBC as ‘distinctive.' On the other hand, 73% people have the belief that the output of BBC can be regarded as ‘high quality.' However, the primary objective of British Broadcasting Corporation is to ‘educate, inform and entertain' people through its efficient service of broadcasting. BBC as a media organization has taken the responsibility to inform and educate as well as entertain people of the society through it's distinctive or high quality program of broadcasting. BBC is an independent or public body of programming (Over et al. 2007).

In this perspective, BBC Trust has also found that only 7% people want that BBC should reduce its output in the competitive market of media and broadcasting. However, 56% people of the society have demanded more authentic as well as high quality content from different programs of British Broadcasting Corporation. BBC has extraordinary support to become more relevant broadcasters of this age.

According to the chairman of BBC Trust, every person supports an independent and universal BBC. They want that BBC should broadcast the program that is at the heart of the culture of Britain (Anderson and Egglestone 2012).

Conclusion and recommendation:

From the above study, it can be discussed that people has the demand for more comprehensive and distinctive BBC. It has been noticed that the popularity of some shows of BBC is increasing. However, restructuring in some part is very necessary for the future development of British Broadcasting Corporation within the areas of England. It has been recommended that the company should enhance its operation through more research and development process. BBC should consider the advancement of internet technology for providing adequate services to the audiences. On the other hand, from the findings of the different report, it can be assumed that most of the people have gone against the license fee of BBC. BBC online will enhance the database of young consumers. BBC should provide more focus on the aspect of radio. BBC should take cohesive role while entertaining, educating and informing audiences. The ‘British, bold and creative' tag should provide useful guidance for the future content of the program of BBC.

Tell me what is your opinion about ‘British Bold and Creative’?

Please tell us your opinion about license fees of the BBC?

Do you prefer to see BBC programs via online platform?

What is your opinion about more tech savvy BBC?

Reference list:

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