08 Mar 10

What does BBC cost-cutting mean for the commercial sector?

By Dan Sear, Associate Director

It’s been a difficult few years for the BBC, with Russell Brand offending middle-England on Radio 2 and Jonathan Ross’s extravagant pay packet symbolising a culture of excessive rewards for top talent and senior management. These issues have been brought more sharply into focus by the biting recession that has gripped the commercial media sector.

The BBC has belated responded with a raft of proposals that will free up budget to be reinvested into original drama, comedy and news. The areas proposed for cuts include the website, 6Music, the Asian Network, major sports events and US TV imports. Media commentators have spent much of the past week critiquing the targets for cuts, with the decision on 6Music in particular prompting a significant media backlash.

However there seems to have been relatively little thought on what this all means for the main commercial players in TV and radio. There can be little doubt that over the past decade the BBC has seen the commercial sector as a rival to be beaten, with success judged by share and ratings. This has been seen most clearly in the aggressive scheduling of programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing.

If we are genuinely seeing a new BBC that is focused on providing quality and unique content, then clearly this is incompatible with a mindset of judging success against commercial concepts like share. This should mean a new freedom for the likes of ITV to develop and schedule great quality populist programming without fear of being trumped by the BBC. The shift away from imports could also offer up a real opportunity to Five, which has built its success on programmes such as CSI, Law & Order, House and Neighbours. With the BBC now likely to be out of the running for critically acclaimed drama such as Mad Men and Heroes, Channel 5 has a opportunity to build a channel and a brand that showcases the best quality TV from around the world.

The story is quite different for the commercial radio sector. For years, the BBC has championed DAB radio and invested heavily in DAB-only content, despite increasing concerns that the platform is not economically viable for commercial players. The demise of 6Music and the Asian Network will further undermine the DAB platform as a whole, and give consumers one less reason for investing in a DAB radio for the home or car. In turn this will make commercial providers more and more cautious in making further investments in a platform that looks to be in limbo. We may well look back on this decision as the day the tide turned irrevocably away from DAB as the future of radio in the UK.